What needs to be said

Kevin pretty much nails what needs to be said about the leaked details of the settlement offer proposed by attorneys for the three Duke lacrosse players.

The only thing i have to add is that if the $10 million each is seeking were to be used to start a trust fund to compensate other victims of miscarriage of justice, i have no problems with it.

As far as the ombudsman goes, hey, that's a great idea, but any lawyer worth his salt, as Barry Scheck most assuredly is, knows that the measure of Durham's clout in the state legislature is minimal. And that if this is a reform that they really want to happen, they'll need to do more than just ask for Durham to get behind it. Threatening legal action against the state, which as Kevin correctly notes was Mike Nifong's employer, might better get the attention of the folks in Raleigh.

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Nifonged

From the Herald-Sun:

Because their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears elsewhere, defense lawyers have turned to Durham's top judge in a last-ditch effort to free a mentally retarded man held 14 years without trial for allegedly killing a woman in Wadesboro.

Court documents describe the case as a "quintessential example" of a prosecution run unconstitutionally amok, a "perfect storm of injustice."

On Oct. 8, Judge Orlando F. Hudson will hear arguments about whether the defendant -- Floyd Lee Brown -- will continue to be detained at the state's Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, and whether the homicide charge against him should be dismissed.

It wasn't all that long ago a great hue and cry went up around the land that out-of-control prosecutors needed to be reigned in. Supporters of the three wrongfully accused Duke lacrosse team members all over the internet (and, as i recall, one or two of the lacrosse players themselves) were railing against injustice and vowing to make sure this kind of thing never happened again.

Here's your chance to step up to the plate, folks. It's not like a whole lot of people are talking about this case right now.

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Nifong announces he's leaving

Looks like Mr. Bacon has gotten his wish.

Not the ending i would have preferred in this case, but after the Attorney General dismissed the charges against the Duke lacrosse players and said what he said, this really should have happened much sooner.

UPDATE: Michael makes a point i tried to make a lot last year, but much more cogently than any of my efforts:

Nifong served honorably and exceptionally as an assistant DA for quite a while, and the good of that service shouldn't be completely obliterated by his severe and unforgivable mistakes leading the department. It bears remembering that one of the reasons so many of us found it hard to believe that the case was going so far off of the rails is because of Nifong's long established reputation for carefulness and thoroughness.

It seemed to me, and i posted this thought not only here but in comments on a number of other folk's blogs throughout the spring and summer of last year, that Nifong had to have something to hang the case on, otherwise he wouldn't even be taking it to the grand jury.

The most difficult aspect of the case for me is that, after trying to argue for the better part of a year that it shouldn't be seen as a lens through which to view the societal faultlines of race, gender, and privilege, what's happened has served to wedge those faults further apart, to the extent that they'll continue to trap people in the future.

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