“The bottom line is that everyone is looking bad” in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, former federal prosecutor Annemarie McAvoy tells the Christian Science Monitor. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is dropping the case, citing witness credibility problems. Referring to actions by the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, McAvoy says, “I've never heard of a rape victim making a public statement or filing a civil action that early in the process [ ] [Diallo and her lawyer] were looking for money. They wanted to put pressure on the DA's office to keep the criminal case going, and I think it backfired.”
McAvoy now teaching at Fordham Law School, believes Vance may have moved too fast and aggressively against Strauss-Kahn. Another former federal prosecutor, Alan Kaufman, says, that if prosecutors had gone forward, “they would have to bring out all the falsehoods and omissions that occurred during the pretrial process, and they would have had a very tough road ahead.”