Sweeping The Dirt Under The Rug
by Paul R. Hollrah
It is always instructive to watch Democrats sweeping their dirt under the
rug. Never have we seen a more blatant example of that than in the days since
the North Carolina Bar Association disciplined Durham County District Attorney
Mike Nifong.
For those who’ve been distracted by other events (e.g. the
paternity battle over Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, Alec Baldwin’s verbal assault on
his teenage daughter, or the round-the-clock vigil outside Paris Hilton’s jail),
here’s what the Nifong flap was all about.
In April 2006, three members of Duke University
, during a March 13
party at an off-campus residence. Ms. Mangum identified three players, David
Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty, all of whom were charged with
forcible rape, first degree sexual assault, and kidnapping.
Once the charges were made there was no presumption of
innocence. The lacrosse season was cancelled, the head coach was forced to
resign, and eighty-eight faculty members signed a full page ad in the student
newspaper condemning the university administration, the lacrosse program, and
the alleged rapists.
What the three young men and their parents did not realize at
the time was that the charges had nothing to do with rape and sexual assault.
They had everything to do with the outcome of the May 2nd Democratic
primary, and they were about to learn a lesson that no political science course
at Duke could, or would, ever teach.
As the May primary approached, District Attorney Nifong found
himself engaged in a tough reelection campaign against two opponents, and he
knew that if he could win the support of Durham’s large African American
community he would almost certainly win the Democratic nomination. What better
way to lock up the black vote than by pursuing a high profile rape case against
three rich white college kids, when the alleged victim was a single black
mother?
However, DNA samples taken from 46 of the 47 lacrosse players
on March 27 (the 47th player, a black, was excluded) showed no
matches with DNA taken from inside the victim and/or her underwear. Those test
results, released to Nifong on April 11, found DNA from four other men, none of
whom were members of the Duke lacrosse team. But that exculpatory evidence did
nothing to improve Nifong’s political fortunes so he purposely withheld critical
evidence from the players’ attorneys.
On Tuesday, May 2, Nifong’s political calculations paid off. He
received 45 percent of the Democratic primary vote, while his principal
challenger received 42 percent. And since there was no Republican challenger in
the General Election, Nifong was reelected by default.
However, as the case began to unravel, the Attorney General of
North Carolina intervened. After 395 days of injustice, the three defendants
were declared innocent of all charges and the Attorney General implied that the
only true criminals in the case were District Attorney Nifong and the accuser,
Ms. Mangum.
A committee of the North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with
breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the
court and to Bar investigators, and withholding critical DNA test results from
the players' defense attorneys. After deliberating for just over an hour, the
committee announced its finding that Nifong had pursued a prosecution against
three innocent young men in order to further his own political ambitions.
But what is most interesting is that no one on the Democratic
side of the aisle, in Washington or elsewhere, and no one in the
Democrat-friendly mainstream media, has discussed openly what the Duke Rape Case
was all about… that it was a typical misuse of the black community, for
political purposes, by a candidate of their party. Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and
Nancy Pelosi have all been totally silent on the matter; they’ve quietly swept
it under the rug.
One liberal blog, TalkLeft, came close to criticizing, saying,
“… The root of this case is self-deception arising out of self-interest. We had
a prosecutor in a case where his self-interest collided with race, sex and
class… He was facing a primary and he was politically naive. We can draw no
other conclusion but the initial statements he made [to the media] were to
further his political ambition.
“Self-deception?” “Political naïvete?” Not quite. Mike Nifong
knew exactly what he was doing. He risked the lives of three innocent young men
in order to curry favor with the black community… nothing more, nothing less.
Democrats have been playing blacks for fools in every election
since they put aside their sheets, their hoods, and their burning crosses during
the 1950’s and decided that it was time to stop lynching blacks and start
using them. If African Americans haven’t learned a valuable lesson from
the Duke Rape Case, they probably never will.
