WaPo: Time To Drop All Charges

The Washington Post has come out with an editorial that calls for Durham County, North Carolina DA Mike Nifong to drop all remaining charges in the Duke lacrosse "rape" case. The media sharks have now swum full circle and are eying Nifong as the next main course.

In recent weeks, Mr. Nifong has admitted that he failed, as required, to turn potentially exculpatory information over to the defense: test results that showed the presence of semen from several other men, but not the Duke players, in swabs taken from the woman's body and clothing. Mr. Nifong says it was an accidental oversight. Yet the director of the DNA laboratory says that he and the prosecutor agreed to leave that information out of his report because it was so "explosive." If so, Mr. Nifong has a bigger problem than a botched prosecution. He should be subject to further ethics proceedings by state bar authorities, who filed charges Thursday against him for making inflammatory and misleading comments about the case in its early days.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Nifong said that "until [the alleged victim] tells me these are not the right guys, we're prosecuting this case.'' But Mr. Nifong badly misconceives his job as a prosecutor, which is not simply to robotically prosecute claims or seek a conviction at all costs but to make an independent analysis of whether justice would be served by continuing with the case.

That Nifong is still even trying to sustain charges that are probably impossible to get a conviction on says more about his desperation than about what really happened that night at a party. That Nifong conspired to suppress evidence is in a whole different category. There is blood in the water, so to speak. The sharks have changed direction.