Remember the old joke that "you know it's a bad day when you hear 'Mike
Wallace is on the phone and wants to talk to you?'" It probably won't
be Mike Wallace, but there's some indication that 60 Minutes may make the Duke
lacrosse case the subject of its season premiere. Have a nice
August, Mike Nifong!
Okay, a few explanations.
We picked this up from an article by Michael Gaynor, who has written
extensively, perhaps too extensively, about the Duke case. We admire his
energy, but in the classic sense of the word, he is overly chauvinistic about
the case.
We're not sure where he got it from, but he says Ed Bradley is going to do
the story.
A brief aside:
While we have read many of the same sites the rest of you likely have, we've
been reluctant to link to some of them. Some of them are abusive to the
AV, some resort to name calling and insult slinging, and like Chauvin, Gaynor at
times is so zealous in his pursuit of Nifong that it seems almost
personal.
That said, he has at times done a very good job of delineating what has
happened.
Still, some of the sites who focus on this have gone a bit farther than we
think is appropriate. When things settle down, however that may happen,
we'll discuss them and what we think of them more fully. It's a mixed bag
- some of what they've done is phenomenal. But one site, for instance,
basically harassed the AV by publishing her personal information. That's
sort of the extreme, but suffice it to say, we don't mind going to the circus,
but have no great interest in being in it.
Needless to say, there's a lot of ground to cover if this 60 Minutes thing is
true. The alibi(s), the lineup, the deal Kim Roberts got from Nifong, the
DNA cull, the lineups, the background of the AV, and, well, you know the drill
by now.
But what we can't know yet is who they will speak to. But we're
guessing they'll at least call Frida Black.
For those of you who haven't followed this as closely, Black was the
prosecuting attorney in the Michael Peterson case, Durham's last turn in the
legal spotlight. What you may not realize is the rather intense dislike
Nifong and Black have for one another.
Nifong of course fired Black when he was appointed D.A. Black ran
against him and might have won had the Duke case not blown up.
60 Minutes would be foolish not to talk to her, as she worked with him for
years and knows where the bodies are buried, if you will.
She alone, on the record or off, could cause huge trouble for Nifong.
And they may well put in a call to Cash Michaels, who recently has grown
distinctly dubious about Nifong and Durham's handling of the case.
It's always possible of course, too, that 60 Minutes could come in and say,
well wait a minute, maybe they're guilty. Who knows? But that's hard
to see.
What is possible, insofar as it can be, is that their rather large soapbox
will give the lacrosse players the best chance they'll ever have to clear their
names.