I don’t ordinarily watch 60 Minutes, but the lead story last night was about the now-exonerated Duke lacrosse players and so I decided to tune in. Although I haven’t been closely following the case, I was interested to see the interview with the players because I had been impressed by some clips that I had seen of the three young men speaking after the charges against them were dropped last week. Specifically, I had been impressed by the players’ statements about structural problems with criminal prosecutions in North Carolina and their observations that their families’ wealth likely helped them to avoid conviction on false charges. For example, according to the New York Times, Reade Seligmann stated:
“This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed . . .. If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can’t imagine what they’d do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves. So rather than relying on disparaging stereotypes and creating political and racial conflicts, all of us need to take a step back from this case and learn from it.”
Unfortunately, 60 Minutes failed to pick up on this theme. Instead the players were asked about how they felt while under indictment and when the charges were dropped. They were also asked whether they wanted to see the accuser or the Durham DA punished.
The news magazine spent a great deal of time discussing reasons why this specific prosecution should not have gone forward, such as the accuser’s inconsistent accounts of the attack and the availability of evidence which tended to exonerate the players. And maybe this very fact-specific account of the case — rather than a broader look at prosecutorial discretion or how political pressure may affect the use of that discretion — is the angle that 60 Minutes thought was most newsworthy. But in choosing that angle, the news magazine failed to highlight the important larger truths that the players themselves were mature enough to articulate after they were exonerated.
Posted by Carissa Hessick on April 16, 2007 at 09:17 AM
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Tracked on Apr 16, 2007 3:24:18 PM