Before the votes are counted

Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s DA race, here are some good things that have happened since Beth Brewer and Roland Leary filed petition signatures for Lewis Cheek on August 9.

I hope you add other good things on the comment thread. We can put together a very long list.

Public opinion has continued to shift in favor of the players and against Nifong.

Under the pressure of NC’s Discovery Law, Nifong’s been forced to turn over evidence that further exonerates the players and implicates him in what is nothing more nor less than his deliberate frame-up of three innocent young man.

Gottlieb produced his “notes” for Nifong. They were meant to help Nifong’s frame-up. It turns out they gave Nifong the kind of “help” you give a drowning man when you toss him an anchor.

At first, Nifong appears not to have realized just what kind of “help” Gottlieb had given him. In a move Nifong obviously meant to preempt an upcoming 60 Minutes episode likely to be favorable to the players, Gottlieb’s notes were “leaked” to The New York Times, the most reliable refuge of scoundrels playing race, gender and class cards,

The Times did its best to deliver for Nifong. It knocked out a 5,600-word, front page story. But despite The Times' best efforts its story fooled no one not already fooled.

As Stuart Taylor, arguably America’s most respected journalist writing on legal matter, told Slate readers:

[The Times’s story’s ] flaws are so glaring that it was shredded by bloggers within hours after it hit my doorstep. They were led by a Durham group called Liestoppers and by KC Johnson, an obscure but brilliant New York City history professor of centrist political views.

The [story] highlights every superficially incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence, and reports hotly disputed statements by not-very-credible police officers and the mentally unstable accuser as if they were established facts.

With comical credulity, it features as its centerpiece a leaked, transparently contrived, 33-page police sergeant's memo that seeks to paper over some of the most obvious holes in the prosecution's evidence.

And all of that was before we saw the tapes of “Good Old Precious” just about the time Gottlieb’s notes tell us she was hurting so much she needed a very soft pillow to sit down on.

On the eve of the 60 Minutes broadcast The Raleigh News & Observer’s admitted that in its Mar. 25 “anonymous interview” story it withheld the news that the accuser had identified the second dancer, Kim Roberts, and made accusations concerning her which the N&O said it didn’t mention in the story because it couldn’t “substantiate” any of that.

Wow, you’re saying, but the N&O didn’t substantiate almost everything it said about the lacrosse players.

You’re right. You’re also right that the polls in Durham will close in a few minutes so I’d better wrap this post up.

Remember to add to it on the thread.

I'll put one other thing on the list of what's happened since the Cheek petitions were filed: 60 Minutes concluded they’re innocent. We'd all believed that before 60 came along but it was sure nice to hear 60 say it.

And 60's conclusion will I think help defeat Nifong tonight.

Now to the returns.