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Letter: DNA Bill Proponents Were Silent During Duke Lacrosse Case

By The Raleigh Telegram

Monday, August 2, 2010

RALEIGH - The author of a book on the Duke Lacrosse case comments on the new DNA bill passed by North Carolina that will take DNA swabs of people charged with felonies before they are convicted of crimes. The bill was recently signed into law by Governor Perdue.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor:

I find myself bemused by the North Carolina’s consideration of a bill requiring the collection of DNA. It seems testimonies to the reliability and usefulness of DNA testing are legion.

A similar bill is under consideration in New York, where Governor Paterson has stressed its potential to “exonerate the innocent”.

All of which leads me to wonder where all these fervent proponents -- who eagerly cite the more than 250 wrongly-convicted persons who have been released from prison through DNA testing -- were four years ago.

At that time three out-of-state students were accused of gang-raping a “poor working woman of color”--the very ingredients needed for a

“Scottsboro II”.

The members of the Duke lacrosse team were so anxious to have their DNA tested--knowing it would prove their innocence--that in a meeting where their attorneys were explaining the process, they were up and out of their seats heading for the testing site before the attorneys could even finish admonishing them about all their rights.

All the members of the team were proven to have had no contact with their accuser; at least eleven other men (none of them Duke students)

were found to have had contact with her.

The result? Michael Nifong, the prosecutor, simply dismissed the significance of the evidence.

“How does DNA exonerate you?” he asked.

Not a single lawmaker, politician, professor, or DNA expert, as far as I am aware, stood up to answer him. Neither did the media--which covered the lacrosse case as though it were the first moon landing--challenge him about DNA’s reliability.

Now everyone seems to have had a belated change of heart about the capabilities of DNA testing. What does it take for an out-of-state defendant from an unpopular class to be proven innocent if even DNA tests are good enough?

North Carolina needs a lot of reforms to its judicial system. It is one of the few states which lacks a Speedy Trial law. It needs to grant all defendants the right to a Probable Cause hearing. It should require transcripts of Grand Jury sessions. Defendants need the right to a prompt Bill of Particulars.

Any of these might have prevented the lacrosse travesty. Uunfortunately, North Carolina is one of the few states where such a blatantly fraudulent prosecution could have been sustained; and, lacking reforms, there is nothing to prevent such a case from happening again.

R. B. Parrish

Author, “The Duke Lacrosse Case: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Modern Scottsboro”

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