Duke and the System

the reason the system worked

The system didn't work at all. The kids had their mug shots on the front cover of Newsweek. I have no idea how Matthew can say the "system worked".

I think you mean in conclusion: "urgent problem of dogs biting men"

Your friend Amanda Marcotte would seem to disagree with your sentiments about these particular white mean. Remember? Something to the effect of "can't a few white boys hold a black girl down and **** her against her will without everybody getting all bent out of shape?"

Sounds like Amanda had everything all figured out in her mind a while back. I guess if you've already got a world-view, you don't need facts or evidence; kinda sounds like the left-wing version of our President huh? Once again, all one can say is...wow.

BTW, I think at the very least, there ought to be parity in funding between prosecutors and public defenders. So it obviously would take an increase in funding for public defenders to achieve that.

Public defenders are not necessarily any less capable than private defense attorneys. What they may lack in funding they often make up in dedication and hands-on experience.

The Duke case is a man-bites-dog case for another reason: incidences of white men raping black women (let alone gang rapes by white men of black women) are exceedingly rare, whereas rapes of white women by black men are far more common.

Most low-income blacks aren't "railroaded" by the criminal justice system, they just tend to be guilty. Blacks are about 7 times more likely than whites to commit violent crimes like rape and murder.

that "the reason the system worked in the Duke case was because these were upper-middle class white folk with good lawyers." Exactly. I should have said that in the initial post. This is precisely what makes the sense of beseigement, persecution, and systematic abuse that's surrounded this controversy so baffling.

Think of what it took to get the system to "work." A year and several millions of dollars in legal fees - something even most middle class white people cannot come close to affording. Which makes it all the scarier for everyone else.

Poor defendants -- especially minority ones -- are railroaded regularly thanks to desperately inadequate legal representation.

Absolutely 100% true.

Peter,

Public defenders are not necessarily any less capable than private defense attorneys. What they may lack in funding they often make up in dedication and hands-on experience.

But they often have incredibly limited financial - and investigative - resources, and a heavy case load. "Inadequate legal represenation" here is often systemic, having little or nothing to do with an individual public defender's skills.

Right, because Matt has to answer for everything Amanda says. WTF?

Al, these guys got their faces on the cover of Newsweek. On the other hand, when 15% of the black population of Tulia, Texas was arrested for trumped up drug charges (based on the falsified evidence of a single dirty cop), many of them went to prison for years. That's a failure of the system.

I don't think it is fair to say that "the system worked." Nifong hid DNA evidence from the defense attorneys. That in and of itself represents a failure of the system. A "working system" assumes that this never would have happened in the first place.

The system "works" when both sides honestly present their cases and the jury arrives at the correct outcome, if it ever gets that far. The system fails when one side tries to get away with deceiving the other.

The system didn't work at all. The kids had their mug shots on the front cover of Newsweek.

I read Matt as talking about the legal system. You seem to be talking about some larger system, namely one which includes Newsweek (and I don't know what else it includes). If your suggestion is that there should be tighter restrictions on how police or prosecutors release information about people accused of crimes, maybe that's right, but I don't think that's your complaint. Is it?

It seems clear enough that Matt means "the system worked" in the sense of the final outcome, and in spite of the misdeeds of the prosecutor. A whole lot of innocent parties don't have the legal resources to combat this sort of prosecutorial misconduct. That's the scandal.

I distinctly recall one of the Lawyers for the accused bringing up the issue that they were all very fortunate to have the resources (and knew it) to adequately defend themselves.

I agree with Matt that the system worked - defendents with vigourous representation were able to clear themselves.

The media (as per usual) screwed up, but the justice system...? Not so much.

Most low-income blacks aren't "railroaded" by the criminal justice system, they just tend to be guilty

Nobody's saying they are. I'm saying most of the people who are railroaded by the criminal justice system are low-income African-Americans.

It's also worth saying that guilt and innocence aren't the only issues here. Race and SES, for example, do a huge amount to determine whether or not you'll ever serve prison on drug charges -- the sort of crime where most instances of violating the law are never punished at all.

Luckily there's the Wall Street Journal editorial page to tie everything together for us

Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948

This case served one useful purpose, to remind us why we hold feminists in low regard.

Obviously Matt thinks that the media treatment of this story was brilliant. He's a big fan of the media's approach to reporting and its choices about content.

Notably, Matt led by example here - he did not have much to say about the merits of the case, so he did not say much. Instead, he focused on major public policy issues and the information available about them. That's exactly what the press should have done.

As for parity between public defenders and prosecutors - people should not forget that prosecutors have their investigative work done by the police, whereas defense attorneys do not have the police on their side. Notably, if the goal were to improve the fairness of the criminal justice system, we might want to focus more on police training and police funding - the initial investigation may provide the crucial evidence to provide an airtight defense or prosecution. Often all the crucial evidence will go missing otherwise. Insufficient resources devoted to investigation combined with some questionable police practices play a major role in false or mistaken convictions.

Notably - this case had PLENTY of resources devoted to investigation, and that worked well - the lack of any DNA evidence (but the search for it) may be the reason these guys will NOT be convicted.

If this case is about any public policy breakdown, it may be the problem with direct election of prosecutors.

The real shame of this story is that it has distracted our attention from all the pretty young blonde women who have disappeared under mysterious circumstances recently.

Al, these guys got their faces on the cover of Newsweek. On the other hand, when 15% of the black population of Tulia, Texas was arrested for trumped up drug charges (based on the falsified evidence of a single dirty cop), many of them went to prison for years. That's a failure of the system.

They are BOTH "failures of the system", in different ways. The travesty in the Duke case isn't really that they were falsely accused by the prosecutor - as you point out, that happens all the time. Rather, the travesty there is that the kids were convicted by the media and by others in the public (such as the Gang of 88 Duke professors) as a result of the prosecutorial misconduct.

Steve,

Matt doesn't have to answer for ANYTHING Amanda says, but since he and Ezra Klein seemed to be sympathetic of her, and seemed to be sticking up for her during her short tenure at the Edwards campaign, and since they do seem to be personally acquainted, then I think it's worth mentioning, especially since she was so fabulously unrepentant about the things she said.

Seems like if Matt actually feels sorry for these guys and thinks they got a raw deal, then he would, like me, take offense (or at least take issue with) to Amanda's rash statements. But that certainly didn't seem to be the case back when the Marcotte stuff was in the news.

Plus, it continues to bother me that the left is plagued by ideological disease just like the right. I naively have grown up feeling that being left-of-center was largely about weighing the evidence honestly and being free from the grip of ideology, (but not philosophy). I know that's naive and I continue to be disabused of that notion. In the case of the Bush Administration, the ideological disease is neoconservatism. In Marcotte's case and those like her, the fact that this story fit in with their narrative about how things work was all they needed, and that falls well short of being admirable.

Much of the controversy with Marcotte dealt with what she said about this case, and this case seems to have come to a legitimate conclusion, and Matt commented on Amanda back when her stuff was hitting the fan, so I thought it was appropriate to comment on.

So there you have it.

The system didn't work at all. The kids had their mug shots on the front cover of Newsweek. I have no idea how Matthew can say the "system worked".

Our system of justice, which has built-in safeguards to prevent people from being convicted of crimes they didn't commit, achieved the desired end-result. It worked. It might have been a different story if the defendants could not afford top-notch legal representation, but the system did work.

The prosecutor's office in Durham, North Carolina, which should have safeguards in place to prevent wrongful indictments, failed badly.

Our nationwide 24:7 courtroom drama system, which selectively latches onto high-profile legal cases, turns criminal defendants into celebrities, and tasks its herd of vacuous commentators with speculating irresponsibly about criminal cases despite possessing few, if any, relevant facts, failed miserably as usual.

"The real shame of this story is that it has distracted our attention from all the pretty young blonde women who have disappeared under mysterious circumstances recently."

It's also distracted our attention from this case, of an alleged rape of a white woman by blacks at a Duke fraternity party.

Not so far mentioned in this discussion is the role of the cable talk shows. In particular, the one run by former Atlanta prosecutor Nancy Grace. Ms. Grace specializes in trashing criminal defendants and Mr. Evans, Mr. Seligmann, and Mr. Finnerty were no exception. In this regard, the execrable Wendy Murphy, a frequent guest on these talk shows should be mentioned. Ms. Murphy was still proclaiming the three defendants guilty even after it became evident to everybody else in the universe that the case was conjured up out of DA Nifongs' imagination (in fact, as recently as a few days before the NC Attorney Generals' news conference, Ms. Murphy was warning that dismissal of the case would lead to riots in Durham).

Our nationwide 24:7 courtroom drama system, which selectively latches onto high-profile legal cases, turns criminal defendants into celebrities, and tasks its herd of vacuous commentators with speculating irresponsibly about criminal cases despite possessing few, if any, relevant facts, failed miserably as usual.

Well, to suggest that this system failed implies something about the objectives of the system that I'm not sure can be safely assumed.

djw -- Yes, that's a better way of looking at it.

but there is more than one "system" being discussed here

Agree 100%, LaFollette Progressive.

The disconnect, I think, is that the complaints about the Duke case now focus mostly on the media, professors, etc. - NOT about the criminal justice system. As we all acknowledge, the criminal justice system worked out for the most part OK for the kids (other than putting them $3 million in the hole - which is less bad a result than that the result in the Tulia case). Take, for example, the Victor Davis Hanson piece to which Matthew links in the previous post. VDH is complaining about the MEDIA, not the criminal justice system.

So anybody who says that the system "worked", as Matthew does here, is missing (or avoiding, I'm not sure) what all the complaints are about. The people complaining about the "system" are complaining about the kids being railroaded by Newsweek and the NYTimes.

Something Matt has overlooked here is that the entire genesis of the Duke scandal lies in the alleged rape of a poor black woman by rich privileged white men. It would never have become a national story otherwise.

How can you talk about a "criminal justice" system and not include the media in it?

Matt:

"Nobody's saying they are. I'm saying most of the people who are railroaded by the criminal justice system are low-income African-Americans."

Do you have any statistical evidence that demonstrates this?

"Race and SES, for example, do a huge amount to determine whether or not you'll ever serve prison on drug charges."

I would guess culture has an impact also. Specifically, the "thug" culture common among many low-income black defendants. I doubt the hostile, surly pose that goes along with that culture plays well with judges.

But I don't see any of the Duke-agitators pressing for increased funding of public defenders offices or any other reforms that would address the real systemic problems facing criminal defendants who don't deserve to have the finger pointed at them.

Reade Seligmann, one of the accused, said in an interview today that he plans to become a criminal defense attorney so that he can help out people who are wrongly accused like he was. The people directly involved in the case do appear to be attuned to the inequality in society that you discuss.

Anyone remember Richard Jewell? Or those Muslim med students who got stopped in Florida?

Being railroaded by leak-prone prosecutor and aggressive, anti-defendent press happens in America, even if you aren't an oppressed white male. The 'system', in that regard, is seriously screwed-up.

It should be noted that the vast majority of violent crime (just under 90% IIRC) has a perp and a victim of the same race. This is the reason that when cops, the FBI, etc. make a profile of an at-large serial killer, they victims' race tends to determine the race of the person they'll expect the serial killer to be (exceptions exist, of course, but in general this rule stands). The majority of the victims of black criminals are black, the majority of the victims of white criminals are white, etc., in part because lots of neighborhoods are still segregated and much crime happens in the criminal's own neighborhood. However, the scary black man killing the pretty white girl makes for better ratings, so local news channels, who are in the business of sensationalism, focus on that. It should also be noted that a black man who kills a white man is up to five times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man who kills a black man, in part due to the race and income of the defendant.

""Nobody's saying they are. I'm saying most of the people who are railroaded by the criminal justice system are low-income African-Americans."

Do you have any statistical evidence that demonstrates this? "

A few minutes on Google can turn up many, many studies that confirm this.

Also, is Jay J. Sean Hannity? He uses the same schtick of that someone must answer for the wrongs of anyone else who shares their position on the political spectrum.

Reality Man,

I gave reasons for why I brought it up, and it had to do with Matthew's specific treatment of the Marcotte case, not the fact that he rests near anyone on the political spectrum. The fact that he seems to be acquainted with her is clearly secondary to the way he treated the case, since he treated the case in a way in which his usual sober analysis seemed to be missing, I wondered if his acquaintance with her was an influence, but clearly I don't know. My explanation of why I posted what I did
explained that Matt treated the Marcotte case in a way that I found to be suspect. I also mentioned Ezra Klein, who explicitly stated that he is friends with Marcotte and is a brilliant writer. So why don't I take it up with Klein? Because I've found that his blog has many more people like you that Matthew's does. This is a compliment to Matthew in that I think his blog is more open and less reactionary than Ezra's, at least in the comments section.

Ya know, back when I first started getting into politics when I was younger, I, probably like many others, watched cable news and listened to talk radio. It didn't take long for me to get frustrated with the ad hominem attacks, interruptions, and fallacies bandied about in these forums. Then several years ago, when FoxNews came along, I was appalled at the level (the low-level, in terms of fairness in argument) they brought their medium to.

But after several years, I simply accepted the fact that anyone who gets their news from Fox is a person who has a fundamentally different value system than me in terms of the right way to ascertain what's true and how to deliberate fairly. So my angst over FoxNews faded away as I realized the futility of hoping for something different.

Similarly, it was appalling to me to see so many supposed progressives categorizing me the way you (Reality Man) just have simply because I express (with reasons and all) an opinion that doesn't fit some pre-designed worldview. But like with FoxNews, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and the like, I have grown numb to ad hominem attacks from the left as well.

Once again, I gave reasons and all for my views, and once again, I've been personally critiqued, (being called Sean Hannity) rather than just having my argument critiqued.

Oh well, this is becoming old news on liberal blogs. And yes, the right wing is worse, but that doesn't matter all that much to me, since I've never voted Republican in any Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, or Governor's race since I started voting in 92'. But people like you make me want to.

Things like the Imus and Duke case are the only ways in which the Republicans can win next year. I'm surprised Matt, who is usually pretty accute, doesn't see anything bizarre in the media rush to judgment against the Duke kids. The fact that Edwards would hire a (white partiarchy hating) person like Marcotte is, for this middle aged white male, the strongest argument I know against his candidacy. The Democrats are right on the big issues of the day, economic fairness, the environment, and Iraq. But if they don't get over their anti-white thing (which includes depicting anyone who opposes affirmative action as "racist") they aren't going to get far.

What bothers me the most about the case, in the end, is the way that the arguments broke down so predictably along race, class, and ideological lines even before the DNA evidence became public knowledge. It's all too easy to imagine a similar case where the defendants were guilty as charged, yet the usual suspects in the media would all have been saying more or less the same things. The guilt or innocence of the suspects seems largely irrelevant to the media and to political pressure groups in the early stages of an investigation.

I share Matt's opinion of the folks on the Right who attempted to hype this case into the Biggest Travesty of Justice Ever. But they do have a bit of a point. The media jumped to conclusions and wronged three young men who probably behaved badly but were innocent of the specific charges levied against them. A number of people rushed to assumptions about their guilt based on stereotyped assumptions about the race, class, and gender of the suspects. And pundits lined up to support their respective home teams without paying much attention to the facts of the case.

Stop me if you've heard this story before...

I defended Amanda Marcotte from the mob that wanted her to be sacked for comments that she made on a personal blog before she was hired. But she owes a few people an apology for her comments on this case. A feminist should know better than to make assumptions about guilt based on cultural stereotypes.

LaFollette Progressive,

Stop being just like Rush Limbaugh. JK. There may be fundamental differences between the way you said what you did and what I said, but those differences are style differences, not substance differences.

I think the question of whether Amanda Marcotte should have been fired or not from the Edwards campaign isn't as fundamental as whether she was objectively wrong (objective in the sense that we usually mean wrong) to say what she said about the case. And that's what surprised me about Matthew's coverage of the Marcotte deal back when it happened.

On whether or not she should have been fired, I think there are a number of things surrounding that that reasonable people can disagree on, but its like pulling teeth just trying to get someone sympathetic of Marcotte to just admit that what she said was something we normally would disapprove of.

At the very least, it seems that assuming that these "white boys" held someone down and "f*ck*d" them against their will is as Matt might say, "you know, like, wrong." Seems like that deserves mentioning.

When it's not even dealt with, I wonder what some of the reasons for that are, but clearly I don't know why, I just know I don't agree with the way the vast majority of the left dealt with the issue.

Oh well, if she were to apologize about her Duke case comments, let's hope it would be more explicit and contrite than her 'I'm sorry some people can't spot my humor' attempt at an apology on referring to the "Hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit."

>The Democrats are right on the big issues of the day, economic fairness, the environment, and Iraq. But if they don't get over their anti-white thing (which includes depicting anyone who opposes affirmative action as "racist") they aren't going to get far.

Al Gore, a white man, may run for the democratic nomination this year. This could help the democrats show that they are not anti-white.

The system didn't work in the Duke case. Nifong should have never brought the charges after the DNA came back negative.

Nifong's disgraceful and unethical actions in this case should spark a widespread discussion about corruption in our criminal justice system. If he was willing to play this fast and loose when dealing with rich white defendants who could afford good lawyers, what do you think he's been doing all these years with poor black defendants who can't? This is something the Al Sharpton/New Black Panther fringe doesn't even seem to have considered. The state of our nation's public defense systems is atrocious. The public defender's office should have equal resources to the DA's office as a matter of constitutional law - how else can a trial truly be a fair contest? Furthermore, in many ways, our evidentiary laws are still in the Dark Ages. Case in point: eyewitness testimony is still considered as a matter of law to be highly reliable, but the scientific evidence proves that it isn't.

There may be fundamental differences between the way you said what you did and what I said, but those differences are style differences, not substance differences.

I don't necessarily agree with your assessment of Matt's post. Everything he said is essentially true. But he's also leaving out large parts of the story.

I do think our differences on this matter are primarily a matter of degree, not substance. I don't generally support tarring and feathering people for an ill-considered comment or two. But I do think it's important to call people out when they start wearing ideological blinders. Most liberal bloggers seem to be adopting a "No Enemies on the Left" policy these days. This is almost certainly an improvement over the era of knee-jerk triangulation, but it's not a healthy attitude in the long run.

LaFollette Progressive,

Fair enough. Just a point of possible clarification:

I was referring to Matt's treatment of the Marcotte case back when it was in the news, not necessarily the way he's dealt with today's posts. If you already knew that, never mind as it doesn't change your post at all.

On the "make no enemies" strategy, whether practiced on the right or left, is to me morally bankrupt and anyone implementing this strategy loses credibility when they make future moral claims, if they refrained from calling their own side out on a similar issue because of expediency.

But I know that attitude makes me ill-suited for politics.

Fred: You can shove all your stereorypical bullshit up your ar**.

I guess one reason for the outrage at how these kids were treated by an out of control prosecutor is that -- what if they didn't have resources to defend themselves? Even with every possible advantage, they were mistreated and maligned publically. If it could happen to them, it could happen to anybody.

Surely the award for most creative use of the Duke case in service of a political hackery is today's defense of Wolfowitz in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

"Equally cynical has been the press corps, which slurred Mr. Wolfowitz with selective reporting and now says, in straight-faced solemnity, that the president must leave the bank because his "credibility" has been damaged. Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team."

"If it could happen to them, it could happen to anybody."

Whereas we would prefer that this just be able to happen to the people it has always been happening to.

Not only did the Justice System work (for the white & wealthy) but these guys were hardly victims of the media either. Yes when the story first broke and for a few months afterward the media was very against these guys. But when the problems with the accuser's story & prosectutor's case came to light the media rushed to their side & in fact played a big role in exposing that information and swinging public opinion to their favor. It would be disingenuous to charge that the dominant length of the Duke Case was characterized by disfavorable rather than favorable treatment from the media. Choice nutpicked thread comments from the Feminist blogosphere & early statements of solidarity from sheltered academics in the English Department are hardly representative of plural/majority public opinion, which has been on the accused's side of the case for a long while now.

Good comment.Thanks admin.

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