But I Won't Ever Live In NC!

May 18 2006
WILLIAM ANDERSON
But I Won't Ever Live In NC!

Rachel,

As I said before, I hope you are elected, but after seeing the Edenton case and now Nifong in Durham, I would have to say that North Carolina is not a safe place to live, at least when it comes to justice. It always has broken my heart to have seen what those people in Edenton experienced, and how the whole thing was based on lies and fabrications from social workers.

Now we have the State of North Carolina attempting to imprison three innocent people from Duke from what are transparent lies. I agree that they are not "boys," and their behavior in having such a party was reprehensible. But that is not the same as rape, and since Nifong represents the State of North Carolina, and since no one has seen fit to intervene, my guess is that he will succeed in wrongfully convicting the players, and they may spend the rest of their lives in prison.

And even though the people in Edenton ultimately had their convictions overturned (except those who pleaded out, realizing that they could not trust the justice system in NC), we cannot say "the system worked." If the system worked, they would not have been charged, tried, and convicted in the first place.

Granted, these injustices occur across the country. Janet Reno was a master of the wrongful conviction (read about her conduct in the cases of Frank Furster and Grant Snowden to know that she is a criminal) when she was in Florida, and she did manage to touch off the biggest massacre in this country since Wounded Knee, and managed to do it in her third month on the job at DOJ.

But, with North Carolina once again attempting to wrongfully convict people who obviously did not commit the crime for which they are charged, all I can say is that the entire justice system in that state needs to be overhauled! Maybe you can start!!

Bill

William L. Anderson, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Economics
Frostburg State University
Frostburg, Maryland