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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (5557)	12/19/2006 3:14:48 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

That DA does appear to have crossed the line into criminality. Here's more. Tuesday, December 19, 2006 Replace Nifong It's a strange day when I read Susan Estrich and want to cheer. But she says exactly what I've been saying about Mike Nifong. He must be replaced. This is not the way the system is supposed to operate. Prosecutors are supposed to be out for justice, not blood; committed to the truth, at all costs, not winning, without more. Prosecutors aren’t just morally obliged but legally required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. Prosecutors aren’t just one side in a battle. You can’t come across the smoking gun covered with fingerprints on it – come across it because you have the power of the state to collect all the evidence – and then decide to ignore it because they don’t match the fingerprints of the guy you’re prosecuting for the crime. You certainly can’t file the report from the lab for your eyes only. You have to tell the defendant that the smoking gun has someone else’s prints on it. He has a right to know that, and the prosecutor has a duty to tell him. There is a reason that the rules are such. The prosecutor represents the people. The people’s goal is winning, which doesn’t have to mean a perfect conviction rate. The goal is supposed to be to convict the guy who did it, not frame the guy you’ve got. Somebody should tell that to Mike Nifong. Or to the judge who is in a position to do something about who prosecutes the Duke lacrosse players charged with rape. What is going on in the prosecutors’ office in Durham North Carolina is disturbing in ways that go beyond the ugly allegations that started this case. Thomas Sowell thinks that the worse is worsening in what we know about Nifong's prosecution of this case and the picture that has emerged is of a prosecutor bent on prosecuting three young men because they're white and go to an elite school and the accuser is black. Far more is involved in this case than the misdeeds of one District Attorney. There is a segment of the black community -- a small segment, we can hope -- that figures it is payback time for all the black men who have been railroaded to jail on trumped-up charges involving the rape of white women. The local branch of the NAACP, an organization which fought against such injustices in times past, has thrown its weight behind those who are trying to railroad three white students, who were not even born when these other injustices occurred. Winston Churchill once said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." Nowhere is that more true than when dealing with the explosive mixture of race and politics. Nifong deserves to be removed from office and disbarred. If he gets away with all this, it will be a blank check for every prosecutor in the country to abuse the powers of the office. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds posts an e-mail from Professor John Banzhof of George Washington University saying that Mike Nifong and Durham County are indeed open for a civil law suit by the three lacrosse team members indicted and persecuted in this affair. Durham is not a wealthy county and the last thing they need is to have to pay out millions of dollars because Mike Nifong was determined to get reelected. betsyspage.blogspot.com