Topic category:  Other/General

The subtitle of Until Proven Innocent, Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson's awesome book on the Duke case, is "Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Case." That subtitle (and the truth about the gang rape claim and the reactions to it in Durham and the media and at Duke) infuriated political correctness extremists. So they have been trying to suppress book sales and focus on anything else. But the truth is the truth and the truth is that political correctness contributed immensely to the shameful injustices.

The truth is that political correctness extremism prevails at and ran wild at Duke and proved to be very costly as well as very vile.

Part of the cost is monetary and includes the monies paid by Duke to confidentially settle with the families of David Evans, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Kyle Dowd and Coach Mike Pressler.

Coach Pressler recently sued to rescind his confidential settlement.

Fortunately, I never undertook to keep the amounts confidential and I believe they should be known. After all, Duke paid in part to buy silence when cover up is contemptible and in part to secure releases of claims against 88ers personally.

Fortunately, there are dozens of unindicted players who can pursue their own claims and expose the ugly truth in discovery and eventrial.

I wonder by how much that monetary cost will go up after unindicted members of the 2006-2006 Duke University Men's Lacrosse Team finally sue Duke.

Hopefully, at least as far up as necessary to cause Duke to finally eschew political correctness extremism in favor of common decency and due process.

On October 18, 2007, Mr. Taylor, Class of 1970 and co-author of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, returned to Princeton to deliver an evening lecture titled "Until Proven Innocent: An Examination of the Duke Lacrosse Case" as part of the Jake McCandless '51 Princeton Varsity Club Speaker Series.

The large lecture hall was pretty full. Princeton's women's lacrosse team was well represented. Some parents of unindicted Duke lacrosse players were in the audience. No supporters of the Hoax and the Hoaxers came.

Mr. Taylor told the story in detail, but of course not in as much detail as he and co-author KC Johnson did in their powerful, politically incorrect book. (So buy a copy if you have not already done so and read it!)

What was new was that Mr. Taylor expressed the opinion that Duke had paid $10,000,000 in settling confidentially with the families of the Duke Three--David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty.

That's the same Stuart Taylor who was the first prominent member of the mainstream media to get it right when hewrote very early that "the available evidence leaves [him] about 85 percent confident that the three members who have been indicted on rape charges are innocent and that the accusation is a lie."

Mr. Taylor's expression of opinion leaves me even more confident that Duke paid that much in the hope of putting the ugly experience behind it and moving on in the same politically correct way that led it to do what it did and then secretly pay.

The brochure distributed at the lecture described Mr. Taylor as follows:

"Stuart S. Taylor, Jr. is a weekly opinion columnist for National Journal and contributing editor for Newsweek, writing about legal, policy and political issues of national and international importance. Some of his columns are republished by legal publications including Legal Times. He has won various journalism awards and appeared on all major television and radio networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Court TV, C-Span, National Public Radio, BBC, Canadian Broadcasting, Australian Broadcasting. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and co-author, with KC Johnson, of a new, critically acclaimed book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.

"Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, serving as a note editor for the Harvard Law Review and graduating in 1977 with high honors, at the top of his class. Among other awards, he won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, which he used to travel around the world during the academic year 1977-1978.

"Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering from 1978-1980. He joined the New York TimesWashington Bureau in 1980, covering legal affairs from 1980-1985 and the Supreme Court from 1985-1988. Since then he has written commentary and in-depth magazine articles for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997 and for National Journal and Newsweek since 1998.

"Taylor taught a one-semester seminar at Princeton University, "Writing About Law,' as McGraw Distinguished Lecturer in Writing for 1998. He lives in Washington with his wife, Sally Lamar Ellis, and daughters Sarah and Molly. He is 59 years old.

"Taylor's journalism honors include a share of The American Lawyer's National Magazine Award in 1991 for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war; being a fianlist for a National Magazine Award in 1997 for an article in The American Lawyer on the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, and in 1993 for two articles in The American Lawyer on the legal-lobbying battle between the Baby Bells and their competitors; a second-place National Headliner Award in 2002 for best special magazine column on one subject; the 1991 Golden Quill Award for Excellence in Editorial Writing, from the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors; a special citation in 1990 from the Penn State School of communications for Improving journalism Through Critical Evaluation; and a nomination by The New York Times in 1988 for a Pulitzer Prize for his Supreme Court coverage."

I think Mr. Taylor's "opinion" that Duke confidentially settled with the Duke Three for $10,000,000 is correct and that's not a nuisance settlement. Hopefully, it will lead those who learn about it to demand that dirty Duke come clean about its role in the Duke case and stop using Duke money to protect its political correctness extremists by buying releases for them. Chairman Robert Steel and President Richard Brodhead have to go. Trustees of Duke, make it so.

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.