Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Rape at Duke University

The more I hear about the rape charges against the Lacrosse players at Duke University, the more they stink. Prosecutor Mike Nifong has engaged in very questionable practices, and seems to be facing some rather serious ethics charges. Who in his right mind would do this? Tomas Sowell points out:

Nifong's actions are inexplicable only if you assume that his purpose was to get at the truth about what actually happened at the party where the stripper claimed to have been raped.

...

His inflammatory outbursts against the Duke students in the media are not inexplicable. Neither was his failure to follow standard procedures in presenting the accuser with a lineup that included only white Duke lacrosse players.

Under Jewish law, a person who bore false witness against someone in court would receive the same punishment the defendant would have received, had the testimony been believed. Mike Nifong deserves to go to prison for the maximum term the Lacrosse players could have been sentenced to.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The DA did one good thing. He brought the problem of false claims of rape to national attention.

Each time anyone would bring up the subject of false claims of rape. "victims' Advocate" always cripple or stifle conversation or debate by clouding the issue with the sufferrings of rape victims to over shadow the suffering of victims of false rape claim.

The premise of these "victim advocates" is that it's not okay to be raped, but it's okay to be falsely accused of rape to protect the possible 50% of rape accusers who are actually telling the truth.

• According to the FBI, one of every 12 claims of rape filed in the United States are later deemed 'unfounded,' meaning the case was closed because the alleged victim recanted or because investigators found no evidence of a crime.
• Howard County Police classified one out of every four rape allegations as unfounded in 1990-91.
• The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers says around 600 teachers a year are falsely accused - a trebling since the 1989 Children's Act.
• Citing a recent USA Today article, discussing the miracle of DNA and FBI studies of sexual assault suspects, DNA testing exonerated about 30% to 35% of the more than 4,000 sexual assault suspects on whom the FBI had conducted DNA testing over the past three years.
• Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, in over 40% of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994).
• 1985 the Air Force conducted a study of 556 rape accusations. Over 25% of the accusers admitted, either just before they took a lie detector test or after they had failed it, that no rape occurred.
• 1996 Department of Justice Report, of the roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases analyzed with DNA evidence over the previous seven years, 2,000 excluded the primary suspect, and another 2,000 were inconclusive.
• Linda Fairstein, who heads the New York County District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit. Fairstein, the author of Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, says, "there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about 50% simply did not happen."
• Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for his zealous prosecution of rapists during his 16-year career, says that false rape accusations occur with "scary frequency." As a regular commentator on the Bryant trial for Denver's ABC affiliate, Silverman noted that "any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes." According to Silverman, a Denver sex-assault unit commander estimates that nearly 50% of all reported rape claims are false.