Editorial: The right outcome in DSK case
Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn enters a Manhattan court. (Aug. 23, 2011) Credit: Getty Images
The dismissal of the criminal charges against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the only outcome of this international incident that preserves the integrity of our criminal justice system.
A judge ended the melodrama yesterday by throwing out the indictment after the Manhattan District attorney, Cyrus Vance, determined that the woman making the sexual assault accusation was no longer credible. An appeals court later properly agreed that the facts didn't warrant another look by a special prosecutor.
These rulings are unlikely to quell cries of injustice from those familiar with a system that hasn't always treated women, minorities and immigrants with dignity and justice. But the claim rings hollow in this particular case.
Vance's office believed the initial story of a powerless hotel maid from Guinea, Nafissatou Diallo, and rushed to the airport to arrest Strauss-Kahn, pulling him off a jet bound for Paris. He was held without bail, and then under house arrest, precisely because he was powerful, with the means and connections to flee.
Diallo's persistent falsehoods, however, about what happened in the hotel room and almost everything in her life story left prosecutors wondering whether even they -- never mind a jury -- could believe her beyond a reasonable doubt.
Those prosecutors fulfilled their duty to vindicate not only victims, but defendants and our society. hN
