Full text of DA’s letter on accuser’s credibility; and how the police and prosecutors got caught in this trap

Robert Jackall writes:

This is the end of this case. There is simply no way the DA can proceed against Strauss-Kahn after the release of this legally required letter (see Brady v. Maryland) from the prosecutors to the defense attorneys. This is an enormous embarrassment for Cyrus Vance and his circle.

One has to feel badly for everybody involved at the DA’s office, however, because the way our law itself works helped produce this catastrophe. Once the accusation was made against DSK, the NYPD had to act. So they arrested him at the airport before he could depart to France, with which we have no extradition agreement. Once he’s arrested, he MUST be arraigned before a magistrate within 24 hours with initial charges leveled against him; more elaborate “superseding” indictments can follow. But once he is arrested and indicted based, as we now know, on incomplete information, the media gets wind of it and goes berserk. It’s Tom Wolfe’s “great white defendant” scenario from Bonfire of the Vanities all over again. In the frenzy, on the basis of their preliminary interviews with the “victim,” prosecutors justify the indictment on the victim’s word alone, thus committing the office to the investigative course of action I described earlier. Finally, a possible different version/interpretation of events emerges as the credibility of the victim/sole witness crumbles.

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Jim C. writes:

Will the DA’s office bring felony charges against the low-life? This case is far from over.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 01, 2011 02:02 PM | Send