"The best disinfectant is sunshine." - Louis BrandeisMike Nifong is doing a great job as a PR man for injustice. It's too bad that he's in court once a month and not once a week. The main stream media, national, and now international audience are just starting to appreciate his deceptive legal shenanigans.
One of many good legal comments at The Volokh Conspiracy:
I have a lot of experience investigating rape cases. I did two child rapes last week. This case stunk from the beginning. It smelled of politics then, it REALLY smells of politics now.
Given the PUBLIC comments that the prosecutor made about his conviction that the offenders had committed the crime, and his trust in the truth of the victim, it is inconceivable to me (especially considering the mountains of exculpatory evidence presented on behalf of the defense) that the prosecutor has yet to at least witness a police interview with the "victim", let alone speak to her himself. In my jurisdiction, prosecutors have to be very careful about actually interviewing victims themselves, because they can't be both witnesses and prosecutors.
This case (on the prosecution's side) is a joke. I really really detest rapists, and that is why I took a lot of specialized training in rape investigation, so I could investigate these types of crimes thoroughly, and this case (the prosecutor) has been insane from the beginning.
Jonah Goldberg at The National Review Online (NRO):
WowJonah Goldberg mail from Durham:
I'm no expert, but wouldn't you think a prosecutor in a racially charged, political heated, nationally watched case would take a few minutes to talk to the sole accuser in the Duke "rape" case and see if her facts pan out? I mean, he ran on the case in the last election, but he never satisfied his own curiosity about the case personally (or asked lawyers from his office to), even after the media have poked so many holes in her story?
...my business is located in Durham so I have a pretty good feel for the local community.Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy at NRO:
Not only is Nifong a national embarrassment, he will probably win re-election by a landslide. He has two challengers in the race, and one has publicly stated that he will not accept the position should he win. (!)
Durham is a strange place. On one hand, we have an educated and large medical community that surrounds Duke University and Duke Medical Center, but on the other hand, we have a long-entrenched black power base that controls the politics of this city...
Re: "Wow!" Is Right on Nifong
If the AP report is true, and the quotes from Nifong are accurate, that is just breathtaking incompetence. It is unethical to indict a case — not talking mere arrest here, but indictment, which is a much weightier step — unless a prosecutor is personally convinced that a rational jury would find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at trial based on the facts that are known at the time of indictment. How can you indict a he-said-she-said case without first satisfying yourself about what she would actually say?
Nifong is not a social worker, he's the prosecutor...
Bob Ingle Asbury Park Press:
DA Is A Disgrace
That case of alleged rape involving some members of the Duke University Lacrosse team and a woman hired to be a stripper at a party gets stranger and stranger....
What seems to be driving Nifong is he is up for election next month. And you thought that kind of thing only happened in New Jersey.
Instead of sunshine, the Herald Sun is a journalistic shower of acid rain. The Herald-Sun doesn't just carry water for Mike Nifong, they drive a pumper truck and hose down any story with an acid shower of pro-Nifongian piddle. The Herald Sun does it again: "Monks counts himself in for DA."
Write-in district attorney candidate Steve Monks offered hypothetical statistics Friday to show he might be able to pull more votes in the Nov. 7 election than current chief prosecutor Mike Nifong or County Commissioner Lewis Cheek.The tone of this John Stevenson article uses FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt as a strategy to disseminate a negative message about the "Vote Cheek - Recall Nifong" campaign. It plays up the strength of spoiler Steve "take me dinner" Monks. It will be interesting to see now much money Nifong spent on advertising with the Herald Sun for this election.
If Cheek threw his support behind Monks, then Monks might capture 52 percent of the ballots compared with Nifong's 46 percent, the statistics indicated.
