The New Criterion

So, ABC News reports that the North Carolina Attorney General will soon announce that all the charges--including first degree kidnapping and first degree forcible sexual offense--against three Duke Lacrosse players will be dropped. Well, thanks for that, pal! Since March of 2006, when the three players we accused of rape by a "dancer" hired to perform at a party, their lives have been turned upside down, vilified by the media (including The New York Times, politically correct professors at Duke, and various elements in the Durham community. A history professor at Brooklyn College named K.C. Johnson has written extensively, and extremely well, on a blog appropriately called "Durham-in-Wonderland" about "how a case virtually devoid of evidence, constructed upon a tissue of procedural irregularities, could have reached this stage. The case has thus far divided into five periods; with each new stage, the miscarriage of justice has intensified." I particualrly recommend these three narrative pieces about the case: the first, written immediately after a 60 Minutes inquiry into the case last October; the second on April 10; and the third today.

A more graphic example of politically correct grievance mongering, fired by untrammeled racialist animus, can hardly be imagined. And although it appears that justice, of a sort, is about to be done with the announcement that all charge will be dropped, K.C. Johnson is right that "one mystery remains":

[A]s Duke law professor Paul Haagen noted: "I think the critical thing could be the wording. It could simply say the state can no longer prove its case, which would be a very harmful outcome for the community." Or the AG "could provide a full accounting of why the case should never have been brought."

Of course, even if the Attorney General’s office offers that full accounting, that does nothing to compensate the three lacrosse players for the humiliation and obloquy they have unfairly suffered at the hands of a media, and an academy, too full of the sour milk of self-righteousness to practice anything so antique as the presumption of innocence. As the French poet and polemicist Charles Peguy once observed, "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."

Update 1: Our friends at Powerline, reporting on the news that the charges agaisnt the lacrosse players are to be dropped, point out that the maligned students have raised less than a third of the $3 million in legal fees they have chalked up fighting the unfair charges against them. To contribute to this worthy cause, go here.

Update 2: Just to reinforce some of the points made by K.C. Johnson, let me quote from a friend who just wrote me about some of the shameful aspects of the Duke case:

I think something should be said about the 88 or so professors who signed a petition demanding prosecution of the players and banning of their team in solidarity with the "victim." The coach of the team was fired; the team was disbanded for the season; 3 players were wrongfully indicted; disgrace has been brought to the University; applications for admission are way down; the president of the university will certainly be fired; so will the athletic director; the prosecutor will be disbarred, prosecuted, and sued -- yet these professors, after having thrown any regard for truth to the four winds, will proceed as if nothing happened.

He is probably right about that, and more’s the shame. Duke alumni: what do you think?