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Mr. Dershowitz is a grotesquely evil person. He is a renowned professor of law whose analysis of the Strauss-Kahn case rests on a solid presumption of guilt.

The early reports on the case had Mr. Strauss-Kahn flying off to France, a country with no extradition, after attacking a maid in his hotel room. After the woman entered the room, Mr. Strauss-Kahn came out of the bathroom naked as a jay bird. Flight is a strong indication of guilt.

Mr. Toobin on CNN said that the airplane ticket was purchased two weeks in advance. Mr. Strauss Kahn was scheduled for a critical meeting in Europe the next day. There goes the flight, and professor Dershowitz wasted a teaching moment to talk about jumping to conclusions. Mr. Strauss-Kahn was naked in the bathroom because he showered before getting dressed for his trip. His time was limited, and his going after the maid is hard to believe.

Mr. Dershowitz could have reminded the public of the Tawana Brawley and the Duke cases, where lives were turned upside down by false charges. As a possibility, the maid could have been caught going through Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s wallet, panicked when caught, and claimed attempted rape. The lack of DNA is not a defense against attempted rape.

According to early reports, the maid claimed that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was unsuccessful with rape and forced her to perform oral sex in the bathroom. Why the bathroom? Why not on the bed, on a couch, or on the rug. There would be no reason to take her into the bathroom.

Lastly, Mr. Dershowitz throws out the prossibility of a multimillion dollar settlement which would generate a BIG payday for a fellow lawyer. The late Johnnie Cochran negotiated a deal for the late Michael Jackson years ago. The accusation against Mr. Jackson came from a father in a divorce war. The mother arranged for the child be with his hero, Michael Jackson. The charge was almost certainly false. Many in the public took the settlement as an admission of guilt, and Mr. Jackson paid severely for the settlement when he was falsely accused of molestation years later.

Predictions are dangerous, especially about the future (wink), but I disagree with Prof. D and with the Commenter. This case will go forward, unless the prosecutor has no b…s.

It is unfortunate that the Strauss-Kahn case has become so political that the district attorney, Cyrus Vance, has to continue. The prosecutor and the university administration in the Duke case faced the same problem. When surveillance film put one of the accused far from the alleged rape, the case against the young man could not be dropped. William Kennedy Smith had to go through the ordeal of a trial based on a ridiculous accusation of rape, otherwise the local officials would be accused of favoritism. Mr. Smith was rightly acquitted.

Prof. Underwood above is sadly mistaken when he associates courage with the prosecutor’s involvement in a witch trial.

The statement that the case could not be dropped is ridiculous. The DA refused to look at the evidence. The Duke law faculty refused to consider that white men might not be guilty of whatever they were accused of. Refusing to do something and claiming to have had no choice afterwards is a series of self-serving, cowardly lies.

Bob

Actually the Duke law faculty were among the best behaved on campus. The agitators were from the departments of English, American Studies, a professor of Chinese Buddhist art, and the like.

Not that the Duke law faculty had any influence over the Durham County District Attorney in the first place. He was a Carolina grad.

For Bob Lipton:

It depends on the meaning of could. Could as a legal matter, yes. Could as a political matter, no.

There was a member of the Duck faculty who was very good who was very good and helped in getting the charges dropped.

It was very sad to see supposed scholars at Duke act so ignorantly. When everybody just knows something to be true without evidence or with defective evidence (WMD’s and Iraq, pedophilia of priests come to mind) justice is imperiled.