Les Jones

True Crime > Duke Lacrosse Story

Bouncer-blogger The Doorman, no stranger to drunk college kids, weighs in on the Duke lacrosse rape case. Via Tiny Cat Pants. Dirty words after the jump.

Because, according to Alexander Wolff in the April 10th issue of Sports Illustrated, fifteen current players had previously been charged with "underage drinking, violations of open container laws or noise regulations or public urination." And nobody was ever convicted of a damned thing, so although we know these stick-wielding bastards are evil personified, we also know they're flouting laws and ordinances like it's going out of style down there at Duke.

By the way, anyone here -- especially anyone with a penis -- who went to college and a) didn't drink until their twenty-first birthday, b) never walked around with an open container or made excessive noise, and c) never took a leak in the bushes...is free to leave the room. As a journalist, you simply can't take shit that every college student in the history of mankind has done at one time or another and act as if you're horrified by the fact that such behavior exists. That's dirty pool, and if you're attempting to indicate in your writings that such things shock you, I'll readily question your integrity because I think you're completely full of shit.

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And so people in Durham march. They protest. They hold rallies. They bang pots and pans together in front of the house where the assault allegedly occurred. And for what? Because they know something? Fuck, no. It's because they want these people to be guilty because they don't like them, or what it is they supposedly stand for. That's not the way it works. You simply can't do that. You have to wait and see if they actually did it first.

Listen, I have no great love for Duke University. In all likelihood, I wouldn't get along with most of the players on the Duke lacrosse team. Guys they went to high school with are dying in obscurity in Iraq while they're on the phone ordering strippers to the keg party. They're probably assholes. I don't know, and I don't care, and I have no desire to ever meet any of them. But people who weren't there and don't know what transpired that night need to stop what they're doing until the legal system finally tells us what happened.

That's pretty much how I feel about the meta story around the story. I wasn't hanging out with athletes and frat daddies in college, and I probably would have thought most people on the Duke lacrosse team were idiots, but that doesn't mean they're guilty. Weaving issues of race and privilege around a set of facts just makes it harder to discern the facts.

Speaking of the facts, here's what we know. The DNA evidence came back negative. BTW, it's not clear to me what the source of the reference DNA was - hair? semen? The DA says that in 80% of rape cases there's no DNA evidence. OK, then what did they use for testing? There must have been a sample of something that contained DNA for them to compare to the player's DNA. What was it?

The victim's friend who was at the party says she did not witness a rape.

The taxi driver's statement and associated cell phone records seems to exonerate defendant Reade Seligmann. On the other hand, the cabbie says that a later fare that night said something to the effect of "she's just a stripper." We may be hearing more about that later fare in the future.

That's what I know from press reports. What I don't know is what other evidence the DA has. It's also possible that the DA leaned on one or both of these players in order to get them to testify against other players.