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In my book, they only get a pass if Nifong fabricated evidence. AFAIK, the only “evidence” in this case was Mangum’s complaint. There was no corroborating evidence, no additional witnesses*, nothing whatsoever to support her claim. I would hope that people on a GJ would take the job seriously and only offer an indictment when there is actual evidence linking the defendant to the crime.
If the standard for an indictment is “Someone said that guy commited a crime”, you don’t need a grand jury, just let the prosecutor indict whoever he wants.
*Did the other stripper there actually support her claim, or did her statements kind of make her claim unlikely? I don’t remember the details.
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But the prosecutor can also present evidence selectively, which can have some of the same prejudicial effect as fabrication, especially when there is no opportunity for rebuttal.
As far as Kim Roberts, there were aspects of her story (stories) that could have been viewed as corroborative, and then aspects in which she basically said “I don’t think anything happened.” Which ones would you think Dumbfuck would emphasize to the GJ? Her baseline story was always that she never saw anything directly, but that at some later point LWCM became very “upset” or very drunk, and/or both. That can go . . . either way.
This is where prosecutorial discretion comes in. I can imagine a world in which a highly credible victim comes in and says, “Look, this may seem nutty, but a guy kidnapped me off a deserted street, took me to an isolated house, and raped me (but fairly gently) while using a condom, and having shaved all his body hair so as to leave no forensic evidence [not my invention, stolen from some John Sandford detective novel], and then dropped me off,” and the prosecutor found her story highly credible (but for its inherent unusualness) and self-consistent, and there had been other crimes of that description – he would need to have the option to try to persuade the GJ that an indictment was warranted on the “more likely than not” standard, and I can’t say I would per se deny it (though the common law standard for rape, requiring proof of resistance, etc., had some common sense to it, recognizing that people frequently have consensual sex, and that women apparently sometimes lie about rape, whereas few people are consensually murdered or beaten or fabricate stories about their own murders, so that additional corroboration might be required).
But Crystal’s situation was nothing like that hypothetical. Her story was internally inconsistent, improbable, etc. Thing is – if Nifong went in as he did and presented it as a really strong case, and he’s the DA, and the GJs are dumbasses who may be looking to stick it to a white boy or two – maybe an indictment (based on only one-side of the story) made sense to them.