HOW HE SEES IT At Duke, an assumption of guilt

By SIDNEY ZION
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Comes now the president of Duke University, Richard Brodhead, reinstating the men's lacrosse team he whacked two months ago, based solely on a woman's accusation that three players had raped her.
Brodhead delivered his collective punishment before the players were indicted, and now relieves the team of it while the three face charges that could imprison them for many years.
The case against the boys seems to be skimpier than the G-string the accuser wore while stripping at the party where the so-called rape had its inception.
The accuser, a 27-year-old black woman, was first encountered by the police in a car, where she was later described by a cop as "just passed-out drunk." After she was detoxed, she accused the three guys, who are white, of rape.
Based on this allegation, Brodhead canceled the team's season.
There was no DNA evidence to connect the players to the woman. Alone, this ordinarily would have disposed of the case. If anything else was required, the doctors examining the accuser found no gynecological evidence of rape.
But the Durham, N.C., district attorney, Michael Nifong, running for re-election in a primary in a heavily black district against a black candidate, told a forum at North Carolina Central University, a historically black college where the accuser is a student, that "my presence here means this case is not going away."
Easy grand jury
The DNA results meant nothing to Nifong, who indicted the players and, of course, won the primary, meaning he will run unopposed in the fall. The election turned out to be as easy as the grand jury, which proved again that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.
Against this backdrop, Brodhead last week did what he clearly considered to be a magnanimous gesture. In reinstating the team, he said he was "taking a risk." Richard the Brave.
Uh-huh. And then he laid out conditions: The lacrosse team would be on probation; the players would have to respect new rules of behavior. I have no argument with these rules, having to do with drinking, etc., but coming from Brodhead, they were a new way to spell chutzpah.
The fundamental rule he should have imposed was on himself and his college: Respect the presumption of innocence and never impose collective guilt.
As for the media, we need to reconsider what we do in rape cases. By refusing to reveal the names and faces of the accusers, we turn the presumption of innocence on its head.
We say implicitly that the defendant is guilty because no woman would make this accusation if it were not true. I know the argument: Name the woman, and she won't make the accusation. But we have lost our way when we decide that the role of the press is to protect not the accused, but the accuser.
X Sidney Zion is a columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.