I could believe it when I had read only the column. Knowing the further details of the case, not so much.
Where do they find people to write these columns? They frighten me.
Not to be tediously focused on a pet topic or anything, but another very irritating thing about this piece is the waste of real estate. Someone (at LGM?) said that this one of the few forums left for first-person essays. I get terribly frustrated by the narrow range of work the NYT Styles editors seem to find appropriate.
Geeze, if I were trying to find writers for a 600-word weekly column I could come up with a year's worth of authors with relatively little thought. And they'd be smart, provocative writers with varied life experience and interesting perspectives. And they would too appeal to the Styles demographic.
And why the hell is it in the Style section? High heels, Milan, Prada, date rape?
3: Indeed. Hey, chica, the guy's convicted. He seems to be past the point where he blames her; maybe you should, too, and stop playing apologist?
Compare I believe he was a boy who endeavored for hours in the dark to express his drunken, fumbling desire in a way that, fair or not, ended up unraveling his life with Before entering her room, Douglas "slammed her against the wall" and began kissing her, even though she "told him to leave [and] was struggling to get away from him." -- the view of male sexuality being advanced in this column is that the breaking and entering, and the knocking around and forcing oneself upon, are fumbling, unsure expressions of budding male desire -- the rapist is engaged in a process of self-discovery.
Fuck that with a frozen trout. Some lameass Columbia asswipe wants to believe her convicted sex offender boyfriend just fumbled his way into raping someone. Oops, I stumbled, my dick fell out as I slammed her into the wall.
Not really directed at anyone here. But this article bugged the hell out of me.
5: Maybe she only ever heard his side of the story.
Then she shouldn't fucking say she's researched the whole thing.
Yeah, the article says:
Later, as events unfolded, I would learn everything I could about the case, not only from all the news media coverage but also from visiting Harvard and talking to mutual friends and co-workers of theirs. At the urging of his parole officer, I read the accuser's statement of what had happened.
She'd heard the whole story.
Maybe I didn't read the column very carefully.
Yeah it sounded to me like she had read the victim's statement. I'm pretty sure the breaking and entering and the slamming was exactly what she had in mind -- though probably in more muted hues -- when she wrote "fumbling desire".
Part of my reaction to this probably stems from the idea that if a girl accused a Harvard man of date rape, and it went anywhere besides being circular filed, and charges were pressed, and it got to the point where he had to plea bargain, she had a pretty good case, and the article's making it sound like it was just a drunken hook-up where she felt really really guilty about it.
And then he couldn't get it up with his new girfriend. Wah, wah, wah. If only he'd met Columbia twat first! She wouldn't'a told on him when they drunkenly hooked up.
The thing is, even taking the guy's story at face value, mistakenly forcing someone into sex (if it were possible) is a horrific event even if not rape, just like killing someone while driving drunk is a big fucking deal even if not murder. Her 'God, I don't understand why this was such a big deal' attitude is bizarre whether or not his story (as opposed to his sworn confession, of course) was true.
13 -- yeah that final sentence of the column really creeped me out.
this article is just seventy kinds of fucked up. how she gets past the fact that he wrote a letter to the girl saying 'sorry I forced you to have sex with me' I can't imagine. it's hardly he said/she said if he says he raped the woman. then her astonishment that anyone would seek criminal charges for rape...he already got kicked out of harvard, poor baby, isn't that enough? and how is she even spinning this innocent date rape/misunderstanding thing when the woman was out on a date with someone else and this is a friend of hers who insisted on forcing his way into her room? I mean, OK, not that no one has ever gone out with one guy and then had sex with another at the end of the evening, but it seems to pull the rug out from under the view of date rape (as being less serious or the product of semi-innocent confusion) predicated on a misunderstanding: oh, we went out on a date to this party, and then we ended up back at her place, etc. and how the fuck is the victim supposed to feel; it's not like she ain't going to read this ridiculous apologia from an egotistical brat who seems to regret most about another woman's rape that it had a negative impact on her sex life. I really do think NY styles is just trying to fuck with us at this point. it's unseemly for the gray lady to be trolling.
14: Exactly. Had it been a vehicular manslaughter, would she have been blaming the victim for being in the road?
If only I'd found him first. Fuck you, chica.
it's hardly he said/she said if he says he raped the woman.
Yeah, but he's a convicted rapist -- what kind of credibility does he have?
I could write a Modern Love column. Would I have to write it in that navel-gazing style, though, or would I be permitted not to suck?
Actually, what I find most shocking about this entire affair is that Cala used the word "twat."
Unrelated, don't you think it's total crap that some journals won't let you write contractions?
I think the grey lady *is* trolling, frankly. More than half of the Modern Love essays are narratives of self-delusion without clear-eyed endings; to me, the real wonder is that anyone submits essays to it.
Can I hate the writer of the article, and still have doubts about the legal/moral status of what happened that night? I remember being in Boston while all this was going on, and getting a distinct vibe of Blown Out Of Proportion about this affair.
Last line is indeed insane. Couple that with the "J Crew" line and the equestrian bit, and you have quite the picture.
20 -- are you suggesting that "twat" s/b "'twas"?
20: Yes. Especially because some philosophers don't change the rest of their style to match, so you get a cross of the folksy 'I'm just Saul Kripke, saying things, being fellated by grad students' combined with the should not/cannot/will not more formal locutions.
22: Hate away, hate away. I actually feel sorry for the guy, because if he is a decent human being, and trying to move past it, he had to be saddled with that botoxed-brain of a wench.
Oh Jesus Christ. Back in the day, Camille weighed in on this. Spittle-flecked as usual.
Hilariously, I quote a contraction-ridden passage from a more prestigious journal.
23: No, no. He said it was unrelated.
21: I think you overestimate humanity.
It appears from the Harvard case that the New Man -- who repents and apologizes for his sexual excess -- will always get shafted. The Classic Cad, who would glibly lie about a sexual encounter, would have escaped the lynch mob and rolled merrily on as a student in good standing. Great lessons they're teaching these days in Cambridge!
Surprisingly, Camille, writing a letter apologizing for raping someone doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just as saying you're sorry for running over your neighbor's kid while drunk doesn't mean you didn't commit the crime. His remorse was noted in that he had a lenient plea bargain.
No more, or Imma gonna smack someone.
25 -- My favorite bit is, "N E X T_P A G E | Dusty Springfield; the cultural semiotics of gay 'bears'"
Man, remember when Salon was something you thought you might be willing to pay for?
(I still do, but I gave the password to a bunch of people in exchange for not paying for my beers that night...)
Another relevant fact: if your font is small enough, "Blackburn" looks like "Blackbum." Names are not definite descriptions, thank God.
26: That's great. Do you have to put a little '[sic]' at the end?
Thanks for tackling this, LB. I sat down to enjoy this week's column and was left completely speechless. Whaaaat the fuuuuck.
He wrote a letter to the girl saying 'sorry I forced you to have sex with me' .
A new twist on "Love means never having to say you're sorry", which is about Al Gore and Tipper, as we know.
Coincidence? I think not.
I thought it was Bill who raped Hillary, not Al who raped Tipper.
Or so the mullahs would have you believe.
Please don't explore the other permutations of that foursome.
The wise recognize that if Bill had raped the mullahs, 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
Or so Bill Clinton would have you believe.
I feel like the editors are actively avoiding separating out their reactions of "boy, these kids today" and "this person needs help." Probably because the premise of the series is "oh whutta woild" to begin with.
getting a distinct vibe of Blown Out Of Proportion about this affair.
???
Do you think the girl was lying?
What I find most upsetting is the author's attitude towards rape. There's already a great disincentive to coming forward as a rape victim without the motherfucking New York Times helping the cause, as it were.
I worry that the Duke rape case is heading in a similar direction. Fie on that bullshit.
43: Yeah, but the Duke rape case increasingly appears to be missing a rape, which is a pretty big asterisk.
44: I mean only that both cases serve as discouragements to rape victims coming forward.
"'Cause, you know, no one's gonna believe you anyway, and it's hard to prove. Better just go back to classes, hon."
45: I don't buy that at all. I think most people are going to respond to the ML column the way most of us have: they'll be appalled by the author and by the man she's talking about.
Maybe. If they don't read about the case, and realize that 'fumbling' meant 'forcible assault', it sounds like a good re-affirmation of the belief that date rape just means she changed her mind the morning after.
Yeah, if you didn't know the facts of the case, I don't think you'd find the article definitively outrageous.
46: I certainly hope so. But I wonder about what the effects of this ML article are on a rape victim's thinking (and I'm admittedly un-schooled in this area). Maybe it's good to have a ridiculous article like this in the NYT, but I do wonder why an editor never bothered to go, "Uh, Whaaa?!?!"
48: Exactly. I had no idea how bad it was until I saw the Daily Kos piece linked from somewhere. I certainly would never have bothered to look up news reports on the case based on a lazy Sunday afternoon skim of an article.
but I do wonder why an editor never bothered to go, "Uh, Whaaa?!?!"
Probably because it appeared in Sunday Styles, which is edited by an old issue of Cosmopolitan that gained sentience when, after amniotic fluid got on it during the delivery of a mid-level publishing executive's child (the pregnancy being consummated in her apartment), it was tossed out the window, landing on a metal fire escape, where it was subsequently struck by lightning.
That happened in 1991 or thereabouts.
45
I don't see why the Duke case would discourage genuine rape victims from coming forward.
I think you guys are going at this all wrong. The real point is that this is a heartwarming story about how even rapists can find love again.
54: I think that probably has something to do with your diagnosable condition, JBS.
57: Even though he, apparently, does not.
55: he could have, except that by saying he was sorry, he destroyed the love.
Anyone have any idea what the NYT is paying for these columns?
42: No. I don't know what I thought. I was also 23.
44: It's certainly put it in the "reasonable doubt" class. From what I can tell from here, there's no way I'd convict in the Duke case.
46: Yeah. Anyone remember the NYTimes piece by the woman who wrote about being brave during the Northridge 'quake by getting in touch with her fears and blubbering on the couch while her husband did the usual disgusting male thing of making sure the gas was off, getting flashlights, making sure the kids were okay, and all that other testosterone fueled foolishness? She didn't get a round of applause from the readers either.
The Duke case is bizarre. I was holding onto the belief that the prosecution's version of the case was roughly accurate for a long time, because while people get railroaded on weak or no evidence all the time, it usually doesn't happen to people with good lawyers in cases that are receiving huge amounts of publicity. Nifong would have known from the beginning that his case was going to get closely examined, which made me assume that he thought it could bear the examination. Given that, I dismissed a lot of what came out of the defense as posturing.
As it is, it looks as if the defense version of the evidence is pretty much accurate, giving rise to the question of what Nifong was thinking? He knew from the get go how weak the case was, and that pushing it aggressively like this was going to make him look like an incompetent lunatic. What on earth could have driven those decisions?
64: Listen, back on the steppes... meh, nevermind. Insert your own evolutionary psychology joke here.
What on earth could have driven those decisions?
He was up for election last year, viewed as potentially wobbly because he was an appointee in the first place, and there are a lot more of us voters in the city of Durham than on the campus of Duke.
I guess, but he's ruined his career prospects forever now (or at least I wouldn't be surprised if he had). The one-election payoff doesn't seem like nearly enough to make up for that, given that the eventual bad outcome was pretty much certain.
I suppose people do make stupid decisions, but this one was remarkable.
I don't want to hijack yet another thread but I am concerned that people haven't noticed my previous attempted hijacking, maybe because it was on the Texas thread which mostly Texans are reading, not New Yorkers -- So just to say, if you are in NYC and feel like coming to a meetup on Friday, go look at the Texas thread.
68 - This is similar to how I reacted to the early protestations about the Rather GWB documents or to how a lot of people seemed to respond to Colin Powell at the UN. There's a strong impetus to believe that, no, nobody is going to destroy their professional reputation so stupidly -- the Bush administration has coasted on those rails for a while, lubed by careful application of Medals of Freedom.
Right, Clown. I'll put up a post.
68: I should note I had exactly the same initial reaction as you: I figured that if he planned to press charges that he had seen the evidence and knew that the case was solid. I am not disappointed in him because I feel some need to defend Duke kids; I'm disappointed in him because he has created a circumstance in which there will be zero examination of privilege in a town where an examination of privilege could be very, very useful.
Plus, now we've got another great case to be used as reasons not to believe actual rape victims: "You know women lie. Remember those poor Duke students?"
If only they'd found me first!
Arrgggggg.
And those of us, probably a substantial majority of this community, who wanted the story to be about privilege, about the behavior of white, entitled athletes vs. a hired black girl of different class, are left feeling abused by the failure of the most likely assumption, of competence and professional integrity. To have expressed skepticism, even to have felt it, would have seemed toolish.
And now here we are.
Yeah. The thing is that the rules of thumb we were all using were good ones, and I'm going to keep on using them. (If I'd been paying closer attention, I probably would have changed my opinion faster than I did; but if what I thought of the case mattered, I would have been paying closer attention.)
78: To engage in on-the-one-hand-ism, however, I was perfectly willing from the get-go to be open-minded about it. I wasn't there, after all, and I've had plenty of friends in enough legal trouble over misunderstandings, aggressive prosecution of minor infractions (not sexual assault, I'm talking about being 19 and having a beer) and actual false sexual assault accusations (a friend many years ago was tarred as a rapist in the local press, kicked out of school with no recourse by the student courts and then found innocent by a jury that deliberated for less than an hour after his incontrovertible defense was made in an actual court of law). I was willing to believe they were innocent and I was willing to believe they were guilty, went back and forth on it in my own mind and, most importantly, knew it was Nifong's job to examine the evidence and judge whether there was any case there and I assumed he could be trusted to do so.
That he appears to have made the wrong call in such a spectacular way is tremendously disheartening to women who are victims and afraid to speak out for fear of being disbelieved and an encouragement to men who think this means they can get away with rape. In the process, everyone - myself included when I'd read the paper and think, Well, of course they did it, some mornings - bought into the narrative of privileged young whites taking the worst advantage of a poor young African-American woman. That said narrative was so perfect a fit in so many minds says that we need desperately to examine race and privilege and stereotype in society, but to do so now seems like it could be very difficult without trying to pin the crimes of others on the accused for the sake of maintaining that narrative when it looks less and less like it applies.
That said narrative was so perfect a fit in so many minds says that we need desperately to examine race and privilege and stereotype in society
That a narrative is a perfect a fit should be a tip-off that the narrative needs examining. One thing I've learned is to be distrustful of stories that neatly fit my preconceived notions of reality. Real life is messy, and really good fits indicate someone's been polishing the script IMX. See the GWOTerrorism/Truth for further examples.
Yes, I agree. I just want to acknowledge that my own ideas and reactions are as ripe as any for examination.
65
"... He knew from the get go how weak the case was, ..."
Actually I think the DNA results were a bad surprise to Nifong but by then he had already committed himself.
I haven't read the preceding comments, but did anyone mention that the police lineup for the victim to identify the attackers was done way out of procedure? (The lineup was entirely lacrosse players.) So I think that even before the DNA tests, Nifong knew his case was weak.
81: But he's had those exculpatory results for ages now. From the get go is an ambigious statement, but he should have been certain of the weakness of the case from sometime not more than a couple of months after the story broke.
I've argued here before that the screwed-up lineup was, while a screwup, less important than it appears in this case (although in retrospect the fact of the screwup appears to be part and parcel of the whole railroading.) Generally, the point of having fillers in a lineup is to guard against a good-faith misidentification in a case where the defendant may not be a person that the accuser has ever seen before. Here, the accuser had indubitably seen the defendants -- there's no question but that she was at the party. So whether or not her story was true, she should have been able to pick them out of a lineup regardless of the presence of fillers. But it is still a strange enough failure to follow normal procedures that I should have taken it more seriously.
The lineup procedure was a sham.
This article quotes the designer of the NC lineup procedures as stating that the Duke lineup was "a multiple-choice test with no wrong answers".
This article points out that it was the third attempt at a photo lineup. The previous attempts under the normal lineup procedure having failed.
I don't think Nifong's actions are hard to understand. It is always hard to move off of a path of action; especially if to do so is to admit that you made an error. To decide not to give the shock at 360 volts is to admit that the shock at 340 volts was probably a bad idea.
The first link didn't work:
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/496369.html
83
"... Generally, the point of having fillers in a lineup is to guard against a good-faith misidentification in a case where the defendant may not be a person that the accuser has ever seen before. Here, the accuser had indubitably seen the defendants -- there's no question but that she was at the party. So whether or not her story was true, she should have been able to pick them out of a lineup regardless of the presence of fillers. ..."
This is not correct. The problem is eyewitness identifications of strangers are not very reliable. So a woman raped by a stranger may in fact be unable to pick the rapist out of a line up of 10 similar looking guys. Similarly if the players at the party had been lined up of with lots of similar looking white guys it is not certain she would have been able to pick them out. Remember she was impaired at the party and the suspects were of a different race. As it is, she is reported to have picked out some players who were not in fact at the party.
My limited point (and you're right to have quibbled -- I did not make myself clear, and what you say is generally true) is that the presence or absence of fillers in the lineup was in no sense a check on the accuser's truthfulness in this case. Whether the story of the rape was true or not, she saw the defendants for about the same period of time, and had about the same capacity to identify them. So, under these factual circumstances, the accuser's capacity to pick defendants from a lineup would have been the same whether or not her story was true, and the fact that the lineup was flawed doesn't itself have any impact on her veracity. A good lineup wouldn't have confirmed her story, and a bad lineup (which we had) shouldn't discredit it.
I underestimated the degree to which I should have taken the bad lineup as discrediting Nifong, rather than the accuser.
83
"But he's had those exculpatory results for ages now. From the get go is an ambigious statement, but he should have been certain of the weakness of the case from sometime not more than a couple of months after the story broke."
But by then he had already made the numerous prejudicial statements that have him in trouble with the bar. After you have gone on TV declaring that you are going to prove that Durham is not the sort of place where rich white boys can get away with raping a poor black woman it is difficult to admit, even to yourself, that you were wrong about the case. One reason for the ethical prohibition against such statements is that it makes it hard for a prosecutor to keep an open mind.
Since then he has been in the same hoping for a miracle mode as Iraqi War supporters.
Biohazard's right--the fact that the case fit neatly into preconceived ideas was probably something folks should have been more suspicious of. Though I'm not inclined to give ground to the folks (including a friend of mine) who were from the beginning inclined to assume that the accuser was lying (why?), and are now crowing about how this "proves" that false rape accusations happen (duh) or that people are too quick to assume guilt in a rape accusation (not usually, no).
Plus I still maintain that the college should forbid university-associated organizations from hiring strippers.
I think you're right about what drove his behavior, I'm just surprised that he went as far overboard as he did.
87
"... So, under these factual circumstances, the accuser's capacity to pick defendants from a lineup would have been the same whether or not her story was true, and the fact that the lineup was flawed doesn't itself have any impact on her veracity. A good lineup wouldn't have confirmed her story, and a bad lineup (which we had) shouldn't discredit it."
When a woman identifies someone in a lineup as the person who raped her she is making several claims one of which is that she is able to reliably identify the person who raped her. A proper lineup would have provided evidence as to the veracity of that particular claim.
A botched lineup may not discredit her story but it is possible that it should prevent the prosecution from using her identification against the suspects.
91: Again, fair enough; except that your suggestion that the botched lineup should make an identification catagorically unadmissible under these circumstances seems to go too far. In a different case, in which there was reasonably good evidence supporting the complainant's veracity, it seems impossibly draconian to refuse to allow the complainant to testify to her identification of the defendants because she was initially given the opportunity to identify them under suggestive circumstances. At that point, you just have to allow the defense to attack the lineup, and let the chips fall where they may.
I should also note that when I call him potentially "wobbly," I mean in the primary. He was being challenged by a former assistant DA and a third attorney here in town. Even after surviving the primary he was challenged by a Democratic write-in candidate who vowed not to accept the post, forcing the governor to appoint someone else to the DA's office if he won.
Republican opposition only materialized, and even then only barely, at the very end of the race with a write-in candidate (whose signs, Rah pointed out, were very likely the most poorly-designed campaign signs in the history of democracy).
92
Well what is the normal sanction when a lawyer deliberately irreversibly destroys evidence? Isn't it to assume the evidence would have favored the other side (in this case that it would have shown that the ID was worthless)? Suppose the destruction of evidence is just negligent?
Personally I take a very dim view of deliberate destruction of evidence that could favor the defense. To me it seems worse than an illegal search or failure to give a proper Miranda warning both of which I believe can make evidence categorically inadmissable.
That's certainly a possible sanction for the deliberate spoliation of evidence -- the question is whether it was deliberate. In a different case, where the evidence for the complainant's story was otherwise good, I'm assuming that a bad lineup would have been negligent rather than deliberate.
re: 94
I am not a criminal lawyer, but I believe that generally the rule in a criminal case is that the prosecution has a duty to provide the defense with (a) any non-privileged evidence it asks for and (b) any exculpatory evidence. Failure to do so can result in a conviction being thrown out (subject to the state's right to retry if the evidence still exists) if the evidence could have made a differeence in the outcome.
In civil litigation, the failure to produce non-privileged evidence the production of which your opponent has demanded can, in extreme cases, result in your case being thrown out or, if you are a defendant, in an automatic finding of liablity (and sometimes sanctions for the lawyer).
Yeah. The problem is, though, that a bad lineup isn't so much a refusal to provide exculpatory evidence, as an irrevocable destruction of evidence that might or might not have been exculpatory. I honestly am not sure how a court would be likely to handle it.
95
I think the ID is more likely to be thrown out in a case like this because it is a convenient way to make the case go away but I think a prosecutor is more likely to bend the rules when he finds the victim convincing and sympathetic.
I'm assuming that a bad lineup would have been negligent
How is that possible? What are the standards? What I'm getting at is the level of performance expected of a prosecutor. I mean, it seems to me that a cop failing to read the Miranda warning is a whole lot less excusable than shooting the wrong person in the middle of a gun-fight during a bank robbery.
For a prosecutor to screw up a line-up or to withhold/lose evidence in an on-going case merits one of those special Iraqi hangings, complete with head rolling around the floor, no? A prosecutor isn't operating according to someone else's physical actions and timing, as a cop might be when the shit hits the fan.
Right, but you don't have a constitutional right to a non-suggestive lineup, or, in any state I'm aware of a statutory right to one. (This should not be read as a claim that I would be aware if there were states with statutory standards for what sort of lineups you're entitled to. There might be such standards all over the place, and I wouldn't know offhand.) Without a clear legal entitlement to a specific sort of lineup, how a judge is going to respond to a bad lineup is a matter for the caselaw in the relevant jurisdiction and the judge's judgment as to how much of a difference it made.
bend the rules when he finds the victim convincing and sympathetic
This is the part of the story that always tripped me up, even though I didn't really follow it. Wasn't the victim in the Duke case *not* particularly convincing or sympathetic?
And I'll admit it: reading the early reports, it was exactly because she wasn't particularly convincing or sympathetic that I wanted her story to be proved right and her cause proved just. But that wasn't a rational response.
re: 100
There seem to be several cases, beginning with US v. Wade and Gilbert v. California, which place a number of restrictions on line-ups, including suggestive lineups, and make the use of identifications resulting from them grounds for having a conviction thrown out.
102: Hrmf. Apparently I was shooting my mouth off without having much of a sense of what the law was in that area.
100 102 103
The current controlling US Supreme Court case seems to be Manson v. Braithwaite which stated the following test:
"We therefore conclude that reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony for both pre- and post-Stovall confrontations. The factors to be considered are set out in Biggers. 409 U.S., at 199 -200. These include the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness' degree of attention, the accuracy of his prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the confrontation. Against these factors is to be weighed the corrupting effect of the suggestive identification itself. "
In practice this balancing test rarely results in the exclusion of unnecessarily suggestive line ups but as one defense lawyer site notes it also means you can always ask for a bad lineup to be thrown out.
And why the hell is it in the Style section? High heels, Milan, Prada, date rape?
Because rape = story of interest to women, and Style's the only section of the NYT light enough for us to manage to pick up, what with our weaker upper-body strength and all.