Review: Fantastic Lies

I got around to watching ESPN’s Fantastic Lies last night.  It is part of their 30 for 30 series of documentaries.  This episode follows the Duke Lacrosse case of 2006.

I highly recommend this documentary (which will probably be on Netflix soon).  I did not expect to watch the whole thing last night as I do not have much of an attention span.  But I could not stop watching it, it was so engaging.

I am more familiar with the Duke Lacrosse case than most and posted on it here several times beginning in October 2006.  And I think the documentary was overall fair and accurate along with being very watchable.  It particularly well captured the attitudes surrounding the case and the details of the case, and that in an appropriately dramatic manner.

I do think it is weak in one significant area.  Although Fantastic Lies does mention Duke faculty presuming and attacking the supposed guilt of the Duke Lacrosse players, it did not mention the Group of 88 by name (unless I missed something, and I am pretty sure I did not).  Their conduct was particularly egregious, and very few ever apologized for it.  Further, the careers of the 88 did not suffer at all for this.  (If there is an exception, it has not come to my attention.)  Even a (the?) ringleader, Cathy Davidson, has gone on to bigger and better things, including an appointment by President Obama to the National Council of the Humanities.

Fantastic Lies does focus well on characters who had remorse and/or faced consequences, particularly District Attorney Nifong, since disbarred.  There should have been more focus on those who showed no remorse nor faced consequences for their rush to judgement.

But there is no perfect documentary, and Fantastic Lies remains a very good one.  Watch it when you have the chance.

Once you do watch it, if you wish to dig deeper, there is no better source than the now closed Durham-in-Wonderland blog.

Durham-in-Wonderland Closes

The excellent Durham-in-Wonderland blog came to a close Friday.  Some readers may remember that is the blog that closely followed the Duke Lacrosse case.  I read and linked to it frequently.  I commend to you Dr. Johnson’s closing and reflective post.

This case is one reason my enthusiasm as a Duke alum has greatly diminished through the years.  The university conducted itself horribly in spite of numerous rebukes from alumni.  And the administration has learned little from the episode judging from their once again showing little concern for the rights of the accused.

With Dr. Johnson, I particularly find egregious the conduct of the Group of 88 and their lack of consequences for the same.

And yet for dozens of Duke faculty, this evidence appeared irrelevant. Eighty-eight of them rushed to judgment, signing a statement (whose production violated Duke regulations in multiple ways) affirming that something had “happened” to false accuser Crystal Mangum, and thanking protesters (“for not waiting”) who had, among other things, urged the castration of the lacrosse captains and blanketed the campus with “wanted” posters. As the case to which they attached their public reputations imploded, Group members doubled down, with most issuing a second statement promising they would never apologize for their actions. (Only three Group members ever said they were sorry for signing the statement, and two of that number subsequently retracted those apologies.) For months, the Duke administration was either in agreement with the faculty extremists or cowed by them—or some combination of both.

The lacrosse case provided a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the mindset of an elite university—and the look was a troubling one. There is no evidence of any accountability at Duke: the university has the same leadership and the same hiring patterns it had in 2006. Several members of the Group of 88 have gone on to more prestigious positions, their efforts to exploit their students’ distress causing them no problem in the contemporary academy.

In fact, a leader of the Group of 88, Cathy Davidson, has since been appointed to the National Council of the Humanities by Obama.

By the way, I was among those alumni who urged consequences for the Group of 88.

But Dr. Johnson is one person who shone during this sorry episode.  He did yeoman work in reporting on this case (for which he eventually was greatly hassled by Duke).  I salute him and his blog as he brings it to a close.

The Obama Regime and False Accusations

A word of advice to men going off to college in the next few days: beware of being falsely accused of sexual assault, especially under the Obama Regime.

For his Education Department is virtually requiring that those accused of sexual assault not receive a fair hearing from college authorities. For starters, his Education Department Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is pressuring colleges not to allow the accused “to question or cross-examine the accuser” during college hearings. Also, the accuser must be allowed to appeal decisions, subjecting the accused to double jeopardy.

But, perhaps worse, the OCR is requiring colleges to use “a preponderance of the evidence” standard, an absurdly weak standard for a rape case worthy of a kangaroo court:

This is the lowest standard. It is much less demanding than "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is used in the criminal justice system, and the intermediate standard of "clear and convincing proof."

Yet the Obama Regime would destroy a student’s reputation and career based on such a low standard.

Read more here. It suffices to say that the OCR’s version of “civil rights” omits the civil rights of the accused. Because womyn never make false accusations of sexual assault or harassment in the correct feminist view, don’t you know.

This is not the only indication that the Obama Regime cares not a whit for college students falsely accused of sexual assault. Months ago, Obama appointed one Cathy Davidson, an English professor at Duke University, to the National Council on the Humanities.

Davidson was one of the infamous Group of 88, a cabal of Duke faculty who made statements extremely prejudicial to the falsely accused Duke Lacrosse students years ago. Worse, she refused to admit her wrong and instead brazenly defended the Group of 88 when it became clear the accused students were innocent.

The best source on the whole sordid affair is the Durham-in-Wonderland blog. Look back on the posts in the Spring of 2007.

I was so outraged by the actions of the Group of 88 that this alum wrote to the Duke Board of Trustees and suggested the following:

Each member of the Group of 88 should individually be asked either to publicly and completely apologize for their extremely prejudicial actions against the three students or to begin seeking employment elsewhere.

That will be more courtesy than those faculty members deserve. And it's the least that furthering a safe, welcoming, and just atmosphere for students demands.

Obama instead gives one member of the Group of 88, Cathy Davidson, a plum appointment. That adds insult to injury to those students who have found themselves falsely accused of sexual assault.