In today’s episode, Ed avows that the Uptown paper of record got its coverage and commentary of the Duke rape case about right.
“I looked back over the Observer’s stories and editorials and didn’t see much I’d do differently, except one thing. Early on I would have urged the district attorney and defense attorneys to stop arguing the case in the news media,” Williams says.
He points to a July 24, 2006 editorial as an example of the paper getting it right, if a bit late. The problem is the 350 word editorial appeared at a time when it was the defense attorneys who were releasing fact after fact. Lying DA Mike Nifong had long since clammed up.
Worse, the Observer was several months behind the curve in noticing the gigantic holes in Nifong’s case. Not until December did the Observer fully break with the NYT’s take on the case and cite the chronic problems with Nifong’s prosecution. Problems that journalists like the National Journal’s Stuart Taylor had long since documented.
In fact, Taylor by May 2006 had already called Nifong a “petty-tyrant” who should “be under criminal investigation, in my view, for what looks like possible intimidation of a disinterested defense witness, a cabbie who had been transporting one defendant at the time of the alleged rape.”
Ed Williams just wanted everyone to be quiet.
Lest anyone forget, the Uptown paper of record stuck to the Nifong line early and often despite early indications of trouble. Certainly within weeks of the claimed attack the timeline seemed shaky. By the time news came in early April that there was no DNA evidence linking any lacrosse player to the attack — evidence Nifong had all but promised would be there and results he personally flogged through a back-loaded testing system — any serious person had serious doubts about the case.
Not quite, everyone though. A week after the DNA revelation, an April 19th Observer editorial declared that the case had to go to trial — for Durham’s sake, a line of argument which exactly paralleled that of the radical pot bangers on Duke’s campus. It was time to put “speculation” aside and let the justice system “work.”
Except there was no justice system in Durham in April 2006.
We now know that beyond any doubt, but there were certainly strong indications of a broken system back then as well. Let’s not forget the attempt to get to Duke players by Durham police after the DNA tests came back negative and after they kept getting conflicting IDs from the supposed victim.
Recall from April 14th:
Durham lawyer Bob Ekstrand, who represents 32 of the 46 players whose DNA was tested in connection with the alleged attack, said detectives waited outside the dorm Thursday night until a woman used her card-key to enter. Then, he said, they stuck a foot in the door and sneaked in behind her, even though they lacked a search warrant.
“The clear gist of what they were looking for was to find out who was at the party and who wasn’t,” Ekstrand said Friday. “That’s really odd, given that the accuser claims to have identified two people. The accuser maybe picked someone out of a photo lineup who wasn’t even in this state at the time. … All they’ve got is an ID. If this woman fingered someone who was flying over the state of New York when this party was in progress, how embarrassing would that be?”
Yet that is exactly what was happening and still Ed Williams thought this mess of a case absolutely had to go to trial.
Then an amazing thing happened down on Tryon Street. All throughout May, as one damaging blow after another struck Nifong’s case — including a bombshell previously unheard in the annals of North Carolina criminal justice history, that a second DNA test did not ID any lacrosse player, but did ID someone else — the Observer’s editorialists went dark on the case.
Instead, the paper became obsessed with exactly how and under what circumstances the Duke lacrosse team would be allowed — if it should be allowed — to take the field again. Meanwhile, on the news pages, what once were 600, 800, 1200 word stories on developments in the case became 300, 200, 100 words into June.
Regardless of the coverage, by July there were big problems with about every aspect of Nifong’s case — from the line-up, to the DNA, to rape trauma, to electronic time-stamps, to witness intimidation.
These doubts were raised by a concerted defense team PR effort, an effort mandated by a DA who took the bizarre step of refusing to hear defense evidence that might point him toward the truth. The defense had no option but to go to the broader public with their case. And Ed Williams wanted to stop that.
“Newspapers will print, and TV will broadcast, every damnfool statement the lawyers in the case make, but there’s nothing requiring them to make damnfool statements. Nothing, that is, except their desire to prejudice the pool of potential jurors and their interest in self-promotion,” the Observer declared.
Or just maybe stop a rogue prosecutor in his tracks.
That Ed Williams can possibly quote that passage — today — with evident pride is astounding.
Of course, there were other low-lights of Observer’s take on the case — a distressingly common view that guilt of “a crime” really didn’t matter in this “shocking” case, for one — but frankly they all pale in comparison to Ed Williams, with the full benefit of 20/20 hindsight, finding little wrong with — let alone expressing deep, abiding contrition for — his paper’s coverage of this farce.