Topic category:  Other/General

THE book on the Duke case--Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape case--will be released on September 4, 2007 and Duke case enthusiasts will be in heaven.

The book was written months ago, and with but a page for updating, much of what happened in recent months will be missing, so this is a book that cries out for a revised edition a year or two later.

Meanwhile, this publisher's book description is good reason to read what is revealed in the book:

"What began that night shocked Duke University and Durham, North Carolina.

"And it continues to captivate the nation: the Duke lacrosse team members‘ alleged rape of an African-American stripper and the unraveling of the case against them.

"In this ever-deepening American tragedy, Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson argue, law enforcement, a campaigning prosecutor, biased journalists, and left-leaning academics repeatedly refused to pursue the truth while scapegoats were made of these young men, recklessly tarnishing their lives.

"The story harbors multiple dramas, including the actions of a DA running for office; the inappropriate charges that should have been apparent to academics at Duke many months ago; the local and national media, who were so slow to take account of the publicly available evidence; and the appalling reactions of law enforcement, academia, and many black leaders.

"Until Proven Innocent is the only book that covers all five aspects of the case (personal, legal, academic, political, and media) in a comprehensive fashion. Based on interviews with key members of the defense team, many of the unindicted lacrosse players, and Duke officials, it is also the only book to include interviews with all three of the defendants, their families, and their legal teams.

"Taylor and Johnson‘s coverage of the Duke case was the earliest, most honest, and most comprehensive in the country, and here they take the idiocies and dishonesty of right- and left-wingers alike head on, shedding new light on the dangers of rogue prosecutors and police and a cultural tendency toward media-fueled travesties of justice. The context of the Duke case has vast import and contains likable heroes, unfortunate victims, and memorable villains—and in its full telling, it is captivating nonfiction with broad political, racial, and cultural relevance to our times."

Interestingly, the book description treats "the idiocies and dishonesty of right- and left-wingers" equally, as though the Duke case was not a Democrat scandal that would not have resulted in indictments, much less a politically and personally motivated prosecution, but for the ambition of a desperate Democrat appointed by a Democrat governor and trying to come from behind in a three-way Democrat primary in which he was the only white male, the favorite was a white female and the third hopeful was a black male. The persecution of the members of the Duke University Men's Lacrosse Team and its continuation for so long had nothing to do with any sexual misconduct or violent behavior by ANY team member and everything to do with a Democrat candidate desperately manipulating black voters, the Democrat establishment's willful blindness or cooperation with that scoundrel (Governor Easley waited until long after Election Day 2006 and sometime after the scoundrel had been publicly exposed to publicly state that the scoundrel had deceived him) and the Democrat establishment's deplorable decision not to prosecute false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum (quickly praised, instead of deplored, by defense lawyer and former North Carolina Democrat Party chairman Wade Smith).

The blurbs for the book are themselves noteworthy.

“Brutally honest, unflinching, exhaustively researched, and compulsively readable, Until Proven Innocent excoriates those who led the stampede—the prosecutor, the cops, the media—but it also exposes the cowardice of Duke’s administration and faculty. Until Proven Innocent smothers any lingering doubts that in this country the presumption of innocence is dead, dead, dead.”—John Grisham

If Mr. Grisham had written the story as fiction (his specialty), the politically correct crowd would have excoriated HIM for defaming them, but the book reveals plenty (but not all) of the ugly truth.

“This compelling narrative dramatizes the fearsome power of unscrupulous police and prosecutors to wreck the lives of innocent people, especially when the media and many in the community rush to presume guilt. The inspiring story of how the defense lawyers turned the tables on a dishonest DA points to the crying need for reforms to give defendants of modest means a fighting chance when law enforcement goes bad.”—Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law at the New York Law School

It's not a surprise that the head of the ACLU wrote of "law enforcement go[ing] bad," but did not mention the evils of political correctness or the Democrat nature of the scandal that was the Duke case.

“In what surely is this year’s most revealing, scalding and disturbing book on America’s civic culture, the authors demonstrate that the Duke case was symptomatic of the dangerous decay of important institutions—legal, academic, and journalistic. . . . With this meticulous report, the guilty have at last been indicted and convicted.”—George F. Will

Alas, Mr. Will, not even false accuser Mangum and rogue prosecutor Nifong have been indicted and convicted. And those who think that Mr. Nifong was the only player in the criminal justice system who should be indicted and convicted is woefully ignorant or dangerously delusional.

“A gripping, meticulous, blow-by-blow account of the whole grotesque affair. It is beautifully written, dramatic, and full of insights, exposing how vulnerable the prosecutorial system is to abuse and how ready the liberal media and PC academics are to serve as leaders of the lynch mob. A must read for anyone who cares about individual rights and justice.”—William P. Barr, former attorney general of the United States

Amen!

“A chilling, gripping account of how our judicial system can go terribly wrong. This is an important book that brings the Duke story to life and exposes troubling facts about our justice system and our citadels of higher learning. You may think you know the Duke story—but you don’t until you read this book.”—Jan Crawford Greenberg, ABC News legal correspondent and author of Supreme Conflict

Not even the whole story after you read the book. But it's a must-read.

“The analysis of the notorious Duke rape case in this book is hard to accept. According to Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, this episode was not just a terrible injustice to three young men. It exposed a fever of political correctness that is more virulent than ever on American campuses and throughout society. . . . Unfortunately for doubts, the authors lay out the facts with scrupulous care. This is a thorough and absorbing history of a shameful episode. ”—Michael Kinsley, columnist for Time magazine

For Mr. Kinsley, it was hard to accept. For many, it was easy to believe and it's not a surprise that real corrective action has been very limited and Duke has been buying silence with confidentiality agreements.

Read the book. Carefully. And try to read between the lines too.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.