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Plenty of Vicitms in Duke Case Susan Estrich "Let The Liar Be Named And Shamed," proclaims the headline in the Drudge Report. John Podhoretz's column — to which that headline is linked — practically steams. Here we go — again. Her name, he says, is Crystal Gail Mangum. The attorney general stated, "Our investigators who talked with her and the attorneys who talked with her over a period of time think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling. They worked real hard with her. It doesn't make sense. You can't piece it together." The person who ruined these young men's lives was not the confused woman whose account should never have been the basis of a prosecution, but the prosecutor who chose to use her to further his political career. Let the liar be named and shamed? His name is Mike Nifong. He will face his day in court. But who will undo the damage he has caused? The injection of politics into the prosecutorial system doesn't get fixed just because charges are dropped. Listening to reaction to the attorney general's decision on the radio this morning, I was struck with the level of skepticism it met from students at the predominantly black college Crystal attended. Story Continues Below
They all seemed to think the dropping of the charges had to do with money and power, not inconsistencies and DNA. They gave no credit to the declaration of innocence. They took it as proof of the system's racism. If these were three black defendents charged with raping a white girl, one young woman opined, the charges wouldn't have been dropped. A flawed indictment intended to play to racial distrust is a time bomb waiting to explode. Now it has. Can you blame these kids for not having much faith in the system? Not to mention the kids at Duke. Similarly, I know many in the rape-treatment community who believe that even if the three men she identified didn't rape her, that doesn't mean all was well inside that house that night; who believe something may well have gone wrong. We know about the ugly racial slurs and e-mails, and that is certainly nothing for the men to be proud of. The inability to remember accurately the nature of the victimization, even when there has unquestionably been one, is the hallmark of many cases in which drugs — including the date-rape drug — and alcohol play a prominent part. So you worry that the declaration of innocence in this case and the intense verbal barrage being aimed at the victim will be taken by legitimate victims as a message that such cases aren't even worth reporting. It is the victim's fault if you do. Of course, the problem in this case was not simply the inconsistencies in her account, but the absence of DNA evidence to support it; not simply the failure of her memory, but the conflicting testimony and evidence that made the prosecutorial timetable unworkable; not only the fuzziness of her identifications, but the suggestiveness of the procedure used by the investigators. In short, the case didn't add up — even if it was an awful evening, even if the boys behaved brutishly, even if this woman has been a victim of men before. She wasn't a victim of any crime at the hands of these three. The prosecutor had every reason to know that. It was his job to spare her the ordeal, not use her to create a larger one. She was clearly his tool, not the other way around. So name her and shame her, if that makes you feel better, but in my book, she's a victim, too.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. Editor's note:
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