"When You Don't Have Evidence on Your Side..."

The Tonya Craft case has followed the patterns of the infamous child molestation witch hunts such as the McMartin and Edenton cases, but it also has a number of parallels with the Duke Lacrosse Case. In that one, prosecutor Michael Nifong never interviewed any of the three young men whom he had indicted.

Likewise, the DA's office has not interviewed Ms. Craft, according to an interview with Channel 9 news. (This interview took place before Judge Brian House threw down a gag order, as it is not to his liking for a defendant -- especially one who clearly is innocent -- to mount a defense.) To make matters worse, prosecutor Chris Arnt told WTVC:

When you don't have evidence on your side, when you don't have truth on your side, you have to go out and try to poison the jury pool and that's the kind of stuff they're pulling.

Arnt's statement is most interesting. First, he and his tag-team partner Len Gregor changed the original charges from the alleged abuse happening on a specific day at a specific slumber party at Ms. Craft's home to a nebulous affair that occurred over a three-year period, but not at the slumber party. That was because a number of girls were prepared to testify that there was no sexual abuse at the party. House agreed to keep the girls from testifying.

Second, if anyone has "poisoned" the jury pool, it has been the prosecution teaming with the local media to convict Ms. Craft in the press. Like Nifong in the Duke case, who gave more than 70 interviews in which he told nothing but lies, it seems that the prosecution knows that lies are out the door and in the community before truth even is able to tie its shoelaces.

You see, if Arnt really believed that he had "truth on his side," then he would not fear the defense being able to provide witnesses that presented a rebuttal argument. Instead, Arnt has managed to have the opposing testimony thrown out altogether because, apparently, he doesn't much believe in his own evidence.

The father of one of the girls who is claiming she was abused went to the prosecution and told them he did not believe that any abuse happened. What was the response of the "ministers of justice"? Well, the way that they dealt with this evidence bombshell was to threaten the father with obstruction of justice if he did not go along with their scheme.

Again, if Chris Arnt believes he really has "truth on his side," then he would not be afraid of a parent who seriously doubts that Arnt's "evidence" has veracity. Unfortunately for Arnt, the father's doubt also were recorded by Tonya Craft's private investigator, Eric Echols.

What to do when someone has exculpatory evidence? Why, arrest the person who found the evidence and have him charged with felonies! In other words, take a page from Michael Nifong, who had cab driver Moez Elmostafa arrested after he found out that Elmostafa had Reade Seligmann as a passenger in his cab at the very time that Nifong claimed in his statements that Seligmann was raping Crystal Mangum. Nifong knew that even in the corrupt Durham courts, he might have a hard time explaining how Seligmann could be in two places simultaneously. (There also was a time-stamped photo of Seligmann standing in front of an automatic teller withdrawing money, the time being when the alleged rape was supposed to have been going on; Nifong, however, did not try to arrest the automatic teller.)

Furthermore, if Arnt and Gregor really were interested in the truth, they would have looked at the evidence from the other side. However, like Nifong, their entire "investigation" has been about trying to rig the court proceedings (with Brian House's help) and keep out exculpatory evidence.

For example, when attorneys asked Arnt for information that he had in his possession of children at the slumber party claiming there was no abuse, he lied to the attorneys and said he did not have it. He later turned it over, after being forced by Georgia law to do so. However, the very fact that he would lie tells me that he is not all that confident about his own evidence.

This case was built on lies, the prosecutors are lying, and Judge House is encouraging the whole sorry affair because the last thing he wants to see is a jury verdict that makes Arnt and Gregor and some other powerful people unhappy.