Daily Show Rips Nancy Grace Over Duke Case

My longstanding disgust for Nancy Grace is well-known to regular readers of this blog. Her coverage of the Duke Lacrosse "Rape" Case provided a nice vehicle for Jon Stewart and the good folks at The Daily Show to rip her a new one. Enjoy!

Quick Hits

I got slammed this afternoon, and don't have time for a long post, but there is a lot of interesting stuff in the news, law wise, so here is a list of stuff to check out:

*One of those terrorist-loving lawyers for the Gitmo detainees publishes an open letter to Cully Stimson in Salon and it is awesome.

*The dedicated lawyers at the Cook County Public Defender's Office are fighting back against budget cuts that would mean a bunch of lawyers there losing their jobs, and their already high caseloads getting even higher.

*Bill O'Reilly, adamant defender of children against sex offenders, thinks Shawn Hornbeck didn't escape his abductor for over four years because it liked it since he didn't have to go to school.

*The judge and the DA apologized to James Waller yesterday in court when his DNA exoneration was made official, but I think it would be nice if someone tracked down the jurors who didn't do their job and got some apologies from them. They convicted the guy in 46 minutes based on an obviously bad voice identification and in the face of an alibi. Step up and take some responsibility for violating your oath and sending an innocent man to the pen for 30 years, jurors! Maybe future jurors will learn a lesson.

*I told the prosecutor yesterday that my case set for trial on Tuesday should be dismissed because he didn't have the evidence to prove it, and this morning, he dismissed it. Wow. That's pretty cool.

Will New Dallas DA Get to the Bottom of Wrongful Convictions?

Wretched of the Earth announces yet another DNA exoneration in Dallas County, bringing the total since 2001 to 12. James Waller was convicted based on the identification of the victim, which, if the article about the case is correct, sounds incredibly shaky, and the type of identification that should have been dismissed by a jury as completely unreliable. Newly sworn-in Dallas DA Craig Watkins has promised not to block requests for DNA testing in future cases (he already agreed to DNA testing in another case, which helped lead to a speedy exoneration) like the previous DA had, and to look into the root causes of the wrongful convictions. I hope he follows through on that promise. It would be great if they did some training with police agencies on proper identification procedures, and backed up that training by not using IDs in court that were the result of improper procedures. That second part may be asking too much, but I'm interested in seeing where he goes with this. In the meantime, his willingness to agree to DNA testing in appropriate cases is a nice change in policy, and one that any DA truly interested in doing justice, and not just in protecting their convictions, would embrace.

Fox News Analysts Have a Thirst for Justice . . . For Rich, White Defendants

I don't know if I've had one single post about the Duke rape case. That doesn't mean I haven't been following the case--it's pretty hard to ignore. In fact, I have been paying pretty close attention to the news coverage. I'm a criminal law junkie, and it is one of those stories that is hard to resist. But one thing about this case, or rather, about the news coverage of this case has really fascinated me. I can't recall ever seeing a rape case covered by the media with such vehement support for the defendants, and such skepticism and hostility towards the prosecutor and the accuser. It certainly didn't start out that way. As many criminal cases often do, when the police and the prosecutor control the information, all the initial reports looked really bad. If you believe the ethics police in the North Carolina bar, that was because the DA was violating all sorts of ethical rules about pre-trial statements to the media. At any rate, as more of the actual evidence--physical evidence, witness statements, medical evidence, lineup procedure, etc.--started coming out through court filings, the case began to take a different turn. At this point, it seems that 90% of the legal experts commenting on the case think it is a dog, that it should be dismissed, and many would also add that the DA has screwed it up so royally that he should quit.

But, since virtually the beginning, most of the folks at Fox News--normally big on law and order--have been almost uniformly skeptical of the accuser and the prosecution, and supportive of the defendants. Sean Hannity, in particular, has been an outspoken advocate for the accused and equally outspoken in his outrage at the prosecutor and the accuser. She is a slut, a drunk, a liar. The prosecutor is a disgrace, a violator of civil rights, and needs to be thrown out of office, disbarred, if not prosecuted himself.

Honestly, I think this case is a disgrace. I think it would be a travesty to take the case to trial. The identification procedures used were atrocious, the accuser's account of events has changed as often as she has spoken about it, and the physical evidence is either virtually nonexistent or exculpatory. Heck, one of the accused has about as airtight an alibi as you can have without actually being locked up in jail at the time of the "crime." So, yeah, I think the case should be thrown out. If the DA doesn't have the good sense to dismiss it, the judge needs to have the balls to toss it based on the prosecutorial misconduct, and impermissibly suggestive identification procedures.

As someone who rants and raves when people are wrongly accused, I should be thrilled that someone like Sean Hannity at Fox News is so outspoken in his indignation. But, here's my problem with Sean Hannity. When has he ever given a damn about a poor defendant, wrongfully accused or convicted? When has he called on the federal government to investigate a prosecutor for civil rights violations committed against someone who didn't go to a prestigious university or have a wealthy family? When he rails against the prosecutor for abusing his authority in this case just to get elected, does he ever consider what responsibility he and his Fox co-hort Bill O'Reilly have when they threaten the political futures of elected officials who refuse to pass draconian sex offender laws that, they must admit in light of the Duke case, sometimes end up being imposed on innocent people? I haven't seen any evidence of that. The title of my blog comes from the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I might suggest to Sean Hannity that, over this long holiday weekend, he reflect on that quote. And perhaps he might acknowledge that all across this country, the poor are subjected to injustices perpetrated by police officers and prosecutors not doing their job. And they don't have millions of dollars to fight back like the Duke players do. And that, perhaps, if he spent some time urging the people and politicos in this country to do something to prevent and to rectify those injustices, then the chances that rich, white boys from Duke will fall prey to those same injustices would be significantly less.