If the authorities were criminally prosecuting former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong for obstruction of justice and false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum for a false rape report and fumigating the District Attorney's Office and the Police Department instead of giving the false accuser a pass and pretending that the only problem was Mr. Nifong and, with him out of office and disbarred, the criminal justice system is in great shape, there would be real repentance instead of putrid pretense and a call for mercy would make sense.
When it came to the Duke case, Durham. North Carolina's horrible Herald-Sun was an utter disgrace.
Now the day of reckoning is here and it's accusing the true victims of being punitive!
Herewith an obnoxious editorial for the ages:
"The train wreck that is the Duke lacrosse case is about to come crashing into the City of Durham's living room. The total damage is yet to be determined, although it seems likely to be extensive.
"Former District Attorney Mike Nifong has already been disgraced and disbarred for pursuing sexual assault charges against three former Duke students despite having no evidence. Now the students and their families have retained some of the highest profile lawyers in the nation to punish the city and its Police Department.
"The players' attorneys for this round of blood-letting include Barry S[c]heck, who helped represent O.J. Simpson, Brendan Sullivan Jr., who defended Lt. Col Oliver North during the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal, and David Rudolf, who represented former Carolina Panthers player Rae Carruth and Durham murder defendant Michael Peterson. You know it's going to be a bad day when these three want to see you.
"The City of Durham is in a tough spot because, as they say, mistakes were made. We already know that a police lineup in which an exotic dancer identified the three lacrosse players violated police procedures. We can wish, in retrospect, that someone inside the department had stood up and screamed that the lineup was wrong and the case was a sham, but that didn't happen. We can take some solace that a new police chief, Jose Lopez, will come on board next month.
"We may also wish that the players would refrain from demanding a huge settlement that will only hurt Durham taxpayers who played no part in putting them through what, admittedly, was a long nightmare. But the players appear to have a case, and they certainly have every right to pursue it.
"The latest news is that the city's insurance company has demanded that a committee created to get to the bottom of what happened at the police department halt its work. The insurance company is understandably nervous that the committee will be performing unpaid services for S[c]heck, Sullivan and Rudolf.
"We supported the committee's work in order to seek accountability in the case. But there's no choice now but to shut it down. Reality can be a difficult pill, and this is no time for the city to lose its insurance company. Even without the committee, we know enough to realize that a bad crash is probably unavoidable. Now we're just bracing ourselves."
The notion that the true victims in the Duke case should be less than fully compensated for being persecuted for the sake of the Durham taxpayers is amusing.
Did suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick or unsuspended New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady take less than his market value in order to reduce ticket prices for his fans?
No.
Did the bulk of the Durham taxpayers come to the defense of the persecuted players?
No.
If Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and/or David Evans want to be charitable, the Durham taxpayers might not be their first choice and they should be deciding, not The Herald-Sun.
If the authorities were criminally prosecuting former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong for obstruction of justice and false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum for a false rape report and fumigating the District Attorney's Office and the Police Department instead of giving the false accuser a pass and pretending that the only problem was Mr. Nifong and, with him out of office and disbarred, the criminal justice system is in great shape, there would be real repentance instead of putrid pretense and a call for mercy would make sense.
Remember: Mr. Nifong realized when the DNA results came in that the gang rape claim was a hoax and he nevertheless shamelessly played the race card because he thought (rightly) it would work.
If the Durham taxpayers believe that Mr. Nifong did not have knowing enablers, then they should have Durham's name changed to Denial and seek treatment.
I say that the Three should be compensated fully and then do whatever they want with the compensation they receive.
After all, reparations to them are in order and the North Carolina NAACP should be demanding that they be paid!
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.