"Where do I go to get my reputation back?"
By Jeff Emanuel Posted in Duke | Fake Rape Case | Law | Nifong — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Over a year after evolving accusations and prosecutorial campaigning first landed them in court on rape charges, the Attorney General of the state of North Carolina has announced that all charges will be dropped against the three Duke lacrosse players who lost their sport, their college enrollment, their reputations, and a year of their lives to the combination of a hysterical stripper and a prosecutor whose electoral eyes were bigger than the truth's stomach.
The immortal words of Ray Donovan are as handy now as ever. I'd just like to wish these three kids the best of luck in the future.
"Where do I go to get my reputation back?" 33 Comments (0 topical, 33 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
What did the Durham County taxpayers do to deserve being sued?
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
therefore the city/county of Durham (I think they are one in the same) bears some culpability.
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The CIA has better politicians than it has spies - Fred Thompson
As long as Niphong was acting in good faith within the scope of his employment, he is indemnified.... protected from lawsuits. But if his employers make a determination that he was acting outside the scope of his employment, in a manner proscribed by law, Niphong may well become subject to civil litigation.
I believe it would probably take a ruling from the bench to lift his indemnification, but it could be done. Essentially, if he can be prosecuted criminally, he can be sued.
Even the President can be sued under such circumstances, though the suit generally has to pend removal from office. Of course, Clinton was sued while in office, and the suit was allowed to go forth, but that was because the alleged misconduct was not related to his Presidency, but rather concerned events that occurred while he was Governor of Arkansas (and were, of course, outside the scope of his employment).
I think you could make a pretty good argument he was not acting in good faith. The timing of his press conferences and hiding of exculpatory DNA evidence alone are pretty damning.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I doubt that the Duke players would allege Nifong was not acting in good faith. If true, that may take the appropriate governmental entity off the hook. Since the government has more money than Nifong, I suspect it will be the target for Nifong's actions. Just the practicalities of litigation.
history of unethical prosecutions before she went to work for CNN and Court TV.
http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200315251.pdf
11th Circuit: Nancy Grace 'Played Fast and Loose' With Ethics
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1115111123854
"Nancy Grace, the host of a self-titled legal show on CNN Headline News, "played fast and loose" with her ethical duties as a Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor in 1990, a federal appeals panel has declared."
"It is the third time appellate courts have admonished Grace for her conduct as a prosecutor in Georgia."
"The three-judge panel on Monday criticized Grace for not following her obligations to disclose to the defendant's lawyer information about other possible suspects. The 11th Circuit also agreed with a magistrate who found it hard to believe that Grace did not knowingly use a detective's false testimony that there were no other suspects."
her problem is she wants to be Judge , Jury , and hangman. She prejudges people sometimes correctly and sometimes falsely.
They either elected him or elected the person who appointed him. He represents their state, and therefore they are liable.
It's pretty crappy, though.
I do hope they sue. They need to be compensated for a lot of lost earning potential.
Of course there's the book royalties....
...so he doesn't represent the entire state.
Secondly, please use the "reply to this" link to respond to a comment.
was the Duke University faculty. I mean, these are the "social justice" types interesting in fixing the wrongs of our legal system and protected the innocent. Well, even before evidence was presented or a trail occured, the faculty damned them adn presumed them innocent before proven guilty. Its gutter University, as far as i'm concerned. These students were apart of their community and they turned their backs on them without even hearing them out!
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"As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this."
- George Mason
But 'Social Justice' in the university setting today is code for 'white males are ultimately and collectively wrong, whether they are wrong in any given particular instance or not'. They have no interest in protecting the innocent. Their agenda is villifying America and traditional Americans in general and laying the blame for all the world's ills at the feet of American white males in particular.
They can find an infinite number of ways to justify in their minds why it really doesn't matter in the greater scheme of things if the LaCrosse players were innocent or not.
Oppression and atrocities occurred against people of color in the past; racism is still the major driving force for social interaction today; capitalism is still providing the greedy mega-rich with wealth beyond measure off the backs of the lesser classes, while all over the world, the lesser classes suffer and die for lack of appropriate redistribution of wealth.... so what does it really matter if a few rich white boys got their feelings hurt.
That shouldn't in any way affect the way their activism now or in the future, and there is no way they should consider a wrong as having been done in this instance..... and if there was... it was certainly not by them.
This is, unfortunately, not a problem restricted to Duke. The vast majority of universities across the country seem to have that bent anymore.... at least in the liberal arts colleges.
I was a late bloomer... finishing off my degree just a few years ago... after turning fifty. I graduated from Columbia College of Missouri, a small liberal arts college in the midwest that affilliates itself with the armed forces. As such, it is reasonably conservative compared to many... I daresay most... US institutes of higher education.
I had to find a quick elective during my senior year when a class I had scheduled was cancelled. The only course still open at the time was a SOC class concerned with the Politics of Race (I forget the exact course title). The first reading assignment covered the first three chapters of the text. In those chapters, the authors said in so many words at least twice per chapter that white males were the cause of every major problem in the world today. The rest of the text surrounding those statements was dedicated to explaining why those statements were true.
I challenged the teacher on it the next day. He blushed about ten shades of red, apologized, and said that believe it or not, he had searched for an appropriate text for the class for about a month and this was the MOST conservative one he had been able to find. Conservatism, and conservative values regarding truth and justice are just hard to find in academe anymore.
I would not hold my breath waiting for any kind of attempt at reconcilliation from the Duke Liberal Arts crowd.
If I remember correctly, "Columbia College" in Columbia, Missouri, was originally named "Christian College." I've wondered since why they felt they had to change the name. Do you know?
Flagstaff
Democrats on Iraq: "We don't want to win. We just want to quit."
My SUVs park in the shade of AlGore's carbon big toeprint.
...much of Higher Education today is so devoted to vilifying America's middle- and upper-class white Protestant male, throughout all history, I'm surprised that this type of prosecutorial railroading doesn't happen even more often. The story template is there for any big city prosecutor to use. He just has to fill in the names.
[I realize this is hearsay, just putting it out here - but my thought is that that this sort of thing is out there, and this caller was a victim of it]
A dude called Hannity this afternoon to say he'd been Nifonged back in 1991 or 92. Having less means at his disposal, he sat in county lockup for 9 months while various sorts of prosecutorial 'zeal' went on that included withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense.
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
This was a forgone conclusion and it's too bad it took so long to finally happen. Obviously the D.A. acted badly and should be punished. The faculty and students who rushed to judgment also acted poorly.
I don't agree with some conservatives who make claims like "the University should have stood by it's players." What if the players had done it? Does a University have a responsibility to defend students enrolled at it who break the law? Also, I think the University had the right to suspend the lacrosse season, not because of the rape allegations but because of the very poor behaviour of the team generally that night. No doubt other college sports teams have had drunker parties with strippers, and they have probably been cases of racial insensitivity, etc. But that doesn't excuse it. And I don't have a problem with a University suspending someone while a criminal investigation is going on. I think it's generally good policy in the interests of protecting other students.
I disagree. These kids may have acted irresponsibly, but as you pointed out, worse has been done by athletes and students who represent their universities across the country. The same standard was not applied here. Duke wanted no part of even a potentially damaging story. The law may have presumed the players to be innocent, but Duke certainly did not. Forgive me if I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but MLB has not suspended Barry Bonds for unproven allegations that he has taken steroids (as much as I’d like them to). The same should apply here. These kids were not suspended because of their immature decisions. Duke deemed them guilty from the get-go, and wanted no part of them thereafter. Let's not kid ourselves here. Duke, one of the country's most admired and prestigious private universities for its academic and athletic reputations, was as much on trial as these players. This story made headlines as much because it was Duke as it did because white men allegedly gang-raping a black woman. For 390+ days, these kids were assumed to be guilty in the eyes of the press. Duke could have at least erred on the side of caution for the sake of their students instead of themselves. Duke dropping them like MSNBC did Imus didn't help to assuage the public outrage against these kids. These kids did not make it through this ordeal unscathed. To my understanding, the two that had not graduated at the time of the indictment have decided not to return to the university. I have lost a good amount of respect for Duke after this whole ordeal.
the Duke faculty that had that had these guys hung one year ago. They've already forced mandatory diversity classes, etc onto the university. Think anything will happen to them? Doubt it. Every one of them should be fired.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
liberal press went after 3 innocent young men.
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/21523.html
"Associated Press's conduct is especially egregious in matters of interracial rape. It has suppressed reporting on black-male-on-white-female gang rapes, such as the January 21, 2006 case from Henrico County near Richmond, VA, in which four black students (some of whom had been athletes) at black Virginia Union University were charged with gang-raping a white coed from the University of Richmond's Westhampton College for women."
"John Patrick Cates, 21, and Brian Anthony Ridgeway, 24, were eventually convicted of rape in early November for the attack, but may serve token terms of less than five years in prison. A third attacker, Julian Dewayne Williams, 21, pleaded guilty to assault and battery, and will not spend more than four months in prison, even though he participated in a vicious gang rape, and charges against a fourth man, Sherrod Donte Jeffrey Jr., 21, were dismissed altogether."
But the 80+ Duke professors who signed the declaration condemning the players should never have gone activist on this without there at least havinng been a presentation of evidence. They should have kept their mouths shut, and since they didn't, and were proved wrong, they should now be apologizing collectively as well. You'll NEVER see it happen.
you won't see the professors apologize. Because this was meereley one case, insignificant in itself -- we still live in a country dominated by racism, sexism and white male priviledge, yada, yada, yada.
The arrests had barely been reported when the academic intellectuals began what they call in jargon their "narratives" This is what they call the set of prejudices, bigoted stereotypes, and conformist, peer dominated fantasies.
At least they could have waited for a trial to begin before pronouncing the athletes guilty. A curious thing was the repetition of the feverish buzz words "white and wealthy". Curious because that is probably the make up of most of the student body at Duke, allowing for the usual exaggerations of what wealth means. So in reality you had a class of faculty parasites living off the income of this "white and wealthy" student body, and apparently hating it and them. Typical and sick.
Let's not forget the media scum who did the same thing the academic scum did.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Democrats on Iraq: "We don't want to win. We just want to quit."
My SUVs park in the shade of AlGore's carbon big toeprint.
So what do you have against plain old scum that you have to vilify it with these adjectives?
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
expect Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama to meet with these three kids, their families, and their coach and his family to apologize to them for jumping the gun and assuming the worst about them because they are white, intelligent, and athletic? Where is their apology? Where is the denunciation of the two bit hooker that wrecked their lives? Or the race baiting prosecutor?
I'm not holding my breath, for I might turn blue.
This compared to the Imus uproar is so damned outrageous, it makes me sick!!!
God, the hypocrisy is so disgusting!!!!!
And they wonder why racism is alive and well.
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The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.-Reagan
I don't think Senator Obama was a public figure when J.C. Watts made his famous comment about "poverty pimps," but I know Jesse and Al were. Those two apologize for something they said? Not hardly.
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"Perdicaris alive, or Rasuli dead!" - Theodore Roosevelt, 1904
what will Duke do about the Gang of 88.
HINT: nothing.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
The calculated Nifong felony and social justice blackshirts piling on are nothing new. Remember Tawana Brawley? She shows up at a police station, accuses several respectable white men of rape and after enduring months of racist taunts, they want to know where to go to get their reputations back.
I'm not real fond of Rush (too bombastic), but he's got it right with the term "drive-by media." Sock it to an ideological opponent and if it doesn't turn out well, just move-on.org. The libs are never held responsible for their failures, as Thomas Sowell points out so eloquently in his book "The Annointed". Ruin a few reputations? So what, they deserved it anyway. Remember, their ancestors probably persecuted someone unjustly a hundred years ago.
It is chilling to read, in one of the links above, that most Police Deptartments now are as PC as the average liberal arts college. In essence, Tammy Bruce's "Thought Police" are no longer metaphorical.
This punishment by accusation paradigm will only get worse as time goes on. So, the real question is, what are we going to do about it?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --- John Adams
It was fairly ridiculous to hear the NC AG, Roy sumpinoranotha, zestfully insisting that Nifong's "intent" was what mattered and that we don't know his "intent" as yet.
I could probably find a score of ninth graders who would easily supply AG Roy with Nifong's "intent."
More than risible, however, AG Roy's sputtering such a sally is frightening. Nifong's intent was obvious to even the most casual observer. Let's hope the left's much vilified "good-ole-boy" system is not at work here. Nifong's actions were calculated to provide him with political gain at the expense of innocent men.
One pudit said we need to "stop this kind of thing." I agree. And the best way to do that is to make an example of "Mr." Nifong and his egregious abuse of power.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --- John Adams
Hopefully the NC Bar is tough with him and these 3 sue the city/county of Durham & Duke University.
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The CIA has better politicians than it has spies - Fred Thompson