Is the DSK Case the Tawana Brawley of the 21st Century?

There is always a danger in only listening to one side of a story and assuming everything you hear is true. The citizens of New York City, and the media, learned this lesson the hard way, but not more than 20 years later, it seems precious few remember it.

I have been having a strong sense of déjà vu in recent weeks, as I’ve watched the media and the public take sides in the Dominique Strauss-Khan case. In 1987, many of us listened to the harrowing story Tawana Brawley was telling and assumed the worst of our law enforcement, public servants and neighbors. She said she had been raped by six white men, including police officers and a New York prosecutor. She said she had been smothered in feces and left for dead. It was unfathomable that a young woman would make up such a story. So we believed her, and we rallied behind her. It became black versus white, rich versus poor, and it was bad for our city.

But Brawley did make it up, most of us have concluded. She had her own motives, probably fear of being abused by her mother and stepfather for skipping school. Maybe we couldn’t have known that then. But having lived through it, we should all know better than to assume that a victim’s sad story is absolutely true.

The very fact that DSK’s alleged victim, Nafissatou Diallo has taken her case to the media, rather than work her way through the court system, should raise red flags. Any lawyer will tell you that putting an alleged victim in front of television cameras before a trial only creates another version of events for defense attorneys to pick apart and use against her. Prosecutors couldn’t have been happy with her decision, because it hurts her chances of achieving justice.

Instead, Diallo is throwing a hail-Mary, hoping to galvanize enough sympathy through “Newsweek” and “Good Morning America” to press Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr. into taking the case to trial.

Certainly, turning Diallo into a celebrity can be a wealthy endeavor for her and her family, as well as those that rally behind her. But it also raises questions about her motives.

Too often we can make assumptions based on race, class and power and don’t wait for the full story to unfold. We rally behind one person, demonize another, and then often feel foolish when we realize we have not been told the whole story. Few people who initially heard Crystal Magnum’s tale of having been raped by members of the Duke University’s lacrosse team thought she was making it up, but she did, prosecutors eventually concluded. That case is a great example of how a media sensation can taint the justice system.

There are certainly things that have dripped out in recent weeks that should give those rallying behind Diallo pause, in the way it has the Manhattan district attorney. Diallo has a track record of lying, having told tales of a gang rape in Guinea and exaggerating on her asylum papers. The reporters for Newsweek who interviewed her have said that the details of her personal history are inconsistent, and according to the New York Times, she told an incarcerated friend in a taped conversation that DSK had money and she knew what she was doing.

Our justice system gives prosecutors the responsibility to weight the facts and the allegations from both sides and determine whether there is a case worth bringing to trial. Trying to use the media and the threat of racial tension to force a prosecutor’s hand can have disastrous results. If a prosecutor genuinely believes that DSK would be acquitted because there is so much in Diallo’s past to render her untrustworthy, going ahead with the case will be a wasted of time and money. And worse, it could be the kindling to the next race riot

Too often, it seems, we are too eager and willing to make snap judgments about the accuser and the accused, moving faster than the deliberate motions of the law. As a civil rights leader for close to half a century, I am deeply troubled by the racialist games that so many of my colleagues engage in. Just today, Reverend Herbert Daughtry held a press conference to stir the racial pot, by blindly calling for prosecutors to aggressively pursue charges against DSK. Just across town, Khadijah Shakur, who I’ve never heard of, but who is a member of some box top imitation of a civil rights group called the New Black Panther Party, held a press conference with a gang of 12 and played the race card by referring to Ms. Diallo as “the victim”. I have been pleasantly surprised to see my old friend Al Sharpton has largely stayed out of the DSK case. Perhaps he has learned his lesson from Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse case. It is time for others to allow the law to determine guilt and innocence, and to end the practice of armchair juries.