The rape case being prosecuted by DA Mike Nifong just went from being incompetent to outright prosecutorial misconduct.   For those of you who have not been following the case, let me bring you up to speed on what has been happening.  The case has been quietly ebbing along since the DA won his primary and he will run unopposed this fall.  Clearing that election hurdle has now given Nifong new license to target innocent citizens.  It was not enough to arrest two young men who were picked out of a Power Point lineup, but now he has arrested a witness that surely will be called by the defense to bolster their case. 

The defense has methodically destroyed the prosecution's case by showing that their clients were not even present when the supposed rape occurred.  This is not to say that it did not occur, but simply it may have been another player or person who was present at the party that night.  The key witness for the defense, Moez Mostafa, a taxi cab driver who took the lacrosse players to their dorm room that night has now been arrested by the DA on a bogus charge.  Incidentally, Mostafa has said that he has not been paid to testify by either side and that he is just telling the DA what actually happened.  The defense has ATM receipts and data from the swipe card that corroborates Mostafa's version of the events that night.  (Why would rich kids at Duke University need a cab driver to get home from a party?  I had a car in college and would never dream of paying a cab driver to take me home, but then again, maybe they were honing their skills for responsible drinking later in life.)

So what great crime was committed that demanded the immediate attention of the Durham Police Department?  In 2003, a woman stole five purses valued at around $250 and left them in Mostafa's cab.  Mostafa helped the police locate her, identify her through store security cameras and then they arrested her.  She plead guilty to larceny and I assume went to jail.  Case closed, right?  Not so fast.  Mostafa still had a warrant out for his arrest.  So why did they not arrest him during the trial of this woman?  Why not arrest him and prosecute him when he was helping the DPD locate this woman who actually stole the purses?  The timing of this arrest is more than suspect and to any casual observer and it is this type of behavior by the DA which gives our criminal justice system a bad name. 

Not only will the defense be able to discredit this woman's testimony because it has changed several times, but now they can accuse the DA of witness tampering for attempting to intimidate the cab driver.  For someone who has such a rock solid case against these young men, you would think he would exercise more discretion in his timing of the arrest of Mostafa.  Why not wait until this case is finished to arrest Mostafa?  Was he a flight risk?  Three years later and he is still in town working the same gig, and suddenly the police are worried he will leave town.  This is just another example of how idiotic this DA is and why he will never win in this case.  The accuser's father is already saying she may not testify and if that happens, this case will be dismissed.  Her criminal past and her prior rape accusations will also make their way into court.  All of this together has to give the jurors a plausible reason not to believe her or the DA. 

Lastly, for those who are following this story, it appears now that the DA has finally found some DNA which matches up to one of the 46 players who was tested.  It is unclear why it did not match in the first go around, but suddenly they found a match, at least that is what is being leaked to reporters.  The question is, "To whom does this DNA match?"  Does the DNA belong to Reade Seligmann or Collin Finnerty or does it belong to one of the other members on the team?  And why does the DNA only match one player when the accuser clearly states she was raped by three young men.  Of course even that has changed because initially she said she was gang raped by 20 men.  Here is what the Duke Campus Police reported,

A campus police report filed March 14 states that the accuser, who is black, initially said she was raped by 20 white men. It goes on to say she changed her story several times, and that Durham police stated that the charges "would not exceed misdemeanor simple assault."

It has been said many times, by me, but this case has been horribly mismanaged from day one.  In the end, the DA will have wasted taxpayers' valuable dollars and potentially helped the real rapists escape if there ever was a real rape.  I have my doubts, but who doesn't!  Certainly a jury should based upon all of the evidence presented so far.  Many more things will come out in a trial of which some may indicate guilt, but there is no question that a reasonable doubt already exists in the minds of bloggers.  What is your verdict?