Prosecutor Moves Forward

"Those boys need to be arrested," said Jackie D. Wagstaff, 47, a Durham school board member. "It's terrible."

Nifong, who is white, rejected the contention: "That is not the way I conduct business. It never has been." Nifong goes before the voters in a primary May 2. "There has never been a case under me that the decision is made based on race. That's just not the way I believe."

Durham Mayor Bill Bell, who is black, declined comment when asked if he felt the case would have been handled differently had the accuser been white and the suspects African American. "It just doesn't help the situation, and I'm not going to comment," Bell said, drawing boos and hisses from several in the audience.

"Too many people are blaming the victim," said Shawn Cunningham, 34, a former Charlotte banker studying political science at NCCU. "Anyone that would take the position that this is her fault, shame on you. The press has disrespected this young lady. You have marginalized my sister to a stripper and an exotic dancer. You don't identify her as a student. You don't identify her as a mother. You don't identify her as a woman."

The audience applauded Cunningham's remarks.

Harris C. Johnson, a historian and NCCU graduate, recounted a case in which a black male was arrested on suspicion of raping a white woman and later released when police realized they had the wrong person.

"Those lacrosse players met the profile. Why weren't they arrested?" Johnson asked Nifong. "What's the difference? Is it the billion-dollar endowment of Duke, which can buy anything and everyone?"

"My answer to you, sir," Nifong said, "is I don't want to arrest the wrong person in any case. I only want to arrest the right person, and I want to convict the right person. And I don't want any person who did not commit a crime to be arrested or put on trial."

Deputy Police Chief Ron Hodge, a 24-year veteran of the Durham police force, expressed satisfaction at the tenor of the hourlong discussion.

"Durham, North Carolina, and the citizens of Durham, North Carolina, are very vocal folk," he said afterward. "They speak out on what they believe, but I have never known this community to get into an uproar and act in a reactive fashion. You saw these students up here today: They're intelligent; they're articulate; they're not going off on some kind of tangent like that."