A CASE COLLAPSES – We're at least fortunate here in New York that the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., has some class and some respect for his profession.  His handling of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case is a model of what an ethical prosecutor must do.  Vance is the son of the late Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Today, after weeks of being the victim of a journalistic lynch mob, similar to the academic and journalistic mob that almost destroyed three lacrosse players falsely accused of rape at Duke University, Strauss-Kahn was released on his own recognizance, and had his bail returned.  There is even talk that he will eventually be able to resume his career as one of France's most respected statesmen, and might even run for president of France, something in the works before he was yanked off a plane at JFK International Airport, based on the accusation of a hotel housekeeper. 

The news that the case against Strauss-Kahn is in pieces has stunned France, but there has been suprisingly little anti-Americanism in the reaction.  Indeed, Vance's ethical behavior will help to undo a great deal of French anger.

Strauss-Kahn is free to travel about the United States, but cannot leave the country yet.  The case against him has not been formally dismissed, but it is crumbling.  When a prosecutor like Vance says openly that his office has doubts about the credibility of the only witness to the alleged sexual assault, he is pretty much throwing in the towel.  Yes there is presumably DNA evidence of a sexual encounter with the housekeeper, but that could have been consensual.  Also, "evidence" has to be defined.  The mere presence of some DNA, like hair or skin cells, on the body of the accuser is not persuasive.  She's a housekeeper.  She had access to Strauss-Kahn's clothing, dirty laundry, hairbrush and other items that contained his DNA.

The case against the now-resigned head of the International Monetary Fund began to falter when the DA discovered some stunning evidence, as reported by The New York Times, which is doing a much finer job here than it did in the Duke case.  It involved a recorded phone call:

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.

Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

And...

Suspicions of the woman’s associations arose relatively quickly: within a week of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the authorities learned of a recorded conversation between the subject of a drug investigation and another man, who said his companion was the woman involved in the Strauss-Kahn matter, according to another law enforcement official.

COMMENT:  The presumption of innocence is one of the most sacred principles in our law.  It was never accorded to the three boys at Duke.  It was not accorded to Strauss-Kahn.   

In both cases, there were racial overtones  –  an African-American accuser at Duke, an African-Caribbean accuser in New York.  This clearly complicates a case as the press, perhaps for understandable historical reasons, wants to tread carefully and avoid humiliating the accuser. 

This story is far from over.  My own gut feeling, and I have no independent evidence to back this up, is that it may grow as we learn more about the accuser's international associations.  When he was first arrested, Strauss-Kahn was said to have theorized that this was an internationally inspired set-up.  People laughed.  There isn't any reason to laugh any longer.

July 1, 2011