I listened to a long discussion of the case on the drive to work this morning. They were interviewing a guy named Ford who has been following the case for Court TV and used to be both a prosecutor and defense attorney. (Not at the same time, of course). He said he found the Attorney General's statement yesterday "astonishing." He said usually when charges are dropped they say something like "We didn't think we had a strong enough case to convict" or something like that. Calling the accused "innocent" is exceptionally rare, Ford said. He definitely took this as a strong rebuke of Mr. Nifong. He added that he expects some sort of censure of Nifong, mainly for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence that he knew about.

Ford made the same comment about the presumption of innocence. He said if there is a lesson to take from this case, it's to remind ourselves that there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence. He said this was more a presumption of guilt.

He said he won't be surprised if there are civil suits still to come, although he wasn't sure who could be sued. You sure won't get much money from the accuser, he said, and you will have a tough time going after Nifong because it is very difficult to get a verdict of prosecutorial miscondust. He said that's because you don't want everyone found not guilty suing the prosecutor.


>It is a terrible tragedy for the boys. To be fair, we don't know for certainty that absolutely nothing ocurred in that house that night. We do know for certain that there is not credible evidence of a rape ocurring and that charge was the greatest wrongdoing against the young men. It is also a blatant example of how our justice system can go terribly wrong. If those boys' parents did not have the funds available to fight as they did, it may have sunk into the justice system and they could well be on their way to prison. For a country whose legal system stands on 'innocent until proven guilty' its media and public sure practice 'guilty until proven innocent.'
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>>> Um, what were they guilty of doing?
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>>>Other than possibly drinking underage (just a guess, I don't know how old they were at the time, and what the drinking laws are in NC), all charges are being dropped. So the answer is, nothing.
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>>The drinking was never the real issue. That's what college kids are expected to do. The real issue was the allegation of rape.