Others' thoughts on: Law, rape, and Duke

Ironically, what started as a boon for sexual harassment awareness and a call to arms to (re) crack down on sexual predators on campus has turned into a disaster. When those spoiled, snotty white boys were guilty, everyone, including the entire Duke student body plus the faculty was very happy to make examples of them. Marches, ads in the paper, the whole thing. I thought they were guilty (to tell the truth, I still do; something went down that night.)

But because of their (I'm going to just go ahead and blame everybody) inability to see shades in the story, because the media covers or it doesn't, well, here we are: now schools and counties are scared of bringing charges because of the reverse effect: they might be sued if they're wrong:

See, this is why one should look at the coming of hurricane season as a good thing. because every minute a cable news network spends watching some poor, windswept anchor get his tuchis handed to him by Mother Nature is one less minute they can spend on generally screwing up the world.

Writing for Poynter today, Al Tompkins introduces us to the term "Duke effect" and discusses how the Duke Lacrosse botch-up is having deleterious effects on sexual assault prosecutions everywhere. Citing an article on Law.com, Tompkins relates:
In Texas, one defense attorney recently cited the case during voir dire, and again in closing argument, in an assault case involving a teacher accused of pinning down a female student while other students beat her. The lawyer reminded jurors about what happened at Duke. The defendant was found not guilty in three minutes.

Now, one imagines that across the country, there are countless examples of tatty little criminal trials in which prosecutorial misrule leads to regrettable and embarrassing outcomes.

How is it that a run-of-the-mill case in Durham, North Carolina ended up impacting the voir dire of a trial half a world away? Why, it's almost as if someone put a megaphone in front of every stitch of Duke-related, sensationalized nonsense and amplified it out of all reasonable proportion!

So, media: How's that rush to judgement working out for ya?