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More: James Taranto at the WSJ quotes the Raleigh News & Observer under the heading “Yoo Hoo! Over Here! Ignore Us Please!”:

*** QUOTE ***The latest Duke lacrosse suit got off to a big start Thursday with publicists, lawyers of national renown, a media blitz at the National Press Club and a lawsuit with its own Web site.

The 38 members of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team who filed the suit in federal court say their reputations were damaged by their association to an escort service dancer’s phony gang-rape allegations.

The players chose not to appear at the news conference, said Bob Bork Jr., the group’s hired publicist, because they don’t want to attract attention.

*** END QUOTE ***

If they didn’t want to attract attention, it might have made more sense not to call a press conference. Or, if they had already called it and felt they had no choice but to go through with it, maybe they could have created a diversion by having a stripper show up or something.

The News & Observer also notes at the end of its article:

Only three members of the 2006 team have not filed suit — Matt Zash, a former captain; Matt Danowski, the current coach’s son, and Kevin Mayer.

And more: Bob Bork, Jr. writes to say he was misquoted in the News & Observer report, and says the following is a transcript of what he did say about the players’ absence:

One final comment before we start. None of the 38 players who are filing this lawsuit are here today. They considered participating, but many have jobs and some are still students and lacrosse team members at Duke. One is in Army Ranger school preparing to deploy to Iraq.

Know this — the players are united behind this lawsuit. At the same time that they are understandably concerned about retribution and slanderous media coverage. Who can blame them after what they endured for 13 months in 2006 and 2007. They are walking a fine line between trying to live normal lives in the wake of an unspeakable trauma and at the same time trying to get answers to questions that remain unanswered by their university.

Tags: Duke lacrosse, emotional distress, libel slander and defamation, schools, sports

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Next to come is the players’ civil suit, though that money is unfortunately going to come from the taxpayers of Durham rather than from Nifong. The players are attempting to negotiate a settlement before filing their suit; they’re reportedly seeking $30 million, plus changes to the legal process to allegedly prevent the district attorney from hijacking a police investigation the way Nifong did. They intend to file suit within a month if the city doesn’t settle. (AP, Herald-Sun)

And then there’s this little tidbit:

Durham’s Police Department, which helped Nifong secure the indictments, has also come under criticism. A special committee probing police handling of the case stopped working last month, however, because the city’s liability insurance provider warned that the committee’s conclusions could provide material for lawsuits.

At this point, if we were Bizarro-Overlawyered I’d be rambling about “Profits over People” or something, but since we’re not, I’ll just point out that it simply demonstrates the perverse incentives of the legal system and its unbounded discovery rules. As long as everything you put on paper can be used against you — even in hindsight — then the incentive is not to put it on paper. (Of course, I’m not suggesting that the specific wrongdoing in Durham was only obvious in hindsight; people like K.C. Johnson figured it out right away. But the incentives are the same in every case.)

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A female airman says she faces a court-martial next month because she refused to testify against three male airmen she accused of rape.

The woman is charged with one count of committing indecent acts and one count of consuming alcohol as a minor. The defense says the charges involve the same men she accused of raping her.

The woman dropped the charges after feeling “pressured”; the men agreed to nonjudicial punishments in exchange for immunity and their testimony against the woman. If the story is true (and that’s a big if: the only substantive comment in the coverage is from the defense attorneys, as the prosecutors are forbidden from commenting in detail while the case is pending), it is certainly something shocking: you’d expect that sort of thing in remote parts of Pakistan, not in the armed forces. Of course, as the Duke Lacrosse case showed, there are many other scenarios where a woman could allege rape, back down from her allegation, and legitimately be charged with wrongdoing. Court-martial is scheduled for September 24.

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One prominent guest on Grace’s show and others was Wendy Murphy, an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. On April 10, 2006, after defense attorneys announced that DNA results found no links to the athletes, Murphy told Grace, “Look, I think the real key here is that these guys, like so many rapists–and I’m going to say it because, at this point, she’s entitled to the respect that she is a crime victim.”

Emerging questions about the investigation did not prompt Murphy to reassess. Appearing on “CNN Live Today” on May 3, 2006, she posited, “I’d even go so far as to say I bet one or more of the players was, you know, molested or something as a child.” On June 5, 2006, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson asserted, relying on a Duke committee report, that the lacrosse team was generally well-behaved. Rejoined Murphy: “Hitler never beat his wife either. So what?” She later added: “I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.”

Asked to evaluate her commentary, Murphy said in an interview: “Lots of folks who voiced the prosecution position in the beginning gave up because they faced a lot of criticism, and that’s never my style.” She notes that she’s invited on cable shows to argue for a particular side. “You have to appreciate my role as a pundit is to draw inferences and make arguments on behalf of the side which I’m assigned,” she says. “So of course it’s going to sound like I’m arguing in favor of ‘guilty.’ That’s the opposite of what the defense pundit is doing, which is arguing that they’re innocent.”

The last passage prompts Mark Obbie at LawBeat (Jul. 18) to reflect: “Has there ever been a clearer argument for the utter show-biz meaninglessness of such ‘debate’ shows?”

On a different note, the much-anticipated book on the controversy by Stuart Taylor, Jr. and K.C. Johnson, “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case”, is due out a month from now and is already selling well on Amazon. More: John Steele Gordon, “Racial Role Reversal”, WSJ/OpinionJournal.com, Jun. 20.

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