After thousands of articles, television spots, interviews and even two other books published earlier this summer, you might assume that everything to be said about the Duke lacrosse rape case has already been said.
Repeatedly.
Nevertheless, "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case" provides new details gathered from scores of interviews with the defendants, their families, friends and members of the Duke administration, including President Richard Brodhead.
Journalist Stuart Taylor and Brooklyn College history professor and blogger KC Johnson, two authors who have already shed a great deal of ink on the subject, have produced an account of the trial that engages like an episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" while maintaining a respect for the complexity of that oft-neglected thing called reality.
Johnson, whose blog "Durham-in-Wonderland" was an early critic of the prosecution and its "aiders and abettors," told The Chronicle that the defendants and their families agreed to the interviews on the condition that they would only be used for the book and not the blog.
"I got to know Reade [Seligmann] and Collin [Finnerty] very well. I came to really, really like both of them," he said. "I'd like to say if the case had involved three athlete-jerks who were railroaded with false rape charges, I would have done the same thing anyway in the interests of correcting prosecutorial procedure abuse. But it made it a lot easier because these are basically nice people."
The book devotes many pages to fleshing out the personalities and experiences of the defendants as well as those close to them. Often used as "representatives" of some form of social ill-whether perpetrators of white privilege and oppression or later martyrs of reverse racism-it is refreshing to now see them as three-dimensional human beings.
In a similar vein, the dust jacket's promises of "likable heroes, unfortunate victims and memorable villains," as well as the somewhat bombastic subtitle, might make some wary of what could easily be a two-dimensional narrative.
Although Johnson admitted finding it very hard to portray some people, such as "wholly unrepentant" Wahneema Lubiano, an asssociate professor of literature and a member of the "Group of 88"-staff members who signed the now-infamous ad in The Chronicle in April 2006-in a positive light, overall the book refrains from reducing the story's "villains" to cartoonish Snidely Whiplash malevolence.
Indeed, there is something mildly pathetic in the portrayal of former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong, whose vaulting ambition outstripped the capacity of his limited experience, skill and intelligence.
Taylor and Johnson's chimera of journalism, contemporary history and social commentary places the now-familiar narrative within a larger context of the authors' understanding of a long and messy history of prosecutorial misconduct in America, an influx of radicalism within universities and a broader culture of political correctness.
Though not swayed by each and every one of the authors' conclusions, this reviewer finished the book with more than a few things to think about and reasonable confidence that the book was offered up in good faith after a careful investigation, and was neither a work of expediency or exploitation to further any type of agenda.
In short, in a case where it seems like we have heard much too much, "Until Proven Innocent" is worth one more hearing.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.