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Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case

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This is truly the definitive book for those looking to get the entire story of the despicable Duke rape hoax. Perhaps even more scary than the book's depiction of disgraced DA Nifong, are the sections on the Duke professors and officials who were so willing to destroy (i.e. send to prison for 30 years) 3 innocent boys in the name of political correctness. It makes you wonder if these people have a conscience and how they are in charge of teaching young people. The authors present very granular evidence of the incomptence of Duke President Brodhead, who comes across as a coward, and also the group of 88 "professors" who still teach at the school. These folks, plus the DA and police have made the name "Duke" soiled. This book makes sure that they will be remembered for the cruel fools they are for eternity.

I've been captivated by the Duke Lacrosse Scandal since the indictments were first handed down. I found KC's blog in August and looked forward to reading his insightful, intelligent, and down-to-earth posts every day. I hoped his book would be just as organized and fun to read as his blog, and I must say it hasn't let me down.

It arrived yesterday and I muted everything to curl up with it after school. It went very fast and had noticeable bits of KC's dry humor. It appropriately skewers the right villains: the Gang of 88(+23) - there's no shortage of fodder here, revealed to be pseudo-intellects (and scared punks unwilling to defend their words in unstaged public forums); Duke administration - specifically Broadhead; the media - the NYT and Nancy Grace; and Nifong. It does not skewer the NC politicians who sat back and did nothing as much as I think they deserve.

My *only* issue with the book, as well as in his blog, is the Steve Monks affair. The book has speculated, without any evidence, and none brought to light in the book, that Monks had some ulterior motive for running, other than being a deluded person. I really can't reach that conclusion based on the scant mentionings that KC and Stuart have alluded to. Other than that, I feel that the other speculated motivations put forth in the book are fair (i.e. the motivation of the G88) considering the context.

I think it's fitting that this book was released a few days after Nifong was sentenced to his symbolic stint in jail. The real bottom line of the book is that affects of Nifong's actions reach far beyond the court. Nifong's narcissism exposed the pervasive bias in media, on college campuses, and among our most influential and the unchecked power prosecutors have. It also exposed how quickly some are willing to latch on to a narrative. And instead of admitting that the narrative may be, and can be wrong, are willing to reach intellectual dishonesty to keep it true. KC's blog was a breath of fresh air during the entire affair and this book has immortalized that which I'm sure many want to forget.

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(This is response to another reviewer primarily, but I think it's helpful to all) This book wasn't meant to tell the story of the three accused as much as it was about exploring the various themes around the events that ultimately ended by vindication. Yes, the three are central to the book, but only as background to the real issues brought up in the book.

The book is timely because all of those properly denounced in the book have yet to revisit what has been proven wrong. All of the allegations that were made in the days after the 'rape' have yet to be addressed.

And more importantly, the sense you get from the book is that there's a frustration there isn't a mechanism to force people, in situations such as this, to 'put up' (for lack of a better word). The very institutions that are supposed to do encourage this kind of dialog, failed miserably. In a perfect world, non-G88 professors would have challenged the G-88 openly. In a perfect world, other prosecutors would have challenged Nifong. In a perfect world, other social rights organizations would have challenged the NCNAACP. I do believe this is the first instance in my lifetime, that so many social pathologies converged to create the real social disaster that is about to cost the city of Durham millions.

In a perfect world, people would learn from this. This is not a perfect world and I have little hope that those vilified in this book will learn anything.

UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE SHAMEFUL INJUSTICES OF THE DUKE LACROSSE RAPE CASE. UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT is more terrifying than any thriller you will read this year. Stuart Taylor, Jr., and KC Johnson trace what happened when three young men were falsely accused of rape. Rather than being defended by Duke University, they were defamed, threatened with castration, thrown to the rogue prosecutor. Many Duke professors as the "Group of 88" egged on the mob who had begun to harass the lacrosse players. There were almost no heroes at Duke, although a very few professors ultimately spoke out against the rush to judgment which proved to be a rush to the wrong judgment. The women's lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel is depicted here as the kind of person you wish you had been when you look back at a crisis you lived through. Her decency and bravery shine in this dark book. KC Johnson is another kind of hero: the American professor who sensed that something wrong was going on at Duke and set out to document the events in a blog that ultimately helped turn the tide against the Duke mob. One of the most terrifying sections of this book shows that rather than being punished after the truth was undeniable these professors in the Group of 88 were rewarded with greater control of Duke committees. One of the most exciting sections shows how bloggers became heroes when the national media, including Nancy Grace and the New York Times, had joined the mob. This section gives hope that other national lies will be exposed promptly and exposed repeatedly until the country pays attention. The times have changed for the better in this regard even if the Times has not.
Knowing that Brodhead, the master of sly innuendo, as a literary critic habitually ignored the facts and rushed to judgment, whatever the cost to his victim's reputation (see Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 62 [June 2007] pp. 29-47), I recognized the weakling Taylor and Johnson portray in "Richard Brodhead's Test of Courage": "Confronted with a crisis of epic proportions, with Duke's hard-won reputation at risk, he faced his ultimate test of courage. And in an extraordinary moral meltdown, he threw in his lot with the mob." The only criticism I have of this book is that the publishers should have put "Rape" in quotation marks, since no rape occurred.

This is a story of 21st Century America. A woman claims she was raped and sodomized by three young men. The men are all young, white and members of the Duke University lacrosse team, a sport presumed by many to be played only by the rich. Their accuser is black, the unmarried mother of two children, a stripper and perhaps a prostitute as well.

Within days, a large swath of the left-leaning mainstream media, left-wing Duke faculty and an aggressive white District Attorney seeking the votes of a largely black population are declaring the guilt of the three Duke lacrosse players. Justice be damned; this to them is an issue of class, race and gender.

KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY. Thousands of people, including myself, became familiar with him through his blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, which chronicled the events in this outrageous travesty of twisted law enforcement, political correctness, biased reportage and racial politics.

Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a columnist for the National Journal and a contributing editor for Newsweek.

Outrage is present on every page in measured tones as the authors outline the depradations of Mike Nifong, the man who willingly incited Durham's black population in a quest for their votes by referring to the victim's allegations as true, by calling the Duke lacrosse players "privileged white boys", by asking why would the targets of a rampaging DA hire lawyers if they had done nothing wrong, publicizing untrue details of a non-existent crime and worse.

But Nifong, who was ultimately disbarred for his prejudicial comments and his subsequent withholding of exculpatory evidence is only part of the story. Nifong was helped by apparently dishonest or incompetent police officers, by the Duke Medical Center which hired a feminist idelogue as a Sexual Assault Nurse trainee and who changed her stories to fit changing needs, by a gospel singing investigator who thought nothing of intimidating defense witnesses and helping the alleged victim change her story (again) to smooth over the gaping holes in the prosecution case.

It would be awful enough if the story was just about this cast of people who wanted to railroad three young men into thirty year prison terms to serve their narrow, selfish interests.

But there was the Duke faculty, particularly those who taught in African-American, women's studies and similar departments. Before any evidence was available, 88 of these faculty members (Group of 88) signed an ad that essentally presumed guilt. All of them were left-wing activists who saw everything as a matter of race, class and gender. To them this was a case made in heaven. There could be no doubt about the accuser's shifting stories because the accused were rich white boys.

The well justified and supremely well documented outrage pours from every page as the authors examine these left-wing activists and their impact on the case, Duke and academia as a whole.

How any one can read this book and not wonder how to rid academia of its rot is beyond me.

Finally the book takes to task the largely left-wing oriented media who seized upon the race, class and gender issue and pilloried the three defendants without questioning the increasingly shaky case. The treatment of these boys at the hands of the media was deplorable, especially from the New York Times, which as could be expected has failed to apologize.

If the reader begins this book with the naive presumption that the press can be trusted, that illusion will be destroyed by the last page.

Most people know that the North Carolina Attorney General took the extraordinary step of declaring all three defendants innocent and further declaring that no criminal acts of any kind took place. The whole thing was a farce cooked up by Mike Nifong and his enablers to win an election. Too bad if three innocent kids had gone to prison for thirty years.

So far only Mike Nifong has been punished in any way. Maybe there will be a criminal investigation for violation of civil rights. Duke's record in the affair is absolutely shameful, its President, board and faculty caving into the left-wing agenda. None of the faculty members who prejudged the defendants has been disciplined. Some have moved on to even loftier positions. Their racist statements will chill the reader and leave one wondering why they are in positions of trust, teaching young adults at a university where the tuition is $44,000 annually.

This is an important book about an major abuse of the judiciary, police, press and academy. Hopefully it will serve to wake many people up to what has been happening since the 1960s. If nothing more, "Until Proven Innocent" demonstrates what happens when the presumption of innocence is tossed on the trash heap in pursuit of a poltical agenda.

Jerry

This book does not mince words. Certain unscrupulous academicians, certain radical feminist and black studies scholars, certain woefully misguided editorial boards of well-known newspapers, and certain dishonest Durham public servants all were singularly bent on destroying the lives of three young people, and the families that love them, solely because they happened to have been born white males.

This is a superbly crafted but chilling, and at times extremely depressing, narrative detailing how persons with no interest whatsoever in the facts were zealously motivated to punish these young men not for what they did (because they did nothing) but because of what they are, and because they seemed to embody "white male privilege." The narrative, which chronicles the facts in a manner beyond compelling, renders this conclusion inescapable. (One suspects those who declared the boys "guilty" from the time they were fingered in an immoral and unconstitutional line-up surely must not be happy that the accuser, in fact, was not raped. If so, that would be the most twisted thing about this sad affair.)

This may be the definitive case study to illustrate how prominent crusaders against unfair stereotyping in other contexts are themselves more than capable of stereotyping and unfairly prejudging, and destroying lives, when it happens to suit their agendas. Aside from the damage caused to three young lives and their families, such shameful misconduct tarnishes what responsible black and feminist leaders have worked so hard to accomplish.

Bravo to the authors for this epiphany.

Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson's "Until Proven Innocent" is a must-read book, a gift, and an act of courage.

Not only should Americans read this book, Americans should act on this book. Taylor and Johnson indict Political Correctness and American college campuses. Americans should take action on the information the authors present.

I remember when the Duke charges were first made public. I remember reading the New York Times and TIME magazine, trusted publications, my sources of news, and seeing invective and condemnation of the accused Lacrosse players. These often viciously worded condemnations -- in the absence of any court conviction -- were concrete evidence that our country has gone haywire. As in the days of witch trials, innocent persons are pilloried by unhinged extremists for no other crime than being members of suspect, hated groups.

In the days of the witch trials, older, isolated women were targeted. In the Duke Lacrosse case, men were targeted for being men, for having masculine pursuits -- sports -- for being upper class and white, and for being privileged students at an exclusive school.

Taylor and Johnson, through thorough, meticulous, and courageous reporting, amply document that academia is the bastion of a Political Correctness that shouts out its own virtue, while cultivating hatred of men for their maleness, whites for their whiteness, and wealthy people for their wealth and good fortune. Political Correctness told us that it was about conquering hatred. It is no longer about that. It is now about sanctioning hatred -- against the right targets: rich, white, heterosexual, American men.

The evidence Taylor and Johnson adduce to support these points, including texts of hateful, and frequently misspelled, emails from professors utterly convinced of their own virtue, while steeping in their own hatred, is gut-churning.

Academia, mainstream journalism, and, by extension, American culture, are affected by a hatred that has much wider impact than the devastating impact it's already had on the lives of the innocent, accused Lacrosse players. It is up to us to address the academic and cultural rot Taylor and Johnson so carefully document.

BTW, I am a feminist and I teach womens studies. When this case first made the news, long before any verdict was public, my class discussed the case. Students were multicultural, coming from the US, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Whites were in the minority. To my surprise, virtually all of my students, based on the then available evidence, concluded that the charges were trumped up. My students' penetrating insight and frankness, so different from the poses assumed by the Duke faculty and the New York Times, gives me hope.

Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson have written a superb book about a perfect storm that was the Duke-Lacrosse case. Were it not so hideously real, it would read like a work of fiction. Taylor and Johnson portray how a bi-polar black, woman who deserved to be institutionalized but did not want to be, told a fib that grew into a monstrous lie (actually many lies). They describe how A SANE nurse could be perfectly insane by believing that any woman making a claim of rape had to have been raped, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. They describe how three white boys who were good athletes, good students, good people and from well to-do families, could be portrayed as being evil people who had taken advantage of a poor black woman just trying to raise her children while going to NCCU, and oh yes, stripping and whoring on the side. They describe how the black population of Durham had, for the most part, been gulled by their leaders into thinking that every black is a victim and every white an aggressor and a villain -- a sort of reverse KKK mentality. They descibe a DA who had lost his moral compass and who, for a mess pottage, pandered to the black community of Durham to be elected; and they show how he suborned perjury, not once but at least three times (although Taylor and Johnson never use that term); and they show how he avoided any evidence that would not fit his preconceived notion of the truth. They describe how policemen because of their hatred of Duke student aided and abetted the DA in his attempt to frame three innocent people. They also describe a couple of questionable judges who never met a DA they doubted, with the consequence that three innocent people had their lives turned upside down for no reason. They describe Duke University as having 88 faculty members who pretend to be scholars, but whose scholarship, for the most part, does not rise above the jejeune, and they describe how those "scholars" threw gasoline on a smoldering fire, with 87 of them, even today, not being able to figure out what it was they did wrong. They describe how Duke, by selecting those pretend scholars to be on its faculty, chose diversity over merit thereby getting diversity at the cost of scholarship. They describe how Duke's administration was absolutely supine in the face of those faculty memebers, and how its President, the inaptly named Brodhead, provided the leadership of a spineless jellyfish. They describe how Brodhead never wanting to be confused by the evidence in the case ran from being informed about it. They describe how the main stream media reported half-truths and untruths which has become its modus operandi. (You can bet, if it's in the MSM it's not true and if it's true, it's not in the MSM.) They describe in particular how the New York Times provided biased reporting under Duff Wilson's by-line. (It appears that the MSM were as uncritical as the jejeune scholars at Duke, and that they too threw gasoline on a fire that was raging all across the country.) All of that led to a perfect storm that was the Duke-Lacrosse case.
Of course, they also describe what ultimately contained that perfect storm. It was three families who believed their sons; it was a group of excellent defense lawyers; it was an honest judge; and it was a group of internet bloggers who would not give up in exposing the untruths of this case.
The Taylor-Johnson book has exposed something else. It is how a large segment of America has become unthinking over the past forty or so years. For that segment, if it's black-woman-poor-transgender it must be good, if it's white-male-well to do-heterosexual, it must be bad. Another thing the book has exposed is how useful the internet and its blogs have become in exposing the mendacity of some our leading institutions -- in particular,the MSM, the so-called ministers of justice, and finally the scholarship amongst certain components of the university faculties that is not scholarship. I highly recommend Until Proven Innocent as an eye-opener to those unfamiliar with the details surrounding this Duke-Lacrosse case.

I must disagree with reviewer who called the writing "sloppy" and said everyone already knows what was covered in the book. I watched TV coverage and read about the case, but every page of this book brought a new "I can't believe this could happen!" shock to me. As a professional writer, I think it's well written. Every page is stuffed full of facts, yet it's an easy, riveting read, as easy as a novel. It's a real page turner; I couldn't put it down.

Although I doubt there are many prosecutors like Mike Nifong, I know there are many campuses like Duke, steeped in political correctness, where certain categories of professors spoon feed our kids subversive information, tearing down the American way of life that so many of us still cherish. This book reveals how many in academia and most of the media teach and report only what they want us to know, with truth and facts that contradict their agenda considered unimportant. In fact, a number of professors are quoted in the book as saying exactly that.

You can't afford to miss this book. I'll never be the same after reading it. It's an important part of your knowledge of the criminal justice system, your self-protection and of an important event in American history. This is surely as important as the famous "Scottboro boys" case, even thought the racism in this case was against whites, not blacks.

If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, being accused but not charged, you'll know how to handle it if you read this book. And you'll know that if you are ever arrested, no matter how ridiculous the charges, your first words will be "I want a lawyer."

I had followed the Duke LAX case closely over the last 18 months and thought I knew the story cold. Wrong. A great story teller is someone who can weave a series of complicated facts into a coherent narrative while keeping the listener/reader continuously interested in what is coming. As a child, my father could take a completely familiar story and keep me on the edge of my bed at story time. Taylor and Johnson do that in this book. I felt I knew where this tale would come out, but couldn't wait to read the next page. I thought I was a conservative before reading this book. But now I may have to go out and join the ACLU. Where were the liberals when these kids' rights were being trampled on? Rogue cops and DA's are just as scary as any of my fathers bed time characters.

The black skinned Scottsboro boys were presumed guilty of raping a white woman in the early 1930s. Our politically correct culture behaved similarly in 2006 regarding white youths accused of sexually assaulting a black woman. There are few Americans who are not aware of this story. The leftist dominated major media made sure to headline it on a daily basis. Authors Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson focus much of their attention on the cultural milieu that made such ridiculous charges even possible. Common sense, after all, dictated that this case should have been halted no later then 48 hours after the initial investigation began. And yet, the parents of these youths had to spend enormous amounts of money and time to clear their name. How could such madness occur? Did the actions of the now disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong evolve out of a vacuum? How could top officials and professors of Duke University not see the absurdity of the allegations? Why didn't they learn to think and follow a logical argument during their time in academia? Could their degrees even be fraudulent? The authors suggest that this may very well be the reality of the situation. Many soft science degrees from Duke University and other so-called elite educational institutions may indeed not be worth the paper they are printed on.

I also recommend Donald Alexander Downs' Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University. He clearly shows how over forty years ago members of the hard science departments at Cornell entered into a unholy and tacit agreement with the radicalized liberal arts departments. They essentially agreed to live and let live---and do nothing to stop the increasing intellectual corruption of the school. Things have only worsened considerable since then. Another book that should be added to your reading list is Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry's eye opening Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law. A particularly important chapter is "Radical Multiculturalism and Its Discontents." Many academics infected with the intellectual virus of postmodernism, according to the authors, consider the very concept of rational thought to be something of a con game played by an unjust white establishment. An editor of Duke University's newspaper even defended holocaust denial argumentation as merely a reinterpretation of "history, a practice that occurs constantly, especially on a college campus." Until Proven Innocent is a must read. You should order a copy immediately. Indifference comes with a huge price. Our society may not even survive unless we confront today's forces of nihilistic anti-intellectualism. You also need to do your part to stop these enemies of civilization.