User:The Blade of the Northern Lights/Duke lacrosse case

The Duke lacrosse case was an extremely high-profile debacle that touched off in mid-March 2006. The case itself involved a severely disturbed person,, who made a completely false accusation of rape against players on the Duke lacrosse team, and particularly egregious misconduct from a SANE, the Durham County DA , and a few police officers. It took the three players, all of whom were demonstrably innocent, almost a year to clear their names, and this only occurred after Nifong's antics went too far. Besides the players themselves, the case revealed some highly disturbing trends in the American legal system and university system. It was also one of the occasional cases where people actively weaponized the perceived privilege of the people involved in exactly the opposite ways than usual, and made it all the more difficult for the wrongly accused players to obtain justice.

The basics
The captains of the Duke lacrosse team decided to have a party during spring break, and decided to call for strippers. Despite asking for white strippers, the company sent them a black and half-black, half-Asian. The black stripper, Crystal Gail Mangum, had mixed alcohol and Flexeril, which is an exceedingly bad idea and leads to severe physical and mental impairment. After only a few minutes of dancing it became clear that Mangum would be unable to perform, and after some shouting back and forth Mangum passed out and her coworker decided to take Mangum and leave. She then called 911 and had police pick up Mangum; she was already a familiar face to police officers, who knew upon seeing her that she was neglecting her two young children, and upon figuring out that she was only faking unconsciousness decided they would involuntarily commit her to a mental institution.

At the Duke University hospital, one of the staff members openly violated hospital policy by directly asking a leading question, "Have you been raped?" Mangum, who had a criminal history and a track record of making false rape allegations, then saw her opportunity to avoid commitment and said yes. The examination revealed absolutely no evidence of the sort, and the doctor who performed it eventually concluded that she had been full of shit. This is the point at which most such stories end.

However, Mike Nifong was in the midst of a sinking re-election campaign, and saw the case as his chance to court the black vote in Durham; after all, Mangum was black and all but one of the lacrosse players was white. He convinced a SANE who had been in the room with Mangum during the examination, Tara Levicy, to misrepresent medical evidence; Levicy, whose stated motivation was that no one would ever lie about rape, readily agreed. He also received help from the Durham police department, and one officer in particular who had an extensive history of targeting Duke students and engaging in blatant police brutality. In flagrant violation of the prosecutor's code of ethics Nifong then decided to go an an enormous media campaign saying he would bring the lacrosse team to justice, at which point the case came to national attention.

When Mangum constantly changed every element of her story and twice proved utterly unable to identify anyone who she claimed had raped her—indeed, the only person she positively identified had been in another county during the party—Nifong then decided to run a rigged lineup so he could indict three players. He then promised DNA evidence would make or break the case, but when they found none in or on Mangum from the lacrosse players he declared the irrelevance of DNA; indeed, when the test instead found DNA from four unidentified males which contradicted Mangum's claims, he conspired with the lab technician to keep this detail hidden.

The players, for their part, unwaveringly maintained their innocence and fought the charges all the way. Phone and ATM records proved that two of the three were away from the scene by the time the rape purportedly occurred, and photographic evidence clearly showed no assault happened. Nifong appeared out to set a new record for prosecutorial misconduct, and violated almost every rule imaginable in the state bar's ethical code. Any time the demonstrably innocent players managed to show irrefutable proof Mangum changed her story, Levicy changed her medical statements, and Nifong charged ahead. He went so far as to engage in witness intimidation, arresting a disinterested party who supported one of the players. Despite, or perhaps because of, this conduct, the county incredibly re-elected him in November.

Lawyers for the players knew Nifong's case was nothing but hot air, and shortly after the election found out the extent to which he had hidden exculpatory evidence in violation of North Carolina law. In mid-December defense attorneys managed to get a special prosecutor appointed. This new prosecutor interviewed the players and Mangum, the latter of whom continued to change her story yet more. Levicy was willing to keep changing her story her story, and one of the most bizarre statements was, "I wasn't surprised when I heard no DNA was found because rape is not about passion or ejaculation but about power." Exactly how this piece of feminist philosophy had any bearing on forensic evidence is anyone's guess.

Unsurprisingly the new prosecutor dismissed charges, but in what was an almost unprecedented move he then declared the players innocent. The state bar decided to disbar Nifong, and sent him to jail for a day. Mangum then got herself arrested a few years later for setting clothing on fire in a bathtub while her children were in the house, and after working a sweetheart deal for that murdered her boyfriend and got sentenced to 18 years in jail. Meanwhile, the players have mostly moved on and managed to do something with their lives.

Every now and then, there are still people who try to declare them guilty of... well they never actually say what, just "something". There are of course the usual cranks, but then every so often there are otherwise people like doing the same. To do so they either rely on the statements of Nifong or Mangum, and if you don't know why that's a bad idea already we have a bridge we'd like to sell you when you're finished with this article.

The university
Instead of defending their students, Duke University opted to completely throw them under the bus. In an unprecedented move pandering to some extremely anti-athletics faculty, the university president cancelled the rest of their season. He then went on national television and proceeded to all but declare them guilty without any evidence, and said "if they didn't do it, whatever they did is bad enough". For context, the most serious crime which occurred at the party was underage drinking, and we all know that never happens at colleges.

Protesters gathered outside the houses lacrosse players rented, and among other things called for their castration. In response, no fewer than 88 professors signed a statement which they published in the school newspaper thanking these protesters and proclaimed, again without evidence, that "something happened". To pay for the ad they used university money, in violation of the university's policy, and misrepresented the ad as having been signed onto by 5 departments; in fact, none had. A lot of people from certain departments had, though. Most, although not all, of those who signed the statement were race/class/gender fanatics who either had almost no publications to their names or whose publications were so ludicrous that anyone outside of academia would have laughed in their face and told them to get a life.

Perhaps even more egregiously several professors openly harassed lacrosse players, even ones who had obviously not been at the party or who had left before the strippers arrived. One engaged in grade retaliation that nearly prevented a player from graduation, and was so obvious about it that when the student called her on her bullshit the university ended up having to change the grade to a pass. Another wrote a letter openly deriding the players for being white, and later called a parent, in his words, "the mother of a farm animal". Absolutely none of these professors faced disciplinary action, and indeed several have since been hired to more lucrative jobs or been promoted. When the prosecutor declared the players innocent, they signed a "clarification" statement that pretended they hadn't actually said they were guilty of anything; outside observers saw it for what it was, an attempt to avoid liability for defamation.

To show the academic caliber of many of the Duke humanities professors, one American history professor declared that the case was comparable to that of, who had been murdered in 1954. Ignoring the obvious differences between the two cases, Till's murder was in 1955. That an American history professor specializing in black history would make such a statement is jaw-dropping, to say the least. Then again, no one from the law department signed the guilt-assuming statement, so perhaps they do have some good professors there at least. There were also a few professors who openly stood by the players, and it was a black law professor who provided by far the fairest assessment of the team; namely, that they probably drank too much but were good people, not the racist privilege-blind assholes the Group of 88 made them out to be.

About the only sane people on the campus were the students themselves. With the exception of a few "unnamed minority students" who Group of 88 professors quoted to force through their agenda, the students on the campus almost without exception supported the players. Reporters for the student newspaper saw through the bullshit very early on, and openly attacked Nifong and the school administration. For their efforts they received multiple awards, and were by far the best source of information from start to finish. A couple of local reporters also did an excellent job.

Racism
This event is usually cited as the poster child for reverse racism. In reality, it was just straight-up racism. Large numbers of people from all racial and social backgrounds decided that because the players were men from well-off white families, they had to be guilty. Students at the historically black college seriously argued that they should be punished even if they were innocent because they were somehow responsible for past injustices, and their intensity even freaked out Nifong. One student said they supported Mangum because, "this is a black-on-white thing". The city council went so far as to allow the New Black Panther Party, who had already sent death threats to one of the players, to come to Durham; the university was actually going to allow them on campus. To show how low Nifong could stoop, he also had several conversations with Malik Zulu Shabazz about the case. Several Duke professors also unleashed racist screeds about white people, with absolutely no consequences whatsoever.

Less serious threats also plagued the case. Al Sharpton blithered about the case to Bill O'Reilly on national TV, and later pretended he hadn't said anything after all. As per usual, Jesse Jackson made himself look like a fool on a lot of levels. A large number of white people also jumped on the politically correct train, ignoring every inconvenient fact that got in their way. Comments that they were guilty of "everything but rape" persisted even after the prosecutor declared them innocent.

Unlike most of these sorts of cases, it was actually the conservative media that did better in the end. Sean Hannity, usually the reliable idiot, was one of the first to call bullshit on Nifong, and Bill O'Reilly took to task one other guilt-presuming guest for not even considering the possibility that the players might be innocent. Conversely,, NPR, and numerous others decided to declare the players guilty in the face of all evidence to the contrary. NPR did a series of stories containing nothing but howler upon howler, even after the special prosecutor declared them innocent. The New York Times was especially frustrating on this, because the first reporter they had on the story did some reasonable articles; when he proved unwilling to become singularly fixated on privilege and drink from the race/class/gender Kool-Aid—in other words, actually do his job as a reporter—they replaced him with people who wrote a series of articles that were so effusive they would have made Mike Nifong blush. Almost none of them bothered to run corrections when people pointed out their lies, and the corrections they did run were inconsequential.

The one black player on the team, who never became the subject of any accusations, did not totally elude the race-baiting either. He supported his teammates all the way through, and people on the Duke campus accused him of being a race traitor for refusing to turn in his teammates. When faced with this Jesse Jackson claimed that this player hadn't attended the party, despite the fact that photographic evidence clearly showed he had.

Sexism
And because the players were men, a few decided to light into them on that front. Aside from Levicy's horrific conduct in the name of feminism, a few other feminists said things that unfortunately made the entire movement look terrible. The ever-reliable made some particularly inflammatory statements after Nifong had decided to drop the rape charges but press ahead on others, and it was these statements that caused people to uncover her nasty invective elsewhere and torpedo her run as John Edwards' online campaign leader. Several people also made reference to some imagined sense of "entitlement" the players purportedly exuded, despite there being no evidence of any such thing.

About the only women who defended them were the players' friends and the players on the women's lacrosse team—you know, the ones who actually knew them—and they adamantly maintained the men's innocence. The one black player on the women's lacrosse team went so far as to say that, if she could do anything, she was willing to use her race and gender to be of some help. For this they were on the receiving end of petulant insults from a lot of people, self-proclaimed feminists and otherwise, apparently for being too easily manipulated and not standing up and being "strong enough" as women. Right, because the mark of a woman is really to declare men guilty of a crime they didn't commit.