The last thematic section of Thomas Sowell?s Dismantling America focuses on ?legal issues,? and he includes four of his columns on the famous Duke lacrosse case.
In a new preface, Sowell explains why he devoted so much attention to the issue:
This extensive coverage was because that case revealed a moral dry rot that extended far beyond the legal system and included both the media and academia as major contributors to a frenzied lynch mob atmosphere, in which anyone who dared to doubt the guilt of the three accused young men was treated as a moral leper. Yet the strange procedures of the prosecutor from the outset gave ample evidence of the fraudulence of the case, as I pointed out in my first column on this case, a year before the multiple layers of fraudulence were exposed by the state attorney general, forcing the resignation of District Attorney Michael Nifong and his subsequent disbarment.
This is not just the story of one man?s misuse of the law. It is a story of whole institutions and movements that generated a lynch mob atmosphere which threatened the integrity of the law itself, in addition to threatening to ruin the lives of three young men, who could not be guilty of a crime that had not been committed. Among the most disturbing e-mails I received during the year that I wrote about the Duke ?rape? case were e-mails that asked why I was so concerned about ?three rich white guys.? That attitude is more of a threat to the integrity of the law than even a corrupt prosecutor. Indeed, it is a threat to a whole society, for a society cannot remain a society if it degenerates into a war of each against all.
