Duke Rape Hoax - Why Punish Only One of the Culprits?

Well it looks like Mike Nifong will more than get his. He's already been disbarred, a penalty that ends a three decade professional career in what is undoubtedly the only trade he knows. He has been humiliated on national television, with all the "legal experts," (i.e., young babes who graduated law school but never practiced a day in the real world), berating him nightly. Now the attorneys for the three falsely accused Duke students are adding to their million dollar fee bills by formally moving for criminal sanctions against the man. Multiple lawsuits, we are told, are just around the corner. And the media just can't get enough of it all.
It's so easy to kick a man when he's down. As the old song goes: "People love it when you're down; they love dirty laundry."

Now don't get me wrong, I have no defense for Mike Nifong. His attempts to put three innocent men behind bars for possible thirty-year sentences, his withholding of evidence in the process, his callous indifference to the collateral damage that he caused to the families, teammates, and the school - these things are beyond reprehensible. He sold his soul to the cause of cheap racial baiting, all for the selfish purpose of advancing his career. He inflamed racial prejudice and, in the city of Durham at least, set back the progress of race relations by a good twenty years.

I also have little sympathy for the man. I say little sympathy because I can, to some small extent, understand the dilemma he faced. It takes a strong, strong person to do the right thing when the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world have led the black community into a lather by prejudging the case and screaming for the scalps of these three men. Just ask CBS and MSNBC how difficult that task is. For Nifong, the dilemma was far worse inasmuch as he faced a sure election defeat in a heavily black jurisdiction if he had failed to bring charges. Who of us wouldn't push the envelope a bit in the face of such pressure with a career on the line? Yes, I know that prosecutors are charged with the responsibility of ensuring justice; I know they are expected to withstand such political pressure and to uphold the integrity of the process. But if we look beyond these grandiose platitudes and allow the one without sin to cast the first stone, the uproar would be markedly less, wouldn't it?

Having said that, Nifong did some terrible things, no doubt. And to some extent, he himself intensified the political pressure by similarly prejudging the case and, worse, by spouting off inflammatory remarks before every microphone he could find. For all of this, he deserves big time punishment, and if the exonerated players want a pound of flesh on top of things, so be it. Personally, I don't want to see any man commit suicide, and I fear this is where the unending pursuit of Nifong will ultimately lead. But a message clearly must be sent.

My problem is that Nifong is being used as a handy-dandy scapegoat. He is, after all, an easy dumping ground. Everyone - and I mean everyone - is grilling him on a daily basis. To hear the pundits talk, this is all Nifong's fault and his alone. The entire fiasco and the sole cause of three innocent men's irreparable reputational damage was Mike Nifong, and as long as we rid the world of this loathsome man, our society will again be trouble free.

Well, as they say in western North Carolina, that dog won't hunt. In truth, there is a huge herd of villains responsible for this miscarriage of justice. Nifong was the springboard, but he had multiple partners in crime. Some were merely negligent, but others were every bit as malicious as Nifong in moving the case far further than it should ever have gone.

What galls me is that all of his accomplices appear to be getting off scott free. In our age of political correctness, no one wants to challenge these other culprits. But I will. What follows is a list of the other villains who deserve a similar fate as Mr. Nifong:

1. Chrystal Gail Mangum - Anyone remember her? Probably not given that her identity was "protected" throughout the entire ruse. THIS is the person who started it all. This is the stripper/professional escort who filed the completely bogus charges in the first place; the "person" who carried the DNA of some seven men (other than the accused) in or on her person when she appeared for her fraudulently induced "rape" examination; the woman who could not even manage to identify three men who were present in the audience of her strip show when it finally came time for her to identify her fictitious assailants; the woman who described a moustache on the same accused who has never had one in his life; the woman who changed her story probably more times that she changed her own filthy underwear over the course of this bogus prosecution. I'm sorry, but something is big-time awry when a woman like this is allowed to continue to walk the streets -- pardon the pun.

I suppose the reasons are twofold. First, she obviously does not have a pot to peel a potato in, so what's the point in suing her? It would take a lifetime of lapdances for her to generate enough money to pay a small fraction of the damages award that she deserves to have assessed against her. Second, we know that if anyone dared point a finger at her, our "civil rights activists" would immediately cry foul. The same shouts of racism that fueled this prosecution in the first place would promptly come to her rescue. Who needs to face that hassle when whipping boy Mike Nifong is still available?

2. Kim Roberts - Also known as "stripper number two," Ms. Roberts is the equally upstanding person who joined Mangum in her ruse. She's the one who placed the bogus 911 call that started with the interesting words, "Yes, hello, me and my black girlfriend..." (Anyone other than me wonder why she felt the need to volunteer the race of her girlfriend?) Ms. Roberts then made a mockery of herself as she too told one changing story after another, but only after first contacting a media consultant for counsel as to how she could make the most of the whole affair for herself. Her letter, in part, stated, "I'm worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage." When the media later confronted her over the request, Roberts replied, "Why shouldn't I profit from it? I didn't ask to be in this position... I would like to feed my daughter."

Well, hell's bells, as long as you are spinning a bogus rape story to feed your daughter, what's the harm in that? I suppose our rogue prosecutor could offer this same excuse: "Why shouldn't I win an election from it? I didn't ask to be in this position... I would like to feed my family." But it doesn't work that way does it? Instead, Nifong gets crucified while Mangum and Roberts are issued free passes as troubled women in need of help.

Sadly, this is but one of an infinite number of double standards that we see running throughout the debacle. The bottom line is that neither of these pieces of human garbage will be punished -- aside from, perhaps, seeing a decline in the number of strip show requests received. The reasons for their impunity? See item one above.