Tuesday, April 17, 2007

More on the Duke Debacle

Via Radley Balco, Defense Needs DNA, Too.

Excerpt:
But these Duke athletes aren't the first people to be wrongly accused, nor are they the first victims of a politically motivated prosecutor. Their ordeal demonstrates that we need to make forensic-science services, including DNA testing, available to defense and prosecution teams equally.

In March 2006, Durham County District Attorney Michael Nifong charged three members of the Duke lacrosse team with rape. Then, Nifong and Brian Meehan, director of the private DNA lab Nifong used, agreed to withhold the potentially exculpatory evidence in the alleged victim's rape kit; it contained DNA from more than one unidentified man, but not from any of the Duke students.

The life-altering injustices suffered by the affluent white defendants in this case are precisely the sort of injustices suffered regularly by many of America's less privileged citizens.


DNA is no magic bullet of truth when the testers are aligned unambiguously with the prosecution. During the testimony in which it was revealed that Nifong and Meehan had agreed to hide the DNA evidence, Meehan referred to Nifong as "my client." Instead of serving the truth, Meehan's forensics lab was helping its "client," the prosecutor.

When forensic scientists work exclusively for the prosecution, we should expect errors and abuse. Using post-conviction DNA evidence, the Innocence Project has helped exonerate nearly 200 people wrongly convicted of crimes. A study of the first 86 such cases, published in the journal Science, found faulty forensics played a role in almost two-thirds of those convictions.

The time has come to free forensic science from the pressures of prosecutorial bias. To that end, crime labs should become independent of police and prosecutors, and public defenders should be given greater access to forensic advice and testing. Crime labs should be independent, operating under the supervision of an officer of the court, who would be responsible for assigning forensic evidence to laboratories and ensuring that all crime labs in the system are following proper scientific procedures.

We should react to the Duke case by ensuring it will never happen again, to white people or to minorities, to the rich or the poor. I'm sure Sean Hannity and company will get right on that.

6 comments:

Laura said...

Good post. That's what I was thinking about this too. Why is their exoneration newsworthy when hundreds of poor and minority men and women sit in jail under the same circumstances? Same reason why when a pretty little blonde girl does missing, suddenly it's all over the 24 hour networks.

The only reason they were exonerated is because they were able to afford proper representation. If they were black men accused of gang raping a white girl they'd be rotting in prison right now.

I don't know if their innocent or guilty. No one ever will except them and the woman involved. But I do know there's about 10 other news stories I care about more than this one.

Jewish Atheist said...

laura:

It certainly appears like they were innocent. The prosecutor even said so. Calling them "innocent" rather than "not guilty" is significant. I think it's a tragedy what happened to them, but, like you, I wonder where all the outrage is for all the poor folks who don't have fancy-pants lawyers and right-wing pundits to defend them.

Random said...

I didn't reply to your first post on this subject because I was literally so angry that I didn't trust myself to be civil (do you really believe that it is impossible for conservatives to have been motivated by anger at injustice in this case and that their only possible motivation could have been racism? This is almost certainly the most offensively foolish thing I've read in a very long time and not something I expected to see on what is usually an intelligent and civil blog.)

As for Laura's question ("Why is their exoneration newsworthy?") the answer is obvious - because the original arrests and accusations were highly newsworthy, with liberal media outlets rushing to report a story of privileged white boys raping an innocent black girl with all it's echoes of the bad old days of the South, not to mention the disgraceful rush to judgement of the university authorities (have any of the Group of 88 even apologised yet?). To expect the emphatic assertion of the innocence of the accused (as JA correctly points out, this is much stronger than a "not guilty" verdict) not to be a major story too is both unrealistic and profoundly unfair to the accused. Why should they go through life with the only thing people ever heard about them being that they're accused rapists?

As for "I wonder where all the outrage is for all the poor folks who don't have fancy-pants lawyers and right-wing pundits to defend them." Obviously obscure cases tend to be obscure. But here's a question for you - ever heard of Cory Maye? (if you're a regular reader of Radley Balko's blog and haven't just lifted one article from it you will have)? Short form - black man on death row for shooting and killing a white police officer. Longer form - he was asleep at home when armed, masked men burst into his house and opened fire in self defence, killing one. He only realised they were police after the cop was dead but was still sentenced to death after a gruesome travesty of a trial. (I believe he's now off death row thanks in large part to Balko's tireless campaigning.)

The point is I first heard about Maye from the conservative commentators you are so busy sliming (Instapundit picked it up from Balko's cite and plenty of others got it from there) - heck, if you google Maye's name the first major media website you get reporting the miscarriage of justice as such is, erm, Fox News...

Jewish Atheist said...


I didn't reply to your first post on this subject because I was literally so angry that I didn't trust myself to be civil (do you really believe that it is impossible for conservatives to have been motivated by anger at injustice in this case and that their only possible motivation could have been racism? This is almost certainly the most offensively foolish thing I've read in a very long time and not something I expected to see on what is usually an intelligent and civil blog.)


Random:

I apologize for impugning the motives of all conservatives. I had in mind those "conservatives" like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and bloggers like Steve Sailer. I was more precise in this post than I was in the previous one which angered you.

Laura said...

Random: I totally agree that the news coverage of this case (both at the beginning and at the end) was overblown. I think that has more to do with news-as-entertainment being shoved down our throats by corporations more concerned with ratings and ad sales than it does with any conservative or liberal bias.

Anonymous said...

Okay Laura, you stupid little fool, you have apparently swallowed the entire "white people bad; brown people good" nonsense. Here is something to help you grow up. Google Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome. Happy reading. Oh, and ask yourself, why haven't we heard about this pretty little white blonde? Hint: has to do with the sort of PC bullshit you just spewed.