Duke lacrosse commentary - May 23, 2006

At History News Network there’s a post: “Where's the AG?” It begins:

North Carolina's attorney general is Democrat Roy Cooper; under the state's somewhat peculiar prosecutorial structure, he has authority to take control of the Duke lacrosse case away from Durham DA Mike (Ahab) Nifong. It seems as if the time has come for Cooper to act. …

On the post’s comment thread there was this:

"inexplicable" is a good choice of words. Since Nifong has been re-nominated and faces no opposition in a general election, you cannot attribute his conduct of the case to his current political ambitions.

That was followed by this comment:

I agree--there's no plausible or even conceivable political motive at this stage. Simply from a practical angle, why would a prosecutor not want to look at defense evidence, even if only to see what the defense has?

The post and comments were made right after the third player, David Evans, was indicted.

My reactions:

Yes, in certain circumstances the NC AG can take a case from a DA. (I’ll leave it to lawyers to explain the circumstances.)

So it’s possible Cooper could step in but I doubt he will, not least because Cooper is a very cautious guy who wants this year’s Democratic Gubernatorial nomination.

Stepping into the DLC won’t make Cooper many friends. But you can imagine the howls from the activist mob and their media allies if Cooper replaces Nifong.

Nifong upsets some of us who believe in due process and presumption of innocence but the activist/media crowd think he’s “just fine, thank you.”

What Cooper could do short of taking over the case is make a very public statement affirming the rule of law in NC and promising to punish those who interfere with it. But I don’t think he’ll do that although it would be a very wise “ounce of prevention.”

As for, “Nifong … faces no opposition in a general election, you cannot attribute his conduct of the case to his current political ambitions” and “there's no plausible or even conceivable political motive at this stage.”

Those comment’s are extremely naïve.

A plausible motive?

Well, think about it. If you’ve been promising for weeks that is will be three – a trio – do you just go out on stage and announce: “Folks, it’ll be a violin duo tonight. I couldn’t locate a cellist?”

Of course not: you do everything you can to locate a third player. DAs are that way too.

Nifong knows if he hadn’t produced the third indictment, his case would have even less plausibility than it has now.

A political motive?

Yes, Nifong effectively won reelection before he brought the third indictment against Evans. But that doesn’t free him from political pressures.

For the inside players – and Nifong’s one – politics is a 24/7/365 long-term career activity. Politicians begin thinking about the next election once the results of the current one are in. And that next election is often just another step in a 20 or 30 year career plan.

The groups who supported Nifong in his most recent election are, he knows, watching now. In four years time, they’ll remember what they saw.

As to what extent, if any, political considerations actually entered into his actions on the Evans indictment, I don’t know.

I’d be unfair to say they did; and presumptious to say they didn’t.

What I do know is that David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann are entitled to due process and presumption of innocence.