Duke Rape DA Removes Himself

The New York Times has finally become open-eyed and objective with regard to this case, above and here. Events are moving fast, and it looks like the rich white guys will get justice, with the DA Nifong's career probably tanking. Another article shows that Nifong received a formal protest from the defense about his making defamatory comments to the press, which violated bar rules and forced the defense counter those public comments with their own, and about his refusal to meet with the defendants to hear their story (another ethics violation). The day after receiving that letter, Nifong continued with his public defamations. That makes it more likely that he will get disbarred, and exonerates the defense for taking its case to the public.

Let's just hope that this can somehow translate into a better deal even for non-rich people falsely accused of crimes. Would non-rich guys have gotten charged in this case? I say: probably. Local DA offices get federal funds to prosecute sex cases, so they have an incentive to make even the most spurious claims into charges, just to get the funding to press a sex case. If the accused here and accusers were both of the same "race", that might well have happened here, at least as far as taking DNA evidence. I reckon that even regular guys would have gotten justice once the DNA evidence had returned.

If the accused were black and the fake accuser white, I'm sure that all the people initially backing the accuser would have backed the accused victims, and we would have seen justice at least at the point of the DNA results. After all, it was only via the racial hoopla that this case proceeded past the DNA evidence, and in a racial reversal, that hoopla would have sided with the accused victims. In that case the crazy DA Nifong could have correctly positioned himself as the protector of falsely accused black men.

Any way, the only good I see from this is increased scrutiny on accusations of rape. The Mike Tyson case should have provided that for us, but he regrettably hired an incompetent attorney (one with no experience in criminal matters). Let's hope that the Duke lacrosse players and their parents now lead a crusade to protect all men against false rape charges.