Nancy Grace & Terry Moran have a Duke problem

As America begins to digest the news that over thirty people were killed in a campus massacre at Virginia Tech there is another story of students and the media that has to be talked about.  Last week the attorney general of North Carolina declared three Duke lacrosse players “innocent” of any charges that they raped Crystal Gail Mangum.  That night Nancy Grace decided she needed the night off and shortly thereafter another former Court TV “reporter” penned a nasty little piece called “Don’t Feel Too Sorry for the Dukies.”

The latter was written by Terry Moran of ABC who boasts credentials that I presume make him the arbiter of virtue given his statement that the falsely accused and media convicted students shouldn’t be left off the hook easily because they had a stripper perform at a party.  For shame – that and a kegger should have them thrown in jail for life. 

Moran concludes that the falsely accused rapists will be fine in life because hey are “well-heeled, well-connected, well-publicized” young men who had the tenacity and resources to fend off an attack of a politically corrupt prosecutor.  To follow his argument to the logical conclusion any man who is accused of rape who happens to be intelligent enough to attend a good college and who has successful parents can be accused of a crime and left to anguish for a year without bad result.

Any right thinking person dismisses Moran’s ludicrous rant because the idea that students who hire a stripper somehow deserve to be accused of rape by a sociopath is insane.  Not the elite left, though.

At the very least Moran should apologize for being a class envy idiot, but more disgusting is what Court TV and Headline News’ Nancy Grace has done to these same young men. 

Grace has already been exposed for what she is – a washed up prosecutor who runs afoul of appeals courts and gets publicly rebuked for her ethical lapses when she is in real courtrooms.  It is good for anyone who lives in Georgia that television picked up the guilty until proven innocent commentator.

She made a name for herself by talking about all of her experience as a prosecutor and a victim of crime.  It makes for great TV that she has the acting ability to pound on the table to make points that she can no longer make in court.  Unfortunately, many people who watch her on television do not know her history with appellate courts or the fact that her ten years spent as a prosecutor resulted in false imprisonment and misconduct.  At least she can cry on demand.

The night the news broke about the supposed rape at Duke – Grace smelled blood and jumped on the victim is always truthful bandwagon.  The three men, Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, were subjected to her pseudo-prosecutorial misconduct over the air for over a year.  Her comments ranged from leading guest attorneys to talk about the guilt of the young men to chastising those who would dare defend them as innocent until proven guilty.

Her show really imitated her life as she has been rebuked by name by no less than a federal appeals court and the Georgia Supreme Court so being proven wrong is not something new to her.

Her comments about the Duke case were not ambiguous nor were they meant to be a joke (the way Don Imus found his doom) and clearly showed the presumption of innocence that Grace dismissed when she was a real lawyer extends to her show now that she is a fake one. 

Weeks after exculpatory evidence was produced for all to see Grace continued her rant against the three men.  It is sad, but one of the only media outlets actually talking about Nancy Grace is Comedy Central and they put together a great montage of her best slanderous moments.

Apparently it wasn’t enough that Grace victim Weldon Wayne Carr spent time in prison when he should have been free.  The Georgia Supreme Court found that the prosecutor in the case (Grace) engaged in "inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial."

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals took the highly unusual step of upholding a conviction, but spoke of the misconduct of the prosecutor (Grace) who played “fast and loose with the truth.” 

The only penalty paid by Grace is our punishment as a society that we are stuck with her and people actually cry right along with her as they eat their Lean Cuisine while being armchair lawyers.

If only there was a baby missing so that she could berate a woman into killing herself or something from Aruba to talk about – surely some white woman went missing this spring break.  Nancy needs a break because now she has to deal with the fact that she convicted three men for a rape that never happened.

Grace is little more than a parasite that latches onto sensational cases and when they don’t turn out the way she wants she takes the night off and waits for another shooting or another “victim.” 

If the three Duke men were black and declared innocent of rape Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would have been camped out waiting for Grace to do the perpetrator hustle to do a tearful apology.  They would have had an audience with the heads of her networks and sponsors would have begun to flee.  She would have been Imused and the money would have flowed into Sharpton and Jackson’s “organizations.” 

Unfortunately for them they’re white so Nancy Grace can say whatever she wants and the former Court TV hack turned ABC newsman Terry Moran can write drivel bordering on the absurd.  What is it about Court TV and ABC that turn presumably normal people into unethical class mongers who pretend that having a stripper is evil and privilege a problem?

A lot of their current Duke students are amazed that their university overreacted to a complaint by a serial complainant of gang rape (apparently she likes multiple sex partners – wouldn’t that DNA battle be a hoot to watch on Court TV).  Nancy Grace and Terry Moran find virtue in a woman that tried to destroy the lives of three men and instead of contrition for how they treated these guys one wrote a stupid blog entry and the other went on vacation.

It is great that the standard is known for how to treat victims of injustice.  If they are female mostly black college basketball players and they get called a name – fire the host and have candlelight vigils.  If they are male college athletes presume them guilty, lambaste them in the press with unethical lawyers on cable and after they are declared innocent still attempt to find fault with them.

Obviously at Court TV you can be an unethical former prosecutor and I have no problem with that – there are probably quite a few that need a job and as long as you can scowl your way through a couple hours on TV you can get your own show. 

As for ABC, well, we all know that their products are suspect – they did give us Rosie O’Donnell and her 9-11 theories about our attacking ourselves, but it is really over the top to decide that innocent men are not to be felt sorry for simply because they were able to fight for their innocence.  Obviously Terry Moran has never seen a female stripper and that is ok, but I wonder what they did for fun at the undergraduate school that he attended - one that nobody has ever heard of.

Maybe he and Nancy got together on weekends to play pin the "tale" (get it - tale as in tall; tail as in the end of a donkey - oy) on the victim?

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO and may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com