The Wrong Way Around

In the wake of the Duke lacrosse scandal, I can't help but utter these words: "Everyone cries out for peace, but nobody cries for justice."

Three members of the lacrosse team, wrongfully accused of rape, are confirming their innocence boldly once more in the city of Durham, NC. One would think that their acquittals would bring closure to this whole ordeal; after having their charges dismissed, that's what we've come to expect, right?

But no. An empty feeling still lingers on campus & in the lives of Colin Finerty, Reade Seligmann & David Evans. Each man's good name, as well as the university's, is tarnished & nothing has been won/gained from this scandal as there are so many losers in this game of judicial Russian roulette.

Former Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong is the man responsible for all this damage & destruction from every standpoint you can name: judicial, legal, moral, ethical. Such beating around the bush to wrongfully accuse Finerty, Seligmann & Evans of fabricated charges is inexcusable & unacceptable & not the proper way to present himself in the practice of law. Nifong only cared about winning votes & the trust of his fellow voters come election time; he didn't care about the innocent students whom he was about to put through the court system's ringer. Add to the fact that others out of their own misguided speculation were more than happy to railroad three lacrosse players as an excuse to diminish Duke's reputation as one of the elite institutions of higher learning. The end result is: a case with so many gaping holes that it wasn't even credible to begin with. Nifong, for all his self-serving ambitions, is now about to get disbarred permanently because of how he manhandled this case.

Am I saying that the members of the Duke lacrosse team were angels/saints when they threw a party with booze & strippers? No. That's the thing. In a world where star athletes get preferential treatment - the very mark of favoritism - someone was worthy of punishment in regards to this rape case. But these three men didn't deserve the mark of ignominy for all this. Someone else was responsible; who actually committed the rape remains to be seen & hasn't made himself accountable for his actions. And who knows how many folks are crying out, "Who did it?" "Who is guilty now?"

The criminal justice system has a job to do - I mean, it's in place for a reason!! - & in each instance, all are innocent until proven guilty. In the media, anytime a story with as much magnitude as the Duke lacrosse scandal comes out, we could do worse for the cause of the innocent by finger-pointing, speculation, rash judgments. It's time that we took a closer look into the truth before jumping to conclusions; this is where justice wins out without contest over injustice.