In a December 30, 2009 Herald-Sun article titled “Top 10 Stories of the Decade,” writer Neil Offen writes about the Duke Lacrosse case, which the newspaper staff evidently selected as the top story of the decade. The article is a minefield of misleading and false statements about the case; not unlike typically biased writings which have characterized the media’s approach to the topic. One line which particularly stands out is: “The lacrosse players were declared innocent.” This is the complete statement. I believe that Mr. Offen was referring to the April 11, 2007 “Innocent Promulgation” made by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper. To my knowledge, he is the only one to make such a statement, and as most people who have taken high school Civics 101 know, such a proclamation made by a member of the executive branch of government carries no legal weight. The reasons Mr. Offen did not mention in his article that Mr. Cooper made the declaration of “innocent” are twofold. First and foremost he wanted to mislead the public into assuming that a judicial body had made the innocent declaration, and secondly, he was too embarrassed to actually make such a silly statement.
Another statement which I find objectionable is: “…the public downfall of District Attorney Mike Nifong, toppled by his attempt to prosecute the lacrosse players on charges for which there was no evidence.” The truth of the matter is that there are many instances in which prosecutors pursue charges in which there is no evidence. Many of those cases, like the Duke Lacrosse case, are eyewitness cases. For example, prosecutors brought rape charges against Dwayne Dail based on eyewitness identification of a twelve year old girl alleged victim. There was no evidence linking him to that crime for which he spent nearly two decades in jail. Then, there’s the case of Ronald Cotton, who was convicted by eyewitness identification only, without evidence tying him to the crime. He served a decade in prison for a crime with which he was innocent. The armed robbery case against 14 year old Erick Daniels was also based on eyewitness testimony (the shape of his eyebrows in a middle school yearbook) in a case where there was no evidence linking him to the crime. He was wrongfully incarcerated for seven years. A fourth case, Alan Gell was incarcerated at the time of the commission a murder for which he was prosecuted, and prosecutors withheld this information from his defense attorneys in order to win a death penalty conviction. He was sentenced to death and served half of his time served on death row before he was granted a new trial. There was no evidence linking Mr. Gell to the crime. His conviction was based on the testimony of a teenage girl who made contradictory statements, and was even recorded on a wiretapped conversation saying that she was forced to make statements that benefited the prosecutor’s case. Finally, there’s the case of Gregory Taylor, who was sentenced to life on a murder charge in which there was no evidence tying him to the crime. He was convicted on the testimony of a prostitute and a jailhouse snitch (both of whom received deals in exchange for their testimony – a fact which was not relayed to the defendant’s attorney). The prosecutors of these five aforementioned cases were not hauled before the North Carolina State Bar and subjected to disciplinary hearings. However, Mr. Offen would like the media consumer to believe that all cases prosecuted by the state are backed up by forensic evidence. This is misleading and far from the truth.
The reason that Mr. Nifong was charged by the North Carolina State Bar with ethics violations was to get him off the case. After the Bar filed the charges against him, Mr. Nifong had no alternative than to recuse himself from the Duke Lacrosse case.
Mr. Offen states that Mr. Nifong was found guilty of criminal contempt (a trumped up charge for which he was sentenced to 24 hours in jail). This is only part of the punishment for which Mr. Nifong was subjected because of his decision to proceed with prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case instead of dropping it initially. Because of his independence from the state in his decision to proceed with prosecution, Mr. Nifong suffered a similar fate as Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett who defied England’s King Henry II. The fact is that Mr. Nifong did not lie to the court as the State Bar and media would like the public to believe.
In his article, Mr. Offen also states that Mr. Nifong was disbarred for misconduct, but I bet that he, like the average person on the street, cannot explain what that alleged misconduct is. Mr. Nifong certainly did not withhold evidence, as all DNA evidence was submitted to the defense team no later than October 27, 2006. There was plenty of time for the Duke Lacrosse defense team to utilize the information in preparing for a defense as a trial date had not even been set at that time. Furthermore, the alleged DNA evidence that Mr. Nifong withheld was not exculpatory, as the media has suggested often in the past. This is in stark contrast to Prosecutor David Hoke who withheld 17 "exculpatory" eyewitness statements from Alan Gell’s defense attorneys (evidence which immediately led to a “not guilty” verdict in a retrial).
As far as criminal cases, Alan Gell’s case is far more important and compelling than the Duke Lacrosse case when viewed through an objective lens. Whereas Mr. Nifong acted within acceptable standards in prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case, Mr. Hoke withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense team in winning a death penalty conviction. The Duke Lacrosse defendants served no jail time, and they each received $7 million from Duke University for reasons which are unknown to me. Alan Gell is now serving jail time on vendetta charges that the Johnston County District Attorney cannot even coherently explain. Meanwhile, the Duke Lacrosse boys have all been allowed to proceed with their lives and are benefiting from their celebrity (books have been published presenting them in a favorable light, a movie for HBO is in production, and Collin Finnerty has had an assault charge expunged from his record). And currently they are seeking an additional $10 million each from the cash-strapped city of Durham. Mr. Gell, on the other hand, has reached an out-of-court settlement against the state of North Carolina in which he was awarded four million dollars.
Even the case of James Arthur Johnson is more compelling because his actions in solving the murder case of Wilson teen Brittany Willis resulted in him being charged in the crime. The charge against Johnson was based solely on the testimony of the murderer, who implicated Johnson only after police told him that Johnson had “snitched” on him. Johnson served 39 months in jail without a trial, and charges of murder, rape, kidnapping and armed robbery were dropped the day the trial was to begin (long after the murder recanted testimony upon which charges were based). Again, no evidence linked Johnson to the crimes against Brittany Willis. Eventually, with the threat of additional wrongful incarceration, Johnson agreed to an Alford plea with a special prosecutor desperate for a face-saving resolution. Although James Arthur Johnson solved the crime and earned the $20,000.00 reward offered by the family and friends of Brittany Willis, it was never forthcoming. And the fact that the reward was not presented was never addressed by the media. It is doubtful whether the crime would have been solved had it not been for Mr. Johnson coming forward to the Wilson Police Department.
On its merits, the Duke Lacrosse case should not have been made the top story of the decade, but that is what happens when the media panders to the well-heeled, and becomes a bully pulpit for them. Instead of spreading propaganda to support the interests and agenda of the wealthy, powerful, and privileged, the media should concentrate on providing the media consumer with objective and unbiased reporting. The article by Mr. Offen left a lot to be desired as far as this is concerned.
I gladly offer Mr. Offen the opportunity to answer this blog, by providing him with a blog page in which I will post, in full and without editing or a direct rebuttal, his response.
Showing posts with label Ronald Cotton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ronald Cotton. Show all posts
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Monday, November 2, 2009
WRAL… Prime example of the Media molding minds of the public
“Walt in Durham,” the pseudonym of a frequent commenter in this blog site, www.justice4nifong.blogspot.com, is an intelligent individual, but even he has been duped and bamboozled by the media… WRAL, in particular. If the media is capable of feeding misinformation to Walt, and having him accept it as truthful, then it is obvious why the vast majority of media subscribers, like Walt, have negative attitudes towards former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong which are unwarranted.
This observation stems from a recent blog (around October 18, 2009) in which I made the following statement, “Just because Attorney General Roy Cooper said nothing happened at the party does not make it so.” Walt replied with a comment on October 21, 2009 which stated as follows: “But, Nifong himself said so twice” (insinuating that Mr. Nifong admitted that nothing happened at the Duke lacrosse party). When I requested the source upon which he based his comment, he told me it was from WRAL. And sure enough, I went to the WRAL website and upon searching, I found the following article posted on July 26, 2007, with the headline, “Nifong Apologizes, Admits Nothing Happened.”
That headline is an outright blatantly false and purposely misleading statement, and it was extremely effective in playing a Jedi-mind trick on Walt, and many others. The first part of the statement, “Nifong Apologizes,” is true, but the second part, “Admits Nothing Happened,” is offensively false on its face and baseless. There is absolutely nothing in the web article to substantiate such a claim.
Mr. Nifong does make the following statement, as published in the article: “I agree with the Attorney General’s statement that there is no credible evidence that Mr. Seligmann, Mr. Finnerty, and Mr. Evans committed any crimes for which they were indicted – or any any other crimes against Ms. Mangum – during the party.” Yes, he states that “there is no credible evidence” that the three defendants committed any crimes for which they were indicted, but that does not mean that he does not believe that they are not guilty of committing crimes against Ms. Mangum. Definitely it does not mean that Mr. Nifong believed that “nothing happened.” For the media to state that Mr. Nifong admitted that nothing happened is wrong and grossly irresponsible.
That said, there are many cases that move forward without credible evidence. In the Brittany Willis murder/rape/kidnapping/armed robbery case, there was no credible evidence against defendant James Arthur Johnson. Although Johnson heroically solved the crime for the Wilson police, he ended up spending 39 months in jail on charges which lacked credible evidence; charges that were later dropped. Notice that the media did not go after Prosecutor Bill Wolfe. In the case against 14 year old Erick Daniels, who was identified by a robbery victim due to the shape of his eyebrows in a school yearbook, there was no credible evidence that existed against him. Yet he wrongfully served seven years in jail and the media is not critical of his prosecutor, Freda Black. There was no credible evidence against Alan Gell for the murder with which he was convicted and unjustly served nine years in prison (half of it on death row). However, there was exculpatory evidence favoring Mr. Gell which the prosecutors withheld from defense attorneys in order to win a conviction. Even at that, the media went out of its way to protect and shield his prosecutor (David Hoke) from criticism. I could go on.
Bottom line is that there are many charges that are brought by prosecutors without credible evidence… but just circumstantial evidence. The admission by Mr. Nifong that no credible evidence existed does not necessarily exclude the possibility that a credible case could be built against the defendants.
Finally, the nexus between credible evidence and the occurrence of a sexual assault is non-existent, but WRAL and the media in general would like the public to believe that in this particular Duke Lacrosse case they are linked; one and the same. The folly of this argument is obvious when you consider, for example, the rape case against Ronald Cotton. Mr. Cotton was picked up off the street and placed in a lineup where he was positively identified as the rapist by a rape victim. There was no credible evidence linking him to the crime, nonetheless he was convicted and served many years in prison before being cleared by DNA. Because no credible evidence against him existed does not mean that the rape for which he was charged did not happen. In the Duke Lacrosse case, Attorney General Cooper has reached far beyond his bounds by declaring that no criminal activity took place against Ms. Mangum, based on the fact that there was no “credible” evidence against those accused by Ms. Mangum. And this is the line that the media, including WRAL, pursued and propagated.
Furthermore, the media, instead of questioning the legitimacy and propriety of the attorney general’s “innocent” proclamation of the three Duke Lacrosse defendants, accepted it as being legitimate and binding. This declaration is an example of overreaching and irresponsibility by the attorney general at its greatest, and the media has been content to completely ignore its lack of legal substance. This is an outrage that WRAL reported without question and as factual with its online statement: “Following North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s declaration this April that the three men were innocent, …”
A final disgracefully misleading passage in the WRAL article is: “The defense’s request to drop the motion for criminal sanctions means that Nifong will no longer be required to reimburse the defendants thousands of dollars for costs incurred in the defense’s uncovering of exculpatory DNA evidence that could have cleared the players had the case gone to trial.” First of all, the defense probably decided to drop the motion for criminal sanctions because of the absurdity of the charge, which would become apparent in a courtroom. To expect a prosecutor to pay for work performed by the defense team is absolutely ludicrous, yet the media’s take on it is matter-of-fact. But the most egregious and disingenuous part of the statement is the use of the adjective “exculpatory” when describing DNA evidence. There is absolutely no way in which the referenced DNA evidence could be exculpatory (that is, clear the players of sexual assault), and to suggest so is a monumental disservice to the public. WRAL, along with almost all other media sources, has consistently erred on this specific issue of great importance.
In reporting on the same event, John Stevenson, of The Herald Sun, makes statements similar to WRAL such as: “All remaining charges against the defendants were dismissed in April by Attorney General Roy Cooper, who declared the three innocent,…”
The Herald Sun goes out of its way to generate sympathy for the Duke defendants by quoting one of their attorneys, Joseph Cheshire: “…a long journey of suffering for innocent people.” Mr. Cheshire takes advantage of Attorney General Cooper’s “innocent” declaration, and then the public is supposed to believe that the Duke Lacrosse players suffered? First, they spent no time in jail (their prosecutor – Mike Nifong – spent more time in jail than they did combined). Second, they each received $7 million from Duke University in an out of court settlement (don’t ask me why). Third, their avaricious carpetbagger families are currently trying to gouge another $10 million for each of their defendant sons from the cash-strapped city of Durham. Fourth, they were represented by high-powered attorney, not public defenders. And fifth, they were certainly not oblivious to the biased media attacks being lodged against Mike Nifong, the accuser, and the city of Durham. With consideration of the aforementioned, I doubt very seriously that the boys endured a “long journey of suffering.” James Arthur Johnson, Erick Daniels, Floyd Brown, Charles Wayne Munsey, Theodore Jerry Williams, and other innocent people who were wrongfully incarcerated for long periods of time without compensation know what it is to suffer. On the other hand, the Duke Lacrosse defendants have mainly experienced pampering and coddling by the courts, the media, and the public… privileged treatment for which they have been accustomed and to which they feel is their birthright.
As outrageous and unfair as the coverage by WRAL and The Herald Sun was, it pales in comparison to the ranting of MSNBC Senior legal analyst Susan F. Filan. In an online article posted June 17, 2007, titled “Nifong’s punishment is extreme, appropriate,” Ms. Filan claims that Mr. Nifong damaged the sport of lacrosse. Now, I am not making this up. She actually wrote that! I would like to know how. First of all, I doubt that he even knows anything about the sport. Another unsubstantiated claim by Ms. Filan is that Mr. Nifong damaged the reputation of Duke University. Again, I would like to know how. Her article failed to explain. Ms. Filan claims Mr. Nifong damaged three innocent men. Like the rest of the media, she gives credence to Attorney General Roy Cooper’s “innocent” declaration. Now I have never attended law school, and I am certainly not the senior legal analyst of a major media network, but from my high school civics class I learned that the attorney general, or anyone else in the executive branch, does not have the authority to render judicial decisions. That authority lies clearly with the judicial branch of government, as in judges.
Finally, Ms. Filan blames Mr. Nifong for damaging the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Nifong, in prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case on behalf of a victim who was poor, disenfranchised, and of color, against three young college men from families of wealth and privilege, was following the principle of “equal justice for all.” North Carolina justice, in practice, follows the tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.” That is what prevailed in the Duke Lacrosse case. The powers that be, and the media (including Ms. Filan) which was in cahoots with those powers, are responsible for destroying the public’s faith in the criminal justice system of North Carolina. All one has to do is look at the cases of James Arthur Johnson, Erick Daniels, Floyd Brown, Theodore Jerry Williams, Wayne Charles Munsey, Darryl Hunt, and many others who are poor and disenfranchised, and then compare them with the Duke Lacrosse case.
I take umbrage at Ms. Filan’s baseless speculations, especially her following statement: “He used the Duke case to get re-elected, and he resigned to try to save his law license.” What proof does she have for making these claims? They are reckless, inflammatory comments that are unsubstantiated… definitely statements which I doubt that she can back up with fact.
Ms. Filan did note in her article the rarity of the disbarment of an attorney, stating that it is the legal equivalent of a unicorn sighting. I would disagree when it comes to attorneys in private practice, but the statement is valid when it comes to state prosecutors. She failed to mention that Mike Nifong is the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar since its inception in 1933. During a 76 year period, hundreds, if not thousands of North Carolina attorneys have lost their law license, but only one prosecutor has been disbarred… Mike Nifong. This is a fact that the media has kept hidden from the public, especially in light of North Carolina cases in which there has been egregious prosecutorial misconduct… in particular the Alan Gell case. Furthermore, North Carolina follows only the states of Illinois and Louisiana in the number of death row inmates who have been exonerated.
This type of Journalism engaged in by WRAL, The Herald Sun, MSNBC and other media outlets is detrimental to the public which relies on the media for fair and objective reporting. The false, fraudulent, unsubstantiated statements and claims put forth by the media about Mr. Nifong are not the result of sloppiness or inattention, but they are carefully calculated statements made as propaganda intended to direct public sentiment against Mr. Nifong who has attempted to take class and color out of the equation when it comes to justice in North Carolina.
Mr. Nifong has always maintained that he felt that something criminal did happen to the accuser at the March 13, 2006 party hosted by the Duke Lacrosse team. Unlike Attorney General Roy Cooper, Mr. Nifong never said “nothing happened” at the party. So, the media took it upon itself to do it for him… even though there was no truth to it. And as a result, intelligent people, like Walt in Durham, believed the lie… proving that the media has become quite adroit at using the Jedi-mind trick on the public. That is what the media did in its coverage of the Duke Lacrosse case and its prosecutor, Mike Nifong – instead of informing the people, it was busy molding their minds.
This observation stems from a recent blog (around October 18, 2009) in which I made the following statement, “Just because Attorney General Roy Cooper said nothing happened at the party does not make it so.” Walt replied with a comment on October 21, 2009 which stated as follows: “But, Nifong himself said so twice” (insinuating that Mr. Nifong admitted that nothing happened at the Duke lacrosse party). When I requested the source upon which he based his comment, he told me it was from WRAL. And sure enough, I went to the WRAL website and upon searching, I found the following article posted on July 26, 2007, with the headline, “Nifong Apologizes, Admits Nothing Happened.”
That headline is an outright blatantly false and purposely misleading statement, and it was extremely effective in playing a Jedi-mind trick on Walt, and many others. The first part of the statement, “Nifong Apologizes,” is true, but the second part, “Admits Nothing Happened,” is offensively false on its face and baseless. There is absolutely nothing in the web article to substantiate such a claim.
Mr. Nifong does make the following statement, as published in the article: “I agree with the Attorney General’s statement that there is no credible evidence that Mr. Seligmann, Mr. Finnerty, and Mr. Evans committed any crimes for which they were indicted – or any any other crimes against Ms. Mangum – during the party.” Yes, he states that “there is no credible evidence” that the three defendants committed any crimes for which they were indicted, but that does not mean that he does not believe that they are not guilty of committing crimes against Ms. Mangum. Definitely it does not mean that Mr. Nifong believed that “nothing happened.” For the media to state that Mr. Nifong admitted that nothing happened is wrong and grossly irresponsible.
That said, there are many cases that move forward without credible evidence. In the Brittany Willis murder/rape/kidnapping/armed robbery case, there was no credible evidence against defendant James Arthur Johnson. Although Johnson heroically solved the crime for the Wilson police, he ended up spending 39 months in jail on charges which lacked credible evidence; charges that were later dropped. Notice that the media did not go after Prosecutor Bill Wolfe. In the case against 14 year old Erick Daniels, who was identified by a robbery victim due to the shape of his eyebrows in a school yearbook, there was no credible evidence that existed against him. Yet he wrongfully served seven years in jail and the media is not critical of his prosecutor, Freda Black. There was no credible evidence against Alan Gell for the murder with which he was convicted and unjustly served nine years in prison (half of it on death row). However, there was exculpatory evidence favoring Mr. Gell which the prosecutors withheld from defense attorneys in order to win a conviction. Even at that, the media went out of its way to protect and shield his prosecutor (David Hoke) from criticism. I could go on.
Bottom line is that there are many charges that are brought by prosecutors without credible evidence… but just circumstantial evidence. The admission by Mr. Nifong that no credible evidence existed does not necessarily exclude the possibility that a credible case could be built against the defendants.
Finally, the nexus between credible evidence and the occurrence of a sexual assault is non-existent, but WRAL and the media in general would like the public to believe that in this particular Duke Lacrosse case they are linked; one and the same. The folly of this argument is obvious when you consider, for example, the rape case against Ronald Cotton. Mr. Cotton was picked up off the street and placed in a lineup where he was positively identified as the rapist by a rape victim. There was no credible evidence linking him to the crime, nonetheless he was convicted and served many years in prison before being cleared by DNA. Because no credible evidence against him existed does not mean that the rape for which he was charged did not happen. In the Duke Lacrosse case, Attorney General Cooper has reached far beyond his bounds by declaring that no criminal activity took place against Ms. Mangum, based on the fact that there was no “credible” evidence against those accused by Ms. Mangum. And this is the line that the media, including WRAL, pursued and propagated.
Furthermore, the media, instead of questioning the legitimacy and propriety of the attorney general’s “innocent” proclamation of the three Duke Lacrosse defendants, accepted it as being legitimate and binding. This declaration is an example of overreaching and irresponsibility by the attorney general at its greatest, and the media has been content to completely ignore its lack of legal substance. This is an outrage that WRAL reported without question and as factual with its online statement: “Following North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s declaration this April that the three men were innocent, …”
A final disgracefully misleading passage in the WRAL article is: “The defense’s request to drop the motion for criminal sanctions means that Nifong will no longer be required to reimburse the defendants thousands of dollars for costs incurred in the defense’s uncovering of exculpatory DNA evidence that could have cleared the players had the case gone to trial.” First of all, the defense probably decided to drop the motion for criminal sanctions because of the absurdity of the charge, which would become apparent in a courtroom. To expect a prosecutor to pay for work performed by the defense team is absolutely ludicrous, yet the media’s take on it is matter-of-fact. But the most egregious and disingenuous part of the statement is the use of the adjective “exculpatory” when describing DNA evidence. There is absolutely no way in which the referenced DNA evidence could be exculpatory (that is, clear the players of sexual assault), and to suggest so is a monumental disservice to the public. WRAL, along with almost all other media sources, has consistently erred on this specific issue of great importance.
In reporting on the same event, John Stevenson, of The Herald Sun, makes statements similar to WRAL such as: “All remaining charges against the defendants were dismissed in April by Attorney General Roy Cooper, who declared the three innocent,…”
The Herald Sun goes out of its way to generate sympathy for the Duke defendants by quoting one of their attorneys, Joseph Cheshire: “…a long journey of suffering for innocent people.” Mr. Cheshire takes advantage of Attorney General Cooper’s “innocent” declaration, and then the public is supposed to believe that the Duke Lacrosse players suffered? First, they spent no time in jail (their prosecutor – Mike Nifong – spent more time in jail than they did combined). Second, they each received $7 million from Duke University in an out of court settlement (don’t ask me why). Third, their avaricious carpetbagger families are currently trying to gouge another $10 million for each of their defendant sons from the cash-strapped city of Durham. Fourth, they were represented by high-powered attorney, not public defenders. And fifth, they were certainly not oblivious to the biased media attacks being lodged against Mike Nifong, the accuser, and the city of Durham. With consideration of the aforementioned, I doubt very seriously that the boys endured a “long journey of suffering.” James Arthur Johnson, Erick Daniels, Floyd Brown, Charles Wayne Munsey, Theodore Jerry Williams, and other innocent people who were wrongfully incarcerated for long periods of time without compensation know what it is to suffer. On the other hand, the Duke Lacrosse defendants have mainly experienced pampering and coddling by the courts, the media, and the public… privileged treatment for which they have been accustomed and to which they feel is their birthright.
As outrageous and unfair as the coverage by WRAL and The Herald Sun was, it pales in comparison to the ranting of MSNBC Senior legal analyst Susan F. Filan. In an online article posted June 17, 2007, titled “Nifong’s punishment is extreme, appropriate,” Ms. Filan claims that Mr. Nifong damaged the sport of lacrosse. Now, I am not making this up. She actually wrote that! I would like to know how. First of all, I doubt that he even knows anything about the sport. Another unsubstantiated claim by Ms. Filan is that Mr. Nifong damaged the reputation of Duke University. Again, I would like to know how. Her article failed to explain. Ms. Filan claims Mr. Nifong damaged three innocent men. Like the rest of the media, she gives credence to Attorney General Roy Cooper’s “innocent” declaration. Now I have never attended law school, and I am certainly not the senior legal analyst of a major media network, but from my high school civics class I learned that the attorney general, or anyone else in the executive branch, does not have the authority to render judicial decisions. That authority lies clearly with the judicial branch of government, as in judges.
Finally, Ms. Filan blames Mr. Nifong for damaging the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Nifong, in prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case on behalf of a victim who was poor, disenfranchised, and of color, against three young college men from families of wealth and privilege, was following the principle of “equal justice for all.” North Carolina justice, in practice, follows the tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.” That is what prevailed in the Duke Lacrosse case. The powers that be, and the media (including Ms. Filan) which was in cahoots with those powers, are responsible for destroying the public’s faith in the criminal justice system of North Carolina. All one has to do is look at the cases of James Arthur Johnson, Erick Daniels, Floyd Brown, Theodore Jerry Williams, Wayne Charles Munsey, Darryl Hunt, and many others who are poor and disenfranchised, and then compare them with the Duke Lacrosse case.
I take umbrage at Ms. Filan’s baseless speculations, especially her following statement: “He used the Duke case to get re-elected, and he resigned to try to save his law license.” What proof does she have for making these claims? They are reckless, inflammatory comments that are unsubstantiated… definitely statements which I doubt that she can back up with fact.
Ms. Filan did note in her article the rarity of the disbarment of an attorney, stating that it is the legal equivalent of a unicorn sighting. I would disagree when it comes to attorneys in private practice, but the statement is valid when it comes to state prosecutors. She failed to mention that Mike Nifong is the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar since its inception in 1933. During a 76 year period, hundreds, if not thousands of North Carolina attorneys have lost their law license, but only one prosecutor has been disbarred… Mike Nifong. This is a fact that the media has kept hidden from the public, especially in light of North Carolina cases in which there has been egregious prosecutorial misconduct… in particular the Alan Gell case. Furthermore, North Carolina follows only the states of Illinois and Louisiana in the number of death row inmates who have been exonerated.
This type of Journalism engaged in by WRAL, The Herald Sun, MSNBC and other media outlets is detrimental to the public which relies on the media for fair and objective reporting. The false, fraudulent, unsubstantiated statements and claims put forth by the media about Mr. Nifong are not the result of sloppiness or inattention, but they are carefully calculated statements made as propaganda intended to direct public sentiment against Mr. Nifong who has attempted to take class and color out of the equation when it comes to justice in North Carolina.
Mr. Nifong has always maintained that he felt that something criminal did happen to the accuser at the March 13, 2006 party hosted by the Duke Lacrosse team. Unlike Attorney General Roy Cooper, Mr. Nifong never said “nothing happened” at the party. So, the media took it upon itself to do it for him… even though there was no truth to it. And as a result, intelligent people, like Walt in Durham, believed the lie… proving that the media has become quite adroit at using the Jedi-mind trick on the public. That is what the media did in its coverage of the Duke Lacrosse case and its prosecutor, Mike Nifong – instead of informing the people, it was busy molding their minds.
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