The Duke rape case has essentially fallen apart and the prosecutor is facing multiple ethics complaints and may be disbarred. The DNA evidence does not appear to confirm the accuser's initial story. The Duke case struck a chord with conservative bloggers from the beginning, and many conservative blogs have devoted significant time and resources to coverage and investigation. While the concern and interest is certainly appreciated, it's hard not to wonder where this passion for correcting legal injustices has been lurking all this time. As libertarian Radley Balko put it :

The point isn't just that Barber and other conservative, law-and-order types haven't taken up the causes of black people victimized by racism in the criminal justice system, it's that they're so flip and dismissive of the possibility that racism and bigotry have, do, and continue to cause innocent people to get railroaded, or to have their homes raided, or to be unnecessarily harassed by the police.

It's only natural that people would grow suspicious, then, when Barber and company furiously peck away at their keyboards on the rare occasion that the shoe's on the other foot -- when a prosecutor's racial blinkers cause him to wrongly pursue a group of white guys accused of raping a black woman. Why is it only now that the law-and-order crowd is fully ready to buy into the idea that a prosecutor could -- gasp! -- be blinded by race and class prejudice?

Perhaps this sudden understanding that the law is not always as impartial as claimed will lead these same conservative bloggers to examine with equal energy and enthusiasm other cases where athletes have been railroaded. For example, take the case of Genarlow Wilson , a high-school kid who had consensual oral sex with another teenager. Under Georgia law at the time, since he was 17 and she was 15 this was a felony (had they had intercourse, it would technically have been a misdemeanor), and the prosecution brought charges. Wilson refused a plea deal and is serving 10 years. The legislature amended the law but failed to make the change retroactive; the state Supreme Court voted 4-3 (along strict racial lines) against hearing the case.

The position of Barker and the district attorney, McDade, who refused to comment, is that Wilson is guilty under the law and there is no room for mercy, though the facts seem to say they simply chose not to give it to Wilson. At the same time this trial was under way, a local high school teacher, a white female, was found guilty of having a sexual relationship with a student -- a true case of child molestation. The teacher received 90 days. Wilson received 3,650 days.

Perhaps pressure from the publicity of a front-page ESPN story will help secure justice for Wilson. Upon initial reading anyway, this case appears more egregious than the better-known (and more complex) Marcus Dixon case, and Dixon's sentence was overturned.

Of course we could move beyond athletes and just look at the criminal justice system in general. Sometimes people get convicted of crimes when they shouldn't, and sometimes the reasons for such convictions are self-evidently related to bias. Sometimes they even end up on death row when they shouldn't; for example, consider the strange and frightening case of Cory Maye (if you're not familiar with this one, do yourself a favor and read the whole page), who at least has been awarded a new sentencing trial but probably shouldn't be in jail at all. Perhaps this newfound realization that the criminal justice system isn't always impartial or unbiased might lead us to agree that capital punishment cannot be administered with 100% guaranteed accuracy, and hence to question whether we can in good conscience retain the death penalty. Perhaps this newfound sympathy for claims of prosecutorial misconduct might translate into increased scrutiny of the war on drugs, an arena in which bias runs rampant in both enforcement and sentencing. Libertarians are already on board . Perhaps (and this may be a stretch) such newfound disinclination to simply accept the word of the person in charge, such heartfelt questioning of authority, could even translate into greater resistance to surrendering rights in the name of a nebulous and endless war on terror. After all, mistakes do happen . Or not. Maybe the Duke rape allegation was just a unique situation where conservative bloggers found a case of legal misconduct and bias that, for some unknown reason, resonated with them. I guess we'll see.

Cross posted from The Forvm , since on the first day in a month when I had something I wanted to say SC was down...