Good signs from NAACP's McSurely

Liestoppers notes we’ve gotten "A Curiously Mixed Message" from North Carolina’s state chapter of the NAACP. Its President, Rev. William J. Barber II, has told us that “maintain[ing] community and do[ing] justice requires tenacity to seek the truth and willingness to face the truth.”

But at the state NAACP’s website, LS finds an essay by the organization’s Legal Redress Chair, attorney Al McSurely, that LS demonstrates contains “distortions” and what LS delicately calls “departures from the truth.”

JinC Regulars may recall McSurely was the subject of posts on June 3 (“Duke lacrosse letter: So bad it's a good sign for the indicted”) and June 4 (“Remember that Duke lacrosse letter? Here's a follow up”)

The posts commented on a letter McSurely wrote to the Raleigh News & Observer in response to a David Brooks column, "The Duke Witch Hunt," which first appeared in the New York Times.

In light of all the public had learned by late May about DA Mike Nifong’s “case,” Brooks said “simple decency” required that he and millions of others “correct the slurs” they’d uttered in March and April against the Duke Men’s lacrosse team.

McSurely didn't like that one bit. He went after Brooks with statements such as:

“Brooks conceded the team is ‘mostly white’ (46 out of 47). He cited favorably a National Journal essay [by Stuart Taylor] that estimated "an 85 percent chance" the men are innocent.”

I noted that “conced[ing]” a team is mostly white is no more a concession that “conceding” a team is mostly black. I also noted McSurely couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge what Brooks had actually said about Taylor :

“[Law journalist] Stuart Taylor has written a devastating couple of essays on the weak case of the prosecutor, Mike Nifong [citing] lack of DNA evidence, the seemingly exculpatory digital photos and the testimony of a taxi driver.”

McSurely’s letter was so weak I said “it had to be a good sign for the indicted players.”

Liestoppers' post shows us why McSurely's essay is another "good sign" for the players.