The Dukies Who Paid No Price

Disgraced and disbarred former District Attorney Mike Nifong must report to jail today.  Last week, Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III sentenced Nifong to one day in jail for criminal contempt, concluding he "willfully made false statements" to the court.

In actuality, Nifong did much worse by infamously prosecuting three Duke University lacrosse players for rape despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence.  As documented in a new book written by National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor and history professor KC Johnson, Nifong not only consciously ignored exculpatory evidence that should have prevented such a miscarriage of justice from ever proceeding, but also pressed forward with false charges by intentionally and continually stacking the legal deck in order to secure a personal political and financial victory.

As Taylor explained to ABC News: "Nifong ... was desperate to win an election.  The reason he was desperate to win an election was not that he wanted to be a big-shot politician or governor.  He was worried about his pension.  He was a career prosecutor.  His pension would be a lot lower if he got fired by the person who was going to beat him in the election, which is what would have happened.  And, therefore, he was desperate to win, and the way he decided to win was by exploiting and demogoging this case to inflame the black vote into a frenzy of hatred [against] these innocent defendants."

But the former district attorney wasn't the only one who used the inflammatory allegations as a dirty means to a political end.  As Taylor and Johnson highlight in "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case," the fabled storyline as concocted by the media fit precisely the politically correct view advanced by so many of the liberal activist Duke faculty.  Those professors seized upon the allegations as an opportunity to implement radical politics that had until then been confined to "scholarly" publications.

The shortsightedness of some of the Duke faculty saw the inaccurate caricature of rich white students abusing illegitimate power and privilege by raping and oppressing a poor black woman who faced disadvantage and discrimination at every turn.  In other words, the Duke lacrosse rape case was simply an empirical confirmation of their "scholarship" on the injustice of race, gender and class in America.  Unfortunately for those Duke professors turned political activists and legal crusaders, like much of their "research," none of that story was actually true.

Many of the lacrosse players came from families with far less wealth and privilege than that enjoyed by tenured faculty members ensconced in the ivory towers of a prestigious private college.  And, despite the youthful indiscretion of having a stripper-equipped party, both disciplinary records and personal references showed that the lacrosse team was made up of stand-up men who would more likely walk a date home than take advantage of her.

On the other hand, the alleged "victim" was the farthest thing from a good example of a struggling black woman oppressed by systematic discrimination and societal neglect.  Instead, she was a habitual alcohol and drug abuser who "worked" as a sometimes stripper, sometimes "escort."  Moreover, as to the rape allegations themselves, the "overlooked" DNA evidence that led to Nifong's criminal contempt sentence demonstrated that the "victim" championed by the Duke faculty had a lively sex life with multiple partners -- though none of them on the Duke lacrosse team.

The facts didn't really matter to the Duke professorate, just as they didn't impede Nifong's unconscionable prosecution.  The faculty's persecution of the lacrosse team -- and, as the case developed, the three unfairly accused defendants in particular -- came about because, in the words of African-American Studies Professor Wahneema Lubiano, they were "almost perfect offenders" since they were "the exemplars of the upper end of the class hierarchy, the politically dominant race and ethnicity, the dominant gender, the dominant sexuality, and the dominant social group on campus." 

For such professors, with their racist, sexist and classist albeit politically correct world view, the guilt or innocence of the Duke lacrosse players was beside the point.  Instead, the Duke lacrosse players were simply a means to the end of a new understanding of social justice -- a small price to be paid by the already unfairly privileged.

Of course, these are sentiments that are not and would not be recognized by all but the radical fringe of America.  Indeed, such a willingness to pervert justice in order to politically profit transgresses American fundamental fairness.  For this, Nifong will serve at least one day in jail.  With the Duke professors reclining comfortably in their faculty offices, one has to wonder why they have had to pay no price for aiding and abetting the travesty.