NY Times subtle attempt to bolster LaCrosse case

The NY Times has a very lengthy piece on the Duke LaCrosse rape accusation story. For the most part it is very well written and goes into some tremendous detail. I was not able to determine if other news agencies were given the same access to the case files as the NYT or not. If not, that might be worthy of another post.

While casually reading through you tend to thing the NY Times is giving a fair and balanced view of the case. To the critical reader like me, I could not help but have a growing uneasy feeling as I read the story. I have concluded that for reasons I can only speculate on, the NY Times purpose of the piece was to take a completely losing case combined with a very irresponsible DA and smooth it over into something more palatable or more feasible.

The sublte approach is handled by focusing on the details that have a "hail Mary" prayer at bolstering the DA and his case while quickly glossing over some of the points that show the futility of the case. While the approach does not take mountains and valleys and turn them into a prairie, it does attempt for the untrained reader to turn them into smaller hills and lesser valleys.

Here are some of the points:

By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.

This is the theme statement of the article. It states very plainly my take on the piece: they are taking a case viewed as "heading for the rocks" and attempts to transform it into "a more ambiguous picture". Mountains into hills. I read most of the article twice and basically all I can see of this "evidence" is based upon the words and actions of the accuser. She said she was raped. She both claimed and "behaved" as if she were in great pain during the examination. She was viewed to have pain while sitting. In other words she claimed she was raped and then consistently behaved accordingly. So basically the bolstering here may be based upon whether the woman is a good actress or not.

The defense has argued that the accuser gave many divergent versions of events that night, and she did in fact give differing accounts of who did what at the party. But the files show that aside from two brief early conversations with the police, she gave largely consistent accounts of being raped by three men in a bathroom.

I am not sure the average reader would catch what I emphasized with bold print. This paragraph is a very deliberate approach to make the giving of inconsistent accounts seem ok and normal. What I see is that she did not have her story straight in the beginning, but later did. Maybe she thought about it more clearly. The fact is that I would think she would know how many guys raped her. Yet her inconsistency involves her claiming she was raped by a different number of men. While the story gives a credible explanation for the misclaim of 20 men, another paragraph glosses over the descrepency between the claims of 5 and then 3:

The account of being raped by five men comes from the notes of Gwendolyn Sutton, a Durham police officer who talked with the woman upon her arrival at the hospital. Officer Sutton’s report says the woman told her she had been dancing with three other women, “Nikki, Angel and Tammy.” Nikki was Ms. Roberts’s stage name, but there may have been a misunderstanding about the role of the two other women: Tammy was a dispatcher at Angel’s Escorts. The reference to five rapists has not been explained.

It simply was not explained. Here are two other glossover portions on the same subject:

The prosecutor’s file, however, shows that, except in some initial contacts with the police, she gave a consistent account during that night and since then of how many men raped her. In addition, some of the early reports cited by the defense appear to have been based on misunderstandings.
...

But the files show that aside from two brief early conversations with the police, she gave largely consistent accounts of being raped by three men in a bathroom.

Somehow there seems to be some kind of "Grace Period" being proposed here. As long as she is later consistent, initial inconsistency is OK.

The woman denied engaging in sexual activity with those clients, and no evidence has been offered to contradict her. She also told the police that she had last had sex about a week before the party, with her boyfriend. His DNA was the only positive match with samples taken from her body.

Perhaps it is because I am not an expert on this, but my reaction to the DNA still being present a week later is - Yikes. Ok, that may have been a little gratuitous on my part. Basically, I believe I have shown my point on the purpose of the piece. My speculation to why the author would do such a thing is rooted in my assumption that the NYT is a liberal establishment. The liberal establishment has been thrusting two points down our throat for years:

- A woman would never claim she was raped unless it were true
- Minorities are chronic victims

For these positions to be weakened by this case is unacceptable to them, so it is a matter of circling the wagons around their pet agenda items. Even if the DA loses the case, it is vital for liberals to place a question of guilt in the minds of the public. Long after these boys are found innocent, the liberal establishment will hound them with periodic references to the idea that they "got away with it because they were white and rich".