At Duke, the Massacre of Innocence

(This is a book review of "Until Proven Innocent," but I found it to summarize the events quite well)

The Wall Street Journal

At Duke, the Massacre of Innocence
By ABIGAIL THERNSTROM
September 6, 2007; Page D7

Privileged, rowdy white jocks at an elite, Southern college, a poor, young black stripper, and an alleged rape: It was a juicy, made-for-the-media story of race, class and sex, and it was told and retold for months with a ferocious, moralistic intensity. Reporters and pundits ripped into Duke University, the white race and the young lacrosse players at the center of the episode, and the local justice system quickly handed down indictments. But as Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson show in "Until Proven Innocent" -- and as the facts themselves would show when they finally came to light -- it was a false story, a toxic controversy built on lies and bad faith.

There was plenty of wrongdoing, of course, but it had very little to do with Duke's lacrosse players. It was perpetrated instead by a rogue district attorney determined to win re-election in a racially divided, town-gown city; ideologically driven reporters and their pseudo-expert sources; censorious faculty members driven by the imperatives of political correctness; a craven university president; and black community leaders seemingly ready to believe any charge of black victimization.

"Until Proven Innocent" is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions -- legal, educational and journalistic -- that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair -- the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline -- was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture's most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America's supposed racial divide.

A bit of college-age stupidity triggered the sequence of events. The co-captains of the Duke lacrosse team held a house party in Durham, N.C., on March 13, 2006, and hired two strippers from an escort service for the occasion. The women who showed up -- Crystal Mangum and Kim Roberts -- happened to be black. It turned out that Ms. Mangum -- although the public would not learn of such details until very late in the life-span of the scandal -- had a serious alcohol and narcotics problem. She had been diagnosed as bipolar and had spent a week in the state mental hospital the previous summer. Having arrived at the party late, she did not start dancing until midnight. Time-stamped photos show that her performance lasted only four minutes. By 12:30 she had passed out, as she often did -- it was later discovered -- at the Durham night club where she worked as an "exotic dancer." The other dancer, Ms. Roberts, eventually drove her to a grocery store and asked for help, and the security guard there called the police, who assumed that Ms. Mangum was "passed-out drunk."

In the custody of police, Ms. Mangum said nothing about a rape. (Ms. Roberts called the rape charge a "crock" when she first heard of it, until District Attorney Michael Nifong bribed her to say otherwise by reducing a bondsman's fee -- from an earlier conviction -- by roughly $2,000.) Ms. Mangum, fearing recommitment to a mental hospital, landed on rape as the explanation for her incoherent and generally woeful condition when she was prompted by a nurse-advocate at a mental-health processing facility. There was no medical evidence to substantiate the charge.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118903193294118634.html (subscription)

Because, well, whites have power and blacks don't, therefore prejudice against whites is proper and correct. And only rarely proven wrong.

That's not how I think, but I did pay attention to the DU threads on this issue from the very beginning to the bitter end.

on the prosecution..

Sure, at first the story appeared plausible, with shades of "Animal House" in the background.

But I think that once more details came, and when DNA evidence was never clearly presented, many started having doubt. And, yes, the then up coming elections did not help, either.

many of whom seemed so willing to dispense with the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" and due process when the targets were "privileged" white boys. Otherwise, we're just as hypocritical as the right-wingers we criticize.

But I don't think it has.

Thanks for the post.

If these young men had not had millions to spend on a quality defense (as opposed to some court-appointed loser attorney), they might have already been railroaded into jail.

I don't doubt for a moment that Mike Nifong has railroaded less powerful people into jail for crimes they did not commit. That is why it was important for these young men to use their power and influence to have Nifong removed and disbarred, so that he can't do this again to someone who is poorer and not as well connected.

Now the North Carolina Attorney General should conduct a top to bottom review of all convictions produced by Nifong's office.

with only $5 million ($500,000 deductible) of liability insurance. Looks like property taxes may be going up.

Regards, Mugu

but then it is up to the judge and jury to determine damages, right?