Let's have a fair trial before the hanging

One of the rarely mentioned duties of a Prosecutor is to decline to press charges. In cases where evidence is insufficient, where testimony appears to be less than trustworthy, or where there is good reason to believe that the crime in question never happened, the Prosecutor’s duty is to not prosecute. It is also the Prosecutor’s duty to obey the law and act ethically. Mike Nifong, the Prosecutor in the Duke University rape case, appears to have forgotten every one of those duties.
In that case, three Duke university lacrosse players were accused of raping a stripper at a party. After charges were filed, they were paraded before the media and vilified as rapists. And let’s face it: most people wanted it to be true. While no sane person would ever wish for a person to be raped, honesty dictates that we admit there was more than a little schadenfreude involved in the case. Besides, it made sense. Raping a stripper is exactly the sort of thing one might expect rich, over privileged frat boys to do.
Really, the whole case fit perfectly with any number of common prejudices. The men involved in the case were the sons of privilege. They were rich, good-looking, and before charges were filed against them, had every reason to expect a life utterly devoid of the sorts of money worries and insecurity about the future common to the rest of humanity. One just knew that these guys were guilty. This was just another example of the highborn abusing the poor and minorities. The thrill of seeing the high brought low was just too great to entertain other possibilities.
That attitude is understandable. But it is not one that a Prosecutor should allow to color his judgment. In retrospect, however, it appears that no one wanted the Duke players to be guilty more than Nifong. It was great publicity, and it must have felt good to bring those arrogant frat boys to justice, to pull them from their gilded lives and slam them into a steel and concrete box.
Nifong promised justice. He made bombastic statements to the media. He let the world know that he would lay these ogres low. All of that is to be expected. Prosecutors are, after all, elected officials, and the voters don’t want to hear about shaky evidence and questionable testimony.
All of that is completely understandable, even if it is less than laudable. But Nifong’s later actions were inexcusable, and ought to land him in jail. Nifong ordered DNA testing of material found on the victim.
A private lab performed the testing, and the results indicated that the samples included DNA from four men. But the same evidence indicated that none of the accused, and no member of the Duke University lacrosse team, could be the source of the DNA.
At this point, Nifong’s legal and moral duty was clear: he had to tell the defense. Disclosure laws state that the Prosecution does not get to withhold evidence, and they certainly don’t get to hide information that could be exculpatory. Nifong also appears to have lied to the court about having that evidence.
Eventually, the rape charges were dropped. But not before the three accused men were painted as rapists, and not before Duke University as a whole saw its reputation damaged.
Of course, we’ll probably never know what exactly happened on the night in question. The lacrosse players may well have gotten out of hand. But the evidence to support an allegation of forcible rape had fallen apart, and Nifong knew it.
Nifong now faces the possibility of disbarment for his actions. But that is not enough. Prosecutors, perhaps more than any other civil servant, wield the ability to bring the whole power of the state to bear against individuals. It is an awesome responsibility, and a betrayal of the trust the public invests in them can never be taken lightly. Prosecutors must be held to a higher standard, because they carry with them the power to destroy lives.
Nifong will probably not face jail. Sovereign immunity almost guarantees that he will never be the subject of prosecution. He has abused the sacred trust of the public, pursued injustice rather than justice, and lead a witch hunt against three men he had good reason to believe were innocent of the charges he had filed.

Some ideas are just plain stupid

On NPR last night, I heard President Bush complain that those who oppose his troop buildup are criticizing the plan before it has a chance to work.
Well, yes, George. They are. Because it won't work. Some ideas can be declared stupid before they are tested. If I were to plan to build a house on the moon, and to transport the building materials there using a powerful catapult, there would be no need to test the plan before declaring it stupid.
In Iraq, the problems run deeper than a lack of troops. The destruction of Hussein's regime allowed centuries of religious and tribal conflict to come to the surface. Those problems are not easily fixable, and all the troops in the world could hope only to keep a lid on things temporarily.
So, there is no need to give Bush's surge strategy a chance to work before sneering at it.

Test post

This is the test post.