Is the media helping the defense attorneys in Raleigh-Durham to kill the Duke rape case? Consider the following:
Headline after headline asking various versions of, "has the case collapsed?" ... "should it be dropped?" ... "is the prosecutor a political opportunist?" ... "or even dishonest...?" ... "Should Nifong recuse himself?"... and other versions of "is this hooker a liar?"
A Newsweek writer practically apologizing to the defendants for putting their names and photos on the cover, simply on the basis of defense claims about evidence they have selectively released to a solicitous media? Here is what Susannah Meadows writes in the latest issue of Newsweek. It's combination of defense spin:
The description of the rape in a police affidavit was horrendous. The alleged victim, who has not been publicly identified, was said to have been choked, beaten and kicked, to have been penetrated orally, anally and vaginally over a 30-minute ordeal. But the woman's own statements to police and to medical personnel were contradictory, and the physical evidence does not appear to support her claims or the police affidavit. As required by North Carolina law, Nifong says he has turned over all the evidence in his possession, almost 1,300 pages, to the defense, and this week he is expected to turn over another batch of documents.
... apologias to the defendants:
The media coverage of the case has been enormous. NEWSWEEK put the mug shots of two of the players—Reade Seligmann, 20, and Collin Finnerty, 19—on its cover the week after they were indicted. Some early accounts raised doubts about the guilt of the players, but the story more typically played as a morality tale of pampered jocks gone wild. Lately, as more evidence from police or medical reports have been filed or cited in court documents by defense lawyers, the national and local media have been raising questions about Nifong's conduct of the case and his motivations.
So based on information released by only one side in this case -- namely the side whose job it is to see that this case never goes to trial -- the preponderance of media (Fox, MSNBC, CNN and on and on ...) concludes that there is no case, or that what case there is, is full of holes?
D.A. Nifong hs finally had enough, and responded to Newsweek here. His basic point: the media has been thoroughly spun, and he sees no point in playing around with them anymore.
I hear him. This is Tawana Brawley all over again. The media has decided that the golden boys of Duke cannot possibly be guilty of raping this Black girl. This has so much resonance, given the ugly history and noxiouw brew or race, violence and class surrounding Black women and rape, and the fact that, as attorney Alton Maddox (who was embroiled in the Brawley case back in the late 1980s) said on the radio show this morning, it's impossible to find a single case of a white man convicted of raping a Black woman in America.
This case should go to trial. If the defense, aided by the media, (including every legal analyst on television, from Dan Abrams to Greta Van Susteren) and the online legal community, (plus the assorted bloggersnarks) succeeds in hounding this case out of court, it will be another black mark on this country's twisted legal system.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
