The Duke rape case has essentially fallen apart and the prosecutor is facing multiple ethics complaints and may be disbarred. The DNA evidence does not appear to confirm the accuser's initial story. The Duke case struck a chord with conservative bloggers from the beginning, and many conservative blogs have devoted significant time and resources to coverage and investigation. While the concern and interest is certainly appreciated, it's hard not to wonder where this passion for correcting legal injustices has been lurking all this time. As libertarian Radley Balko put it:

Perhaps this sudden understanding that the law is not always as impartial as claimed will lead these same conservative bloggers to examine with equal energy and enthusiasm other cases where athletes have been railroaded. For example, take the case of Genarlow Wilson, a high-school kid who had consensual oral sex with another teenager. Under Georgia law at the time, since he was 17 and she was 15 this was a felony (had they had intercourse, it would technically have been a misdemeanor), and the prosecution brought charges. Wilson refused a plea deal and is serving 10 years. The legislature amended the law but failed to make the change retroactive; the state Supreme Court voted 4-3 (along strict racial lines) against hearing the case.

Perhaps pressure from the publicity of a front-page ESPN story will help secure justice for Wilson. Upon initial reading anyway, this case appears more egregious than the better-known (and more complex) Marcus Dixon case, and Dixon's sentence was overturned.

Of course we could move beyond athletes and just look at the criminal justice system in general. Sometimes people get convicted of crimes when they shouldn't, and sometimes the reasons for such convictions are self-evidently related to bias. Sometimes they even end up on death row when they shouldn't; for example, consider the strange and frightening case of Cory Maye (if you're not familiar with this one, do yourself a favor and read the whole page), who at least has been awarded a new sentencing trial but probably shouldn't be in jail at all. Perhaps this newfound realization that the criminal justice system isn't always impartial or unbiased might lead us to agree that capital punishment cannot be administered with 100% guaranteed accuracy, and hence to question whether we can in good conscience retain the death penalty. Perhaps this newfound sympathy for claims of prosecutorial misconduct might translate into increased scrutiny of the war on drugs, an arena in which bias runs rampant in both enforcement and sentencing. Libertarians are already on board. Perhaps (and this may be a stretch) such newfound disinclination to simply accept the word of the person in charge, such heartfelt questioning of authority, could even translate into greater resistance to surrendering rights in the name of a nebulous and endless war on terror. After all, mistakes do happen. Or not. Maybe the Duke rape allegation was just a unique situation where conservative bloggers found a case of legal misconduct and bias that, for some unknown reason, resonated with them. I guess we'll see.