Short fuse
Duke lacrosse case: Prosecuting a stereotype
Three members of the Duke lacrosse team may have been louts, but all the evidence suggests they were not rapists. The unraveling of the case is a warning to all prosecutors not to abuse their discretion to bring indictments and potentially ruin lives.
The three students came from affluent families that hired skilled lawyers. They were exonerated by the North Carolina attorney general this week. Mike Nifong, the district attorney who brought the case, is under investigation. The case took 13 months to unfold, a long time to be sure, but the students have the resources to get on with their lives.
The three were able to contest a stereotype: that Duke lacrosse players are capable of raping the stripper they had hired for a night of drunken excess. Prosecutors need to be wary of other stereotypes -- about race and poverty -- in cases where the suspects lack wealth or connections.
Scalping law: A waste of officers' time
Outside the Red Sox home opener Tuesday, Boston police arrested six people for scalping tickets, the Globe has reported. But stopping this activity would take a crackdown of a far greater scale. It isn't worth the effort -- however distasteful scalpers might be.
State law prohibits the resale of tickets for more than $2 over face value. Legislators are considering bills to raise the limit. Instead, they should repeal the scalping law altogether. These laws work only well enough to help scalpers charge sky-high prices. If sports teams and concert promoters want to foil those who scoop up and resell tickets, they can take steps on their own. Police have many more pressing problems to solve, amid a spike in violent crime. Deploying dozens of officers to combat ticket scalping is hardly a worthy use of their time.
US attorney scandal: When lawyers balk
Yesterday's flare-up between Senator Patrick Leahy and the Bush administration could presage a real battle over the political sacking of eight US attorneys. If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House officials continue to have difficulty finding evidence and balk at testifying, that real battle is warranted. Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, was lathered up yesterday over administration claims that some e-mails had been lost. Leahy said he had a teenage neighbor who could find them.
Monica Goodling, the Gonzales aide who resigned last week, had said she would not testify on her role as an intermediary with the White House even if subpoenaed. But if her testimony is crucial, the committee could act on Senator Arlen Specter's suggestion that she be given limited immunity and forced to tell what she knows.
