atlanta child murders case study answer key

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The Atlanta Child Murders: A Case Study in Fiber Analysis

Who was Wayne Williams? Wayne Bertram Williams was born on May 27, 1958 and raised in Atlanta’s Dixie Hills neighborhood of Northwest Atlanta to Homer and Faye Williams. Both parents were teachers. Williams graduated from Douglass High school and developed a keen interest in radio and journalism. Eventually he constructed his own carrier-current radio station. He also began hanging out at radio stations WIGO and WAOK where he befriended a number of the announcing crew and began dabbling in becoming a music producer and manager.

Tell me generally about the victims (the 5 W’s). Who: Edward Smith, Alfred Evans, Milton Harvey, Yusef Bell, Angel Lenair, Jeffery Mathis, Eric Middlebrooks, Chris Richardson, Latonya Wilson, Aaron Wyche, Anthony Carter, Earl Terell, Clifford Jones, Darren Glass, Charles Stephens, Aaron Jackson, Patrick Rogers, Lubie Geter, Terry Pue, Patrick Baltazar, Curtis Walker, Joseph Bell, Timothy Hill, Eddie Duncan, Larry Rogers, Michael Mcintosh, Jimmy Ray Payne, John Porter, Nathaniel Cater, What: Causes of death between the victims were, asphyxiated, strangulated, shot, bludgeoned to death and stabbed multiple times. Where: In Atlanta, Georgia, USA. When: from the summer of 1979 until the spring of 1981. Why: Unknown.

What did most of the victims have in common? The age range was similar (children and teens from 7-15 years old and young adults from 21-28) and all of the victims were black.

How and when did police first encounter Williams? What was the outcome of this meeting? Williams car was stopped by two policeman after they recognized his car next to one of the crime scenes.

What happened two days later? The nude body of Nathaniel Cater, 27, was found floating downriver a few miles from the bridge where police had seen the suspicious station wagon.

Explain the carpet evidence, both from DuPont and Chevrolet. Dog hair and fiber evidence recovered from the rear of the vehicle were used in the case against Williams, as identical fibers were found on some of the victims. They matched his dog and the carpet in his parents’ house.

How did probability enter the case? Probability entered the case as two police officers heard a splash happening in one of the bridges and saw Williams’ car at the same place/time but did not have any concrete evidence that he had been the one that threw the body on the water. The probability that it had been Williams though, was high.

What was the verdict and the sentence? He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Georgia’s Hancock State Prison at Sparta.

In your opinion, was the evidence against Williams conclusive? No, because the main evidence they used against Williams was carpet fiber and dog hair. In my opinion, the problem is: two people could have the same type of carpet, and the DNA sequence presented in Williams’ dog could belong to every 1 out of 100 dogs, and despite the chances that the strand of hair belonged to Williams’ dog being high, it wasn’t conclusive because there was no way they could prove his dog had been the source of it.

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Atlanta Child Murders Case Study Answer Key

The Atlanta Child Murders Case Study Answer Key unveils the chilling details of a notorious crime that shook the nation. As we delve into this complex and controversial case, we’ll examine the key events, evidence, trial proceedings, and lasting impact on society.

This case study provides a comprehensive overview of the investigation, highlighting the challenges faced by law enforcement and the controversial aspects of the evidence presented. We’ll explore the role of Wayne Williams, the primary suspect, and the fiber analysis and bite mark comparisons that linked him to the murders.

Overview of the Atlanta Child Murders Case

The Atlanta Child Murders Case was a series of horrific crimes that occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, between 1979 and 1981. The case involved the abduction, torture, and murder of at least 28 young African American children and adolescents.

The murders sparked panic and terror in the Atlanta community and led to one of the largest and most complex investigations in American history.

Investigation and Evidence

The investigation into the Atlanta Child Murders Case was led by the Atlanta Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

One of the key figures in the investigation was Wayne Williams, a 23-year-old African American man who was initially considered a suspect in the case.

Evidence linking Williams to the murders included fiber analysis, bite mark comparisons, and the discovery of fibers from Williams’s car in the victims’ clothing.

Trial and Verdict

Wayne Williams was arrested and charged with the murders of two of the victims in 1981.

The trial lasted for nine months and was one of the most closely watched trials in American history.

The jury found Williams guilty of two counts of murder and sentenced him to two life sentences plus 125 years in prison.

Legacy and Unresolved Questions, Atlanta child murders case study answer key

The Atlanta Child Murders Case had a profound impact on the Atlanta community and the nation as a whole.

The case raised questions about race, poverty, and the criminal justice system.

There are still many unanswered questions about the case, including the possibility that there were additional suspects involved.

FAQ Summary: Atlanta Child Murders Case Study Answer Key

What was the timeline of the Atlanta Child Murders?

The murders occurred between July 1979 and May 1981, with 28 victims identified.

How was Wayne Williams linked to the murders?

Fiber analysis and bite mark comparisons linked Williams to several victims, along with other circumstantial evidence.

What were the challenges in proving Williams’ guilt?

The lack of eyewitnesses, the controversial nature of the bite mark evidence, and the possibility of additional suspects posed challenges.

The Atlanta Child Murders Through The Eyes Of People Who Reported On It

Donnell Suggs | WABE

July 18th, 2019

Curtis Walker, Jr., left, holds the hand of his former wife, Ms. Catherine Leach, mother of Curtis Walker, III, a victim in the child murder cases in Atlanta.

Associated Press

It was all about the children.

Black children, mostly boys, were missing and found dead throughout Atlanta. In some cases, they were strangled. In others, they were stabbed and shot.

Monica Kaufman Pearson, then a nightly anchor on WSB-TV, would come on television every night and recite the common phrase:

“It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

And though that phrase was used across the nation, it had more resonance in Atlanta, particularly in 1979.

Knowing where your children were at night (and during the day) became a mission for the entire city, not just a neighborhood, a block or a housing project. The entire city was put on notice.

“As an anchor, during those days you had two responsibilities: to let people know what was going on and to educate children and their families on how to be safe,” said Pearson, who was just Kaufman at the time.

The Atlanta Child Murders started 40 years ago this month, and for people like Pearson who covered the case — who lived and breathed that dark period in the city’s history — the memories remain vivid.

“It was a time when we started embracing all kids,” said Pearson.

The anchor had her daughter Claire in 1980, two years before the Atlanta Child Murders case was closed. Wayne Williams was arrested, tried and found guilty on Feb. 27, 1982.

“It was a frightening time,” she said. “Nobody felt comfortable during that time period once they found out that there was a serial killer among us.”

That fear didn’t stay local.

• National News

The headline of the March 31, 1981, Atlanta Constitution — before it became the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — read “Body of youth found in Chattahoochee.”  Those six words shared the front page with multiple stories of President Ronald Reagan’s improving condition following being shot by John Hinckley Jr. a day before.

“The incidents began to become closer and closer 1981 into the spring,” Vern E. Smith, who was  Newsweek’s Bureau Chief in Atlanta at the time, told WABE. “That’s when I think the sort of universal fear just kind of ratcheted up. Because then it became clear, in fact, that there apparently was somebody at that, that that was a serial killer at work.”

Telethons and special concerts, some of which had the likes of Frank Sinatra headline, took place around the city. Whatever could get the word out that kids were being murdered.

Then-Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson was once pictured, quite famously, with $100,000 in cash spread out on a desk. He took to local television to coax a tip from whoever might know something about whoever was committing these heinous crimes.

The crimes were focused on the city’s south and west sides, but as time went on, there was an understanding that it might not stay there.

“I had a lot of middle class, black friends who had sons and weren’t worried in the beginning, but as time went on you realized you didn’t know where this person was coming from,” Pearson said.

At least 23 minors were killed by the time all was said and done nearly two years later. Six other victims were over the age of 18.

Three stories shared the front page of the combined Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution morning street edition on Sunday, Feb. 28, 1982, the headline blaring in huge bold type: “Williams guilty.” The paper was a combined 320 pages and had inside of it 20 separate sections. None of those pages listed evidence that Williams committed the crimes. No matter, the “Atlanta Monster,” as he was first called on the cover of a New York tabloid, was finally caught.

But from the summer of 1979 until the day a jury took just 11 hours to find Williams guilty of the murders of two adults — Nathaniel Cater, 27, and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21 — and given to two life sentences, the way the case was covered by the press and handled by law enforcement was puzzling for some. It remains so some 40 years later.

An Ending And More

“From 1991: Wayne Williams 10 years after the missing and murdered” by then-Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Gary Pomerantz on June 16, 1991, told a story of Williams a decade into his double life sentence. There were doubts from the beginning, and some in the media shared them.

“The two people that Wayne [Williams] was convicted of killing were both adults,” Smith said. “And so that was part of the thing that didn’t add up. That was that notion that it was not going to be satisfying, the way it ended.”

No one was ever convicted in the child killings, but the case of was closed, leaving unanswered questions.

Donald Albright, co-founder of Tenderfoot TV, a local content and storytelling hub, and executive producer of the Atlanta Monster podcast, which looks into the Atlanta Child Monster case, believes the answers to those questions are out there somewhere.

“We wanted to go into this open-minded and bring energy to the middle, to that grey area,” said Albright by phone one afternoon. “…If Williams is guilty of all or some of the crimes, then what happened next is the story.”

James Balwin, who first reported on the murders for the December 1981 issue of Playboy magazine and again later for his book “The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” wrote of Williams arrest and conviction, “No one who was in Atlanta can say that this had the effect of causing Atlanta to sleep more easily.”

The decision to re-examine the evidence in the Atlanta Child Murders cases was announced at a press conference in March. Four decades after the crimes were committed, advances in technology used to test evidence could provide a sense of closure to the families of the victims.

“They could have been my children,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told WSBTV in March. “They could have been your children.”

Albright was at that press conference and talked to the mayor afterward.

“I think she has good intentions; some of those kids were probably her peers,” he said. “There are some genuine feelings behind this re-examination.”

As of July 1, there have not been any new developments.

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Mayor: Investigators have reviewed DNA in the Atlanta Child Murders case

Credit: Alyssa Pointer

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms says investigators have recently “methodically reviewed” an estimated 40% of evidence related to the deaths of more than 20 young Black children, teens and adults who have been missing for decades.

Bottoms shared the update on the Atlanta Child Murders during a Friday morning press conference about new public safety plans recommended to her by her recently formed anti-violence advisory council.

The mayor said investigators processed that evidence on June 21, but authorities do not to plan to publicly name the victims that they we were able to extract DNA from for testing because “we want to be mindful of the integrity of the investigation.”

Bottoms in March 2019 announced that police and prosecutors would potentially reopen the child cases using modern technology to test old case evidence. Forty years ago, freelance television cameraman and music promoter Wayne Williams was taken into custody and charged with murdering 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater.

In 1982, Williams was convicted of killing two adults, but police also linked him to the deaths of over 20 Atlanta children and teens from 1979-81.

“This was a very, very painful time in our city’s history,” Bottoms said Friday.

“Part of my asking that this be reopened was in light of where we are with DNA testing some 40 years later...to make sure that we have examined everything possible to make sure that the person or people responsible are being held accountable.”

Bottoms said a private lab is analyzing the deteriorated DNA and fiber evidence in all 30 of the cases. She also said investigators have extended the timeline from 1970 to 1985 to see if there are any additional children or victims that may have been overlooked.

“I believe there are two cases...that we have been able to send off DNA for additional analysis,” Bottoms said.

“We certainly hope to have that information back over the next few months. Hopefully, before I leave office I hope that we’re able to get it back, but if not, I trust that whomever the next mayor will keep this as a priority,” she said. “And it’s truly my hope that with the analysis of this additional DNA that we can have some additional answers.

Portraits of the missing children were recently installed as an art memorial at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The city is also creating an “ eternal flame ” and memorial wall that will list the names of those murdered or left missing at City Hall.

About the Author

Wilborn P. Nobles III covers Atlanta City Hall for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He began covering DeKalb County Schools for The AJC in November 2020. He previously covered Baltimore County for The Baltimore Sun and education for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He interned at the Washington Post. He graduated from Louisiana State University.

Credit: Courtesy of MARTA

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: TRILITH STUDIOS

Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC

Credit: Gwinnett County Police Department

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This Day In History : May 22

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Wayne Williams is questioned by police for Atlanta child murders

On May 22, 1981, police staking out a bridge over the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia, hear a loud splash, and begin chasing Wayne Williams as he attempts to drive away in a station wagon. After questioning him about his involvement in the unprecedented string of child murders in Atlanta over the two previous years, Williams was released. He was arrested one month later, on June 21, 1981.

In a spree that began in July 1979, 29 Black children and young men disappeared or were killed in the Atlanta area. The only clue detectives had to go on was that many of the bodies had the same rare yellow-green nylon fiber on them, leading investigators to believe that all of the killings were connected.

As they desperately searched for the manufacturer of the fiber, a newspaper reported on the significance of the fiber evidence. Fearing that he was on the verge of being discovered, the killer then began dumping the bodies of his victims in the Chattahoochee River. This, in turn, inspired the police surveillance that ensnared Williams on May 22.

The rare fiber was eventually identified as a yarn that was sold to a Georgia carpet company, West Point Pepperell, which used it to make a line called Luxaire. The color of the fibers found on the bodies, including Nathaniel Cater, matched Luxaire English Olive; this was the type of carpet found in Williams’ home.

Experts estimated that one in approximately 8,000 Atlanta area homes contained Luxaire English Olive carpet. Prosecutors used this probability, along with fiber and hair evidence from Williams’ car and dog, to establish the fact that it was an extremely small chance that anyone other than Williams could be the killer. Adding to the already damning evidence against him, the killings immediately stopped after Williams was arrested.

On February 27, 1982, the jury found Wayne Williams guilty of the murders of Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, and he was sentenced to life in prison. After the verdict, the Atlanta police department closed 22 other cases, but Williams was never tried, or charged, for those crimes. Since that time, some conspiracy theorists have advanced the idea that it was members of the Ku Klux Klan , not Wayne Williams, who was responsible for the killings in the hopes of starting a race war. Though this theory has not been accepted by the courts, an investigation into five of the murders for which Williams was not convicted was reopened in 2005. It was closed again in 2006 after police dropped an unpromising probe into the Ku Klux Klan’s possible involvement.

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The Real FBI Agent Behind Mindhunter on What Actually Happened in Atlanta

Criminal profiler John Douglas isn’t exactly a household name, but his work has influenced a vast amount of pop culture from Silence of the Lambs to Netflix’s Mindhunter . As the real-life inspiration behind Mindhunter’ s main character, Holden Ford (played by Jonathan Groff), Douglas was a founder of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and one of the first agents to interview serial killers in an attempt to better understand future predators.

Though retired from the FBI since 1996, Douglas continues to work on cases and has written several books about criminal profiling — his latest, co-written by Mark Olshaker, is The Killer Across the Table — and he lends a knowledgeable hand to TV shows and movies that aren’t, as he puts it, solely about “blood and gore.” (He’s even developing a podcast based on his original Mindhunter book.) Now, the Netflix drama inspired by one of those books has revisited one of the more controversial chapters of his career: the Atlanta child murders . Though a man named Wayne Williams was convicted in 1982 for two murders tied to the case, Douglas doubts that Williams is responsible for many of the other 26 killings — despite matching a profile that Douglas himself made when he began investigating the case in the ’80s — and Atlanta police officially reopened the case last March.

Vulture sat down with Douglas to chat about the fact and fiction of Mindhunter , the Atlanta child killings, the most notable interviews of his career, and why he wants Netflix to keep renewing the show until Ford finally catches the BTK killer .

This season, I felt like I saw more of you in Bill Tench than Holden Ford. What did you think? You’re right! You know when Holden is getting chewed out at the retirement party? If it’s just me, this person that’s superior to me in rank, and no one’s around, I’m not going to take it. You’re going to call me a twerp? No, you’re not going to get away with that. I never challenged a person I was interviewing, either. I would never call Manson “you little shit” or whatever the hell term was used. No, I stroked his ego. I let him feel like he was in control of the interview.

What was it like to speak to Charles Manson ? We actually went back a couple of times to interview Manson. He did take the sunglasses. He wanted to show everyone that he ripped us off because everyone would know that he was talking to the FBI. [ Mimicking back and forth with Manson ] “I want those glasses.” “These are Ray-Ban glasses. These are expensive!” “I’ve got to take them back, man. I’ve got to show everybody I ripped you off.” So he took the glasses and he never gave them back! Unlike in the show.

A lot of characters on the show are based on real people, but they’re pretty fictionalized. What did you think about the story line with Tench’s son? Should we be worried about him? Well, it did not happen to the real guy Tench was representing, [Robert] Ressler, but that case does exist . It was up in San Francisco. A woman in a park with a 20-month-old toddler. Two brothers, 10 years old and 7 years old, snatch the child. They kill the child in the basement with a brick and then they attach a cross to the child, believing that the child’s going to be resurrected. So that did happen.

The Atlanta child-murder case was one of the Behavior Science Unit’s first huge investigations, and it plays a big role in Mindhunter . What can you tell me about the real case? Throughout the whole trial, all the months leading up to the apprehension, I would come and go because I had other work. By 1981, not only did I have the Atlanta child killings, but I had the Tylenol murders. We had the Unabomber case up in Chicago. Then we had other cases, Buffalo’s .22-caliber killer.

I did the written analysis of the case and people didn’t like it. The FBI had me sit down and do an interview with People magazine. In the interview, I say the suspect is going to be black. I’m back on the case down there, I walk into a task force and pretty much the entire force was African-American. Even the agent in charge of the FBI office, John Glover, was the first African-American agent in charge of an FBI office. He wasn’t introduced at all in the show. And so, I wasn’t warmly welcomed.

They were afraid that I was going to create a race war. I remember walking down to one of the crime scenes and a detective says, “You’re Douglas?” And I say, “Yeah.” And he said, “I saw your profile. It’s a bunch of shit, man.” I said, “Fuck you, man. I didn’t ask to be here. I just want to go back to Quantico. I got a lot of cases waiting for me back there.”

To me, the turning point in the case came when a guy called up the police saying that he was the killer. He’s using the N-word, giving directions on where we can find another body. I hear the tape and I said, “That’s not the killer. But we got to catch him because if we don’t, he’s going to be bothering the hell out of this investigation.” What do we do? We’re gonna show how stupid we really are. Lo and behold, the guy calls in, “You dumb-asses, I told you to search this side of the street. You searched the other!” We traced the call and caught him. What’s the significance? Well, that ended up in the newspapers in Atlanta. And who read it? The killer. Within a day or so, we end up with a body on Sigman Road. Now, for certain, we know they follow the press.

The crosses they used for the memorial were a real suggestion I had, too. It was true that the Bureau was arguing among themselves who’s going to make the crosses. They went back and forth. It was never done. That’s why, after a while, I would do things without asking for permission. Just asking for forgiveness if I screwed up.

The scene where they build the crosses never happened? No, never got to them! I have several things that I wanted to do. The big Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra concert, I knew the unknown subject was going to be in that audience. So I said, “Let’s look for somebody who has some type of security background who has a vehicle. We can screen them right away. We can get rid of all the females. We’ll get rid of people who don’t have cars. We can eliminate through race.” Again, it was a great idea. It wasn’t used. We know later on that Williams was at that concert.

Oh my God. Yeah, they wonder why I drink. [ Laughs .]

Do you think the right man was caught? The Atlanta police reopened the case earlier this year. I never thought that Wayne Williams did all of those cases. There are other cases that should not be on the list. Two of the girls, Angela Lanier and Latonya Wilson, and some other ones that did not fit. Roy Hazelwood [another FBI profiler] and I had about ten of them that we thought were behaviorally linked. Now they are looking at it again. It’s not that [Williams] didn’t do any [of the murders]. But it’s the question, did he do all 28 of them?

If investigators contacted you, would you help out on the reopened case? I definitely would go back.

Mindhunter is also slowly unraveling the BTK case . How frustrating was the actual investigation? You started getting information on him in the ’80s, right? He wasn’t caught until 2005. Dennis Rader, he wasn’t any genius. He was just very lucky. In 1984, we said he was a police-buff type, attending college and probably in criminal justice. He was. He was a pseudo–enforcement officer. You see that and you think, Gee, had they just maybe gone over there … It was really the stupidity of Rader that got him caught, unfortunately. It wasn’t because of super-duper police work. He wasn’t smart like Ed Kemper. He was more on the lines of David Berkowitz, the same kind of average IQ.

I hope the show sticks with the BTK case because I want to see Ford and Tench catch him. They’ll have to speed up on it because he gets caught after I retired. But they got some other great cases . From Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Robert Hansen, the Alaskan serial killer who hunted women down like wild animals after setting them loose up in the mountains. The Green River murder case that nearly did me in. Also, I interviewed assassins. Besides Squeaky Fromme and Arthur Bremer, we did Sirhan Sirhan, Sarah Jane Moore who shot at Ford along with Squeaky Fromme. So you can even get into some of the assassination types. It’s just how long they want to take it. It can go a long, long time, really.

You’ve talked to so many infamous criminals over the years. Was there ever a killer you were excited — for lack of a better word — to interview? I don’t know if “excited” is the right word, but I was fascinated by the worst ones. Gary Heidnik in Philadelphia, who inspired Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs — I did an analysis because I assisted the prosecution. We knew he was going to claim that he was insane. He did do some insane acts — like imprison and torture half a dozen women by keeping them in a pit with water in it, by putting an electric current on the shackles around their wrists — but he was not insane. When you look at the crime scene, the victims were kept in the cellar, with various concrete blocks around the window so no one could hear any screaming. His crimes were certainly insane, but he knew right from wrong.

Another one was Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris out in California. My God, these guys raped and killed a half-dozen women, young teenagers, playing audiotape as they tortured them. I have the tapes of these victims who are begging for their lives. I made Scott Glenn of Silence of the Lambs , who portrayed me, listen to them when he came to my office. He got all emotional and said, “John, I was against the death penalty, but I didn’t know there are people like that.”

Let’s end on a lighter question. In Mindhunter this season, Holden says that he likes New Wave music. Are you actually a New Wave fan? No, I like soul music. Right now in my car, Sirius, I got the soul channel. But not the spiritual soul. I used to watch Soul Train after school. I’d be down in the basement with a black-and-white TV, learning the latest moves.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity .

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Case Study Atlanta Child Murders Wayne Williams Hair Fibers PRINT and DIGITAL

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DIGITAL OR PRINT RESOURCE POST or PRINT & GO! In this Cross-Curricular Active Reading Case Study, the focus is on HAIR & FIBERS. Students will study thefamous case of The Atlanta Child Murders and how trace evidence was able to connect Wayne Williams to the victims.

Active Reading Case Studies can be used in a variety of ways:

➩Attention-Grabbing Introduction to the Unit

➩ Supplement to Forensic Topics

➩ Enrichment & Extension Activity to challenge students who need more

➩ Quick & Easy Sub or Emergency Plans

➩ Engaging Non-Fiction Text for Cross-Curricular Implementation

Content Covered:

✽Hair & Fibers

✽Laws of Probability

✽Serial Killer

✽Depending on reading level, student engagement with the text, and familiarity with the technology & format this resource takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Included in this download:

✽ 1 Product 2 types of files for flexibility

✽Active Reading Case Study: Wayne Williams PDF (for in-classroom use)

✽Active Reading Case Study: Wayne Williams Google Slide (you can share directly to students)

✽Answer Key & Teacher Notes

✽Step by step teacher guide for sharing google docs.

GRADE LEVEL:

✽Middle ➙ High School (8th - 12th)

Teacher Prep Time:

✽0 min just PRINT & GO!

**PDF files are non-editable & may not be modified

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• OJ Simpson & the 7S's of Crime Scene Investigation
• The Night Stalker & Fingerprints
• Wayne Williams & The Atlanta Child Murder Hair and Fiber
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Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders

• Challenging Evidence

Since the Wayne Williams case pretty much came down to fiber evidence, it's obviously open to serious challenge. Chet Dettlinger is a former assistant to the Atlanta Chief of Police. He and a group of other high-ranking ex-law-enforcement officers independently investigated the case. Dettlinger, now a Georgia attorney, was asked by Williams' defense lawyer, Al Binder, to act as a consultant, and he co-authored, The List , the only book to be published on the case. Among other problems, he saw glaring errors with the way the fiber evidence was presented.

"The 'matching' fibers were taken only from victims," he says. "Only one individual red cotton fiber was found at the Williams home — which can be found in abundance at K-Mart or Walmart — which is similar to fibers in victim Michael McIntosh's underwear. That came from the vacuum sweepings of a car, which the Williamses may or may not have owned at the time that McIntosh was murdered. Not one fiber from any victim was found anywhere near the carpet in the Williams' house.

"Insofar as the Wellman fiber is concerned, they were attempting to demonstrate how rare the fiber in the carpet in 'Wayne Williams' room' was. This ignores the fact that all of the Williamses, and any regular visitor to the home, existed in the same environment."

Dettlinger goes on to pinpoint the central errors in the prosecution's probability analysis as:

• They ignored the fact that the same carpet was in all but one or two rooms in the house, including the parents' bedroom and the living room.
• They overlooked the fact that Wayne Williams had changed rooms since the last murder on their list. The room they identified as his was actually used by a relative.
• They ignored the fact that even in residential applications many of the exact same fibers were dyed the same color and used in rugs which are not the same model number as those used in the Williams' house.
• They chose to narrow their analysis to a statistical area that doesn't exist — the southeast. They also failed to allow for the possibility that the killer or killers lived elsewhere and traveled regularly to the area.
• They included only fibers said to have been used in carpets for residential applications, ignoring the fact that the same fiber could be found in many apartments and businesses.
• They ignored the fact that millions of pounds of the exact same fiber had been sold undyed to other manufacturers for use in applications such as car mats.
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The Point Conversations and insights about the moment.

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Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

What’s Spanish for ‘Chutzpah’?

This week’s announcements by the governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain that they will recognize a Palestinian state are drawing predictable reactions from predictable quarters. Some see them as useful rebukes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war strategy in Gaza that will further isolate Israel. Others, including me, view them as feckless gestures that reward Hamas’s terrorism.

That’s a column for another day. For now, it’s enough to note the Spanish government’s sheer nerve.

Though Spanish public opinion overwhelmingly supports swift recognition of Palestinian statehood, it’s another story when it comes to Spain’s own independence movements. In 2017 the regional government of Catalonia held a referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court , on the question of Catalan independence. Though turnout was low — in part because Spanish police forcibly blocked voting — the Catalan government said nearly 90 percent of voters favored independence.

The central government in Madrid responded by dismissing the Catalan government, imposing direct rule. Two years later, under the current left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, Spain sentenced nine Catalan independence leaders to prison on charges of sedition, though they were later pardoned. This year the lower house of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant amnesty to those involved in the 2017 campaign as part of a deal to prop up Sánchez’s government, despite a Senate veto. Seventy percent of the Spanish public opposes the amnesty .

Catalans aren’t the only ethnic minority in Spain that has sought independence, only to encounter violent suppression. In the 1980s the Spanish Interior Ministry under a socialist government responded to the long-running Basque separatist movement with state-sponsored death squads, notoriously responsible for a string of kidnappings, tortures and assassinations. The Spanish government called the separatists terrorists — as indeed some were — though their tactics look tame compared with Hamas’s. By the time the conflict ended in 2011, it had claimed more than 1,000 lives.

Spain possesses two cities on the African continent, Ceuta and Melilla, both of which are claimed by Morocco and have been stormed by African migrants seeking entry into the European Union. They are protected by extensive border fences and fortifications strikingly reminiscent of Israel’s breached border fence with Gaza.

There are many other independence movements throughout Europe, from Scotland to Flanders to Corsica and the Balkans. Many of these movements tend to have affinities with Palestinians, for reasons that are obvious. More difficult to explain are governments that suppress independence seekers at home while applauding those abroad. Some might call it deflection. To others, it looks like hypocrisy.

Brent Staples

Editorial Board Member

Fixing the Calamity in U.S. Math Knowledge Starts With Algebra

The federal government made a disastrous choice a decade ago when it abandoned an accountability system (known as No Child Left Behind) that required schools to focus intently on helping the lowest-performing students catch up with their peers. Since then, the already alarming achievement gaps that separate poor and wealthy children have only widened.

Math scores have plummeted, raising fears that the United States is destined to fall permanently behind its competitor nations when it comes to preparing young people for careers in science, technology and engineering.

As Troy Closson of The Times wrote this week , some school systems have opted for policies that disguise the achievement gap without remedying it. A decade ago, for example, the San Francisco public schools responded to high failure rates and achievement gaps by moving algebra — which is foundational to the study of math — from eighth grade to ninth grade, meaning that no one was allowed to take the course in eighth grade simply because some students struggled with it.

This system wrote off poor students who might have benefited from exposure to new material and denied well-prepared children the opportunity to forge ahead in their studies. Not surprisingly, the policy failed to achieve its central goal, which was to close racial gaps in the taking of advanced math courses. Chastened by parental outrage, San Francisco reversed course .

Only about a quarter of American students study algebra in eighth grade . That proportion needs to grow. Fortunately a few states, including North Carolina and Texas , are adopting systems under which children who meet specified performance levels on state exams are automatically channeled into advanced math classes.

In Dallas there are no hoops to jump through. As The Dallas Morning News reported last year , young people no longer have to wait for counselors to recommend them or for parents who know little about how schools operate to sign them up. Students who were unaware that honors courses even existed are now being enrolled.

The gravest challenge facing the country today is redressing the devastating learning losses that children suffered during the Covid pandemic. Among other things, solving this problem will mean equipping teachers to manage classrooms that include students of different preparation levels.

One new study offers reason for optimism. It shows that students who would ordinarily be tracked into remedial work can perform well in algebra classes that include higher-performing peers — and experience broader academic success — when teachers are trained to handle heterogeneous groups and are given more time to prepare.

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Michelle Cottle

Opinion Writer

In the Bronx, Trump Imagines His New York Glory Days

Donald Trump is still such a New Yorker.

Rarely has this been clearer than at Thursday evening’s rally in the Bronx. Sure, his speech featured his usual campaign folderol: the “rigged election” lies, the claims of legal persecution, the scaremongering about migrants and, of course, the wild claims of how, during his presidency, America was richer, stronger, smarter, safer, more respected, more peaceful, more beautiful, sexier — all the things — than at any other point in the history of the planet.

But the parts that were a little different and that the former president clearly enjoyed the most were his rose-colored reminiscences about his years as a player in his hometown — back when most New Yorkers thought he was a harmless joke rather than a serious threat to American democracy.

Trump went on and on about the local landmarks he had worked to renovate and the big ol’ buildings he built, and he could not stop talking about his dealings with the city’s rough and tough contractors. “These are killers!” he gushed. “By comparison, talking to world leaders is, I believe, easier.” Or how about this bit of schmaltz? “I knew that if I could build a skyscraper in Manhattan, I could do anything.”

These tales of his past heroism and genius tended to be rambling to the point of incoherent and probably confused many people with their utter irrelevance to the presidential race at hand. But the guy was obviously having so much fun with them, he was practically glowing.

This was all history according to Trump, of course, meaning his many and varied business failures didn’t make the cut. The whole display was kinda goofy. But it was also a shrewd play to New Yorkers’ sense of exceptionalism.

The dark side of this was Trump’s false hyperbole about how his beloved city has become a dirty, crime-ridden hellhole — that only he can fix, of course. Which goes for the rest of the nation as well, he told the crowd: “If a New Yorker can’t save this country, no one can.”

Aww. How adorable. But what this country really needs is someone to save it from this particular New Yorker.

Frank Bruni

Contributing Opinion Writer

Haley as Veep? Don’t Bet on It

Touched, amused, baffled — none of those words precisely captures my reaction to many people’s surprise at Nikki Haley’s announcement that she’d vote for Donald Trump . Did they think that Haley, who’d so recently pantomimed a principled stand against Trump, actually stood on principle? How quaint. How amnesic. She has always wobbled like a Weeble . The only real suspense is whether she’ll wobble onto the Republican presidential ticket.

I’m betting not, but then my record in the casino of American politics is a spotty one.

Haley would say yes if Trump asked her to be his running mate. Of that much I’m confident. Her overwhelming defeat in the Republican presidential primaries, the polls that show Trump beating President Biden and other developments over the past few months have clearly convinced her that the only path to viability in the Republican Party right now is the one that leads to the doorstep of Mar-a-Lago, where a supplicant must arrive on bended knee.

So here she is, performing her genuflection — despite having called Trump “totally unhinged,” despite her expressions of disgust at his fealty to Vladimir Putin, despite dozens of ways in which Trump contradicts her putative convictions, despite having warned us emphatically that another Trump presidency would be ruinous folly. Never mind! She has personal ambitions to attend to, a future to blaze.

In a post on Truth Social a week and a half ago, Trump stated that he was not considering Haley as his choice for vice president. But he would hardly feel bound by that. He wants to win, period. If she’s the way, it would be her all the way.

She’s not, though. Many of the Republican primary voters who chose her over Trump aren’t likely to follow her into the Trump camp. They were opposing and defying him more than they were supporting and deifying her, and they would recoil from the stench of rank opportunism surrounding a Haley-Trump partnership.

While she arguably complements Trump, she inarguably complicates his anti-establishment message. Picking her would be in cynical league with presidential politics as usual. What’s more, the media coverage of her vice-presidential candidacy would be dominated by her past denunciations of Trump, by all the U-turns and switchbacks on the rocky road of their relationship. It’s not the story line he wants.

He’d be wise, though, to figure out some other prize to dangle before her. You never know when she might wobble in an unhelpful direction.

Biden’s Powerful Reminder of Trump’s Racist History

Just how worried is the Biden campaign about its standing with Black men?

Worried enough, apparently, that it has rolled out an unusually blunt campaign ad reminding the group that President Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is an inveterate racist.

“Donald Trump disrespecting Black folk is nothing new,” a male voice, clearly Black-coded, booms in the spot, following a 1989 clip of Trump saying, “Of course I hate these people,” referring to the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted.

He was sued for refusing to rent his apartments to Black families, and called for the execution of five innocent Black and brown teenagers. It’s why Trump stood with violent white supremacists, warned of a blood bath if he loses the next election, and if he is president again vowed to be a dictator who wants revenge on his enemies. Now, who do you think that is?

Black voters are more likely to support Biden than voters of any other race. But polls in recent months have suggested that support may be softening, especially among Black men.

Heavy-handed ads like this one from the Biden campaign might help reacquaint lower-information Black voters (but especially men) with Trump’s loathsome racial attitudes. There’s value in that, particularly in what could be a very close election.

And yet, most Black voters already hold strong negative views of Trump and have no trouble recognizing his abhorrent views on race. The possibility that a sizable portion of these voters are considering voting for Trump anyway should provoke a flurry of soul-searching in the Democratic Party, as well as outreach and relationship building.

Black voters appear to be at least somewhat open to the idea of finding a new political home. The real task before the Biden campaign, and the Democratic Party, is to give them good reasons to stay. That’s something no 30-second spot can buy.

Zeynep Tufekci

A Blistering Congressional Hearing Forces Accountability on Covid Origins

The unraveling of a high-level attempt to avoid transparency about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic began with a single email uncovered via a Freedom of Information Act request published last year.

Dr. David Morens, a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had emailed a small group of outspoken scientists who opposed the idea that a lab leak was the source of Covid-19. “I always try to communicate on my Gmail,” he wrote , “because my N.I.H. email is FOIA’d constantly.”

If he had to email the group from his N.I.H. email, he promised, “I will delete anything I don’t want to see in The New York Times.”

When the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic subpoenaed those emails, it found that Morens advised his colleagues to avoid oversight requirements and that he intimated he would delete emails related to Covid origins.

Many of those conversations involved EcoHealth Alliance — a nonprofit that collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology , often criticized for its risky research and lax biosafety standards — and Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s president. The Trump administration had terminated an EcoHealth grant, but as these emails showed, Morens was working to reverse that decision. (The termination was eventually reversed, but last week the Biden administration barred EcoHealth from all federal funding, after a hearing in which the organization was scorched by lawmakers from both parties for misrepresenting its work with Chinese virologists.)

After Morens rebuffed the committee’s request for a voluntary interview, it subpoenaed him to testify.

Morens told the committee he used a private email account because he was merely trying to avoid having his personal correspondence with Daszak, whom he described as a longtime friend, become public information. However, the subpoenaed emails revealed Morens advised Daszak on how to publicly respond to the termination of EcoHealth’s grant and demeaned other scientists who worried about biosafety lapses.

Morens wrote to Daszak, “We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails, and if we found them we would delete them.”

Representative Raul Ruiz, a physician who is the committee’s ranking Democrat, told Morens his actions were a “stain on the legacy” of his colleagues. Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona, read email after email from Morens on his avoidance techniques and snapped, “When you say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know this. I didn’t intentionally use my Gmail,’ are you kidding me?”

Morens replied to that and many other pointed questions with a version of “I don’t remember,” drawing strong rebukes from members of both parties.

The only way to reassure the public that smoking guns weren’t deleted is proper transparency.

Farah Stockman

The Importance of a Personal Bridge Between the U.S. and China

There aren’t a lot of things that make me optimistic about U.S.-China relations these days, but Nicholas Burns’s speech on Wednesday to graduating students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government came close. Burns wasn’t speaking in his capacity as the U.S. ambassador to Beijing. His role that day was as a professor who taught at the Kennedy School, with its remarkably international student body, for 13 years.

He made a point of meeting with 25 of the Chinese citizens studying there and told them in his speech, “We’re proud of you, too.”

“Thank you for being 25 of the 300,000 Chinese students in the United States,” he said. “You’re very welcome in our country.”

He also spoke about bumping into his former students in Beijing, including at church during an Easter Sunday Mass.

“There’s a point in the Catholic Mass where you turn to the person beside you when you say, ‘Peace be with you,’” he recalled. “I turned to my left and before I could say anything, this young woman said: ‘Professor Burns, peace be with you. I was in your Great Powers class in 2014.’”

It struck me as he spoke that it is a fortuitous thing that our man in Beijing has personal relationships with some of China’s best and brightest. When ties between the two governments get strained to the brink, he can still see his Chinese counterparts as human beings, with all the complexity and nuance that entails.

It also means that he knows what’s at stake when negotiating agreements with China, including the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement , which has been the basis of scientific cooperation since 1979. That pact, which was once renewed every five years without much debate, has been living on life support, with short-term six-month extensions.

There are good reasons to renegotiate it, and the terms of the U.S.-China relationship itself. China has changed, and we must change, too. But let’s work to preserve what we can of these people-to-people ties and make sure that our interactions are characterized by knowledge of one another, and ideally, mutual respect.

Opinion Researcher

When Antitrust Law Rescues Olivia and Taylor Fans

On a Friday afternoon last fall, Jonathan Kanter, the Department of Justice’s head of antitrust enforcement, met with Times Opinion. I should have been paying attention, but I was staring at a cursed Ticketmaster countdown for Olivia Rodrigo tickets. I never got them.

I later showed Kanter my screen, pointing out the struggle that I (along with teenage girls across America) had endured — indifferent customer service and exorbitant fees. Taylor Swift fans, too, had lodged their Ticketmaster complaints with the D.O.J. after their disastrous experience of buying tickets to the Eras Tour. Kanter assured me he was on the case.

On Thursday, the D.O.J. and dozens of state governments finally filed a suit against Live Nation Entertainment, a corporate glob of revenue streams encompassing music venues, concert promotion, tour merchandise and, of course, Ticketmaster. Kanter stated that all this made Live Nation an “illegal monopoly.” Live Nation called this allegation “absurd” and blamed scalpers and increased demand for high prices.

Live Nation functions both as the middleman and the supplier for a concert’s needs — shuttling both concertgoers and musicians to its own venues, vendors and promoters, while setting the prices and fees as it sees fit. In a news conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland, also a Swiftie , said “it is time to restore competition and innovation in the entertainment industry.”

The net effect of this is an industry strangled by a parasite. We all know how frustrating the concert-ticket experience is for consumers, but the effects of this monopoly on performers is also often disastrous. The musician Clyde Lawrence wrote a guest essay for The Times in 2022 about how the company’s perverse incentives were able to take a cut of nearly every one of his band’s revenue streams. He said if someone paid $42 to Ticketmaster to see his band, Lawrence, perform, the band ended up with $6.

Today’s suit against Live Nation appears to be part of the Biden administration’s broader antitrust playbook, which chooses targets for antitrust suits based on issues like market structure and capacity for innovation, rather than just exorbitant prices. Yes, the “Ticketmaster tax” is high, but the true target of the suit is the power that this company exercises over a large majority of the concert experience. Breaking up Live Nation, as the suit prescribes, might stimulate competition in an industry that has had too little of it for far too long.

Until then, as Olivia Rodrigo would put it , “God, it’s brutal out here.”

Katherine Miller

Opinion Writer and Editor

Nikki Haley, Ever Pragmatic, Tries to Keep Her Options Open

Nikki Haley’s announcement on Wednesday that she’s going to vote for Donald Trump wasn’t that much of a surprise. Eight years ago, she basically did the same thing: She was critical of him before he got the nomination, then once he did, said she’d vote for him and sort of faded into the background, before her surprise arrival in the administration.

She’ll probably end up in the vice-presidential conversation again, even though Trump already said she won’t be, partly because he seems to like the curveball consideration.

I wrote a lot in the winter about what Haley would do after she lost, specifically how much her plans hung over her campaign long before she lost, and then how for a month she subverted those expectations. And, of course, she has now done what many of the skeptics thought she’d do: say she’d vote for Trump.

But part of the reason I wrote a good deal about this topic is that, to me, it always seemed the after-the-loss phase would be much less interesting for Haley and almost everyone else in the Republican field. Most of the failed candidates would probably say they were voting for Trump, as most Republican officials you can think of have been saying they would do for years — and the far more active issue would be that Trump would be the nominee.

The value proposition was entirely in winning and moving past the Trump era by default. Haley wanted to win, she didn’t, she probably wants to run again as a Republican, and here she is preserving some optionality. That’s probably profoundly disappointing to some people who were invested in her campaign. Maybe they had hoped she would just never say anything about voting this year, as it’s not eight years ago; a lot of dark stuff has happened since 2016.

Haley, as a political figure, is not especially focused on moral cases. The larger ones she made against Trump centered on electability and Ukraine in an ideological sense. Even in the late stages of her presidential campaign, she did not frame her criticism of Trump around Jan. 6 or anything similar but more around his recent behavior.

This is a practical politician who is used to winning and seemed to envision a fusion path to victory that didn’t quite congeal. There are various reasons for that. One is that the segment of Republican voters who want to move past the Trump era is just a small fraction of the party. That might make her a bit of an inverse Pat Buchanan 30 years later, articulating the opposite ideological view and representing only a quarter of the party — the bookend to an era that’s really over or the faint strands of a different era we’ll be able to see only long in the future.

Ariel Kaminer

Opinion Editor for Ideas and Investigations

Why Congress Loves Toying With University Presidents

When the heads of Northwestern University, Rutgers University and U.C.L.A. arrived on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning to answer questions about antisemitism on their campuses, they faced what may be the scariest end-of-term exam on record. But they had a bountiful study guide, in the testimony of the other university leaders the House of Representatives had called on.

The transcripts of those encounters amount to a powerful syllabus of what not to do.

As you may recall, in early December, Claudine Gay, then the president of Harvard; Elizabeth Magill, then the president of the University of Pennsylvania; and Sally Kornbluth, the president of M.I.T., were hauled — er, invited — to congressional hearings about campus protests over the war in Gaza. It didn’t go well .

In response to questions about what they were doing to protect Jewish students, the presidents produced responses only a very bad lawyer could love. You had to wonder what kinds of questions they had expected. They certainly weren’t brought there for their scholarly expertise, little of which was on display anyway. It seemed more likely that they were there so that critics of academia — particularly those on the right — could score one very big point. The presidents played along beautifully, if unwittingly. Only one of them still has her job.

In April, Nemat Shafik , the president of Columbia, came much better prepared, clearly determined not to make the same mistakes. But her testimony, though it pleased her interrogators, might have been even more damaging. Dutifully reassuring Representative Rick Allen, Republican of Georgia, that no, she definitely did not want “Columbia University to be cursed by God,” eagerly agreeing to punish outspoken faculty members in defiance of the institution’s rules for due process, Dr. Shafik — who capped her testimony by summoning the New York Police Department to dismantle the encampments and arrest scores of protesters — looked like someone frantically throwing ballast overboard to keep from sinking. Well, it worked. For now, she still has her job.

Today’s witnesses, and those who follow, need a better way to navigate this moment. Because critics in Congress have a winning formula, and they’re not going to tire of it any time soon.

Neel V. Patel

Opinion Staff Editor

Does New York City Really Need More Smoke Shops?

When it comes to weed, I’m not a crank. But I am getting cranky.

Legalized marijuana is a good thing. I live in New York City, and New York State legalized recreational cannabis in the spring of 2021. Since then, I have seen an explosion of shops that sell marijuana products. Some are licensed, but many, many more are not. Ten years ago, I could walk down the block to a dry cleaner or hardware store or a favorite coffee shop for a pastry. Now I’m relearning my neighborhood because these stores have become the umpteenth cannabis shops — legal or otherwise — within a five-minute stroll.

The city was supposed to prevent this from happening, but it botched the rollout of marijuana licenses during legalization. Now the city is flooded with black-market sellers , contributing to an aggravating sense that there is too much marijuana floating around.

And it’s not just New Yorkers: A new report by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 17.7 million people are using marijuana daily or nearly every day, which is three million more than those who report the same frequency of drinking alcohol.

No, marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as other Schedule 1 substances like heroin. But our understanding of the health effects of very frequent cannabis use is still unsettled . Most of us can accept it’s generally not good to be recreationally consuming mind-altering substances every day.

This week, Maia Szalavitz argued in Times Opinion for balanced policies regulating the probable federal legalization of marijuana. I’d add that we need to think deeper about a psychological balance for our society. It’s wonderful to see marijuana use destigmatized and decriminalized. But it feels as though New York City is tripping over itself to sell us the idea that the whole world is toking up now — and that you should be, too.

How our neighborhoods look should be defined by the things we do and the services we need every day. Having every dry cleaner I know replaced by a front for weed isn’t making our day-to-day lives better.

Thomas L. Friedman

Western Europe Is Starting to Send a Vital Warning to Israel

The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland on Wednesday to recognize an independent Palestinian state marks the latest brick in the wall of rejection being built around Israel’s current far-right government, which is asking the world to let it destroy Hamas in Gaza while refusing to work on a new future with non-Hamas Palestinians.

More than 140 countries and the Holy See have recognized the right of Palestinians to have a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. What is noteworthy about this latest move, though, is that major Western European countries, and the United States, had resisted going there, arguing that peace should be worked out between the two parties. Until today.

My focus is always on the practical: Will these recognitions of a nonexistent Palestinian state with undefined borders lead to the only sustainable solution — a real-life peace between two states for two indigenous communities — Jews and Palestinians? The answer is yes and no.

In the short term, these diplomatic recognitions from fellow democracies will not move the Israeli public, Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told me. In the wake of the horrific murders, rapes and kidnappings perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, he said, Europeans telling Israel that it must accept a Palestinian state — “without even mentioning that it must be demilitarized or any obligations on the part of Palestinians to reject Hamas” — will be “rejected” by the Israeli silent majority.

In the long term, though, it is precisely these kinds of diplomatic shocks that could lead the opposition leaders in Israel to finally escape from the gravitational pull of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who dominates what is or is not permissible to say on this subject — and start calling for two states on terms Israel can live with. One can already see signs of that.

If that does not transpire, though, Israel is heading for a world of hurt. Those recognitions of a Palestinian state by European nations “are a huge straw in the wind, that will grow into a hurricane if Israel does not change course,” Craig Charney , a pollster who was a member of Nelson Mandela’s polling team in the 1990s, told me.

Charney explained that the isolation of South Africa’s apartheid regime started with a voluntary arms embargo in the 1960s, which after the Soweto uprising morphed in the 1970s into a formal U.N. arms embargo, which grew into a popular cause on campuses and in boardrooms in the early 1980s, which grew into a broader economic, military and travel embargo in the mid-1980s — until two great leaders, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, finally emerged to end apartheid. “But it was a very painful journey,” he said.

David Firestone

Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

I’m Donald Trump, and I Disapprove of the Message I Just Posted

In the distant and innocent year of 2002, lawmakers really thought they could cut back on negative and corrosive political advertising with one simple trick: Making candidates personally stand behind their ads. Within a year of passage of the McCain-Feingold Act, politicians started appearing at the end of their ads mouthing much-mocked platitudes like, “I’m John Kerry, and I approve this message!”

Though the requirement is technically still in effect, it seems fantastically quaint now. The law never applied to independent or super PAC ads, which drenched the airwaves in mud, and the “stand by your ad” requirements never applied to internet ads, which would soon become one of the dominant ways in which candidates misled voters.

More crucially, the requirement apparently had little effect on the era of Donald Trump. That was evident as recently as Monday , when Trump reposted a video in which he precelebrated his 2024 victory and answered the question of “what’s next for America?” with an image containing the words: “the creation of a unified Reich.”

It was clear in Trump’s first presidential campaign that this level of cartoonish outrageousness would help him get the attention he craved. As Jim Rutenberg of The Times wrote in 2018 , the campaign law never stopped Trump or other Republican candidates from advertising blatant lies and overt racism; being crudely aggressive and openly authoritarian, in fact, had become a useful tool.

Former Representative David Price of North Carolina, an architect of the “stand by your ad” provision in 2002, summed up the new attitude this way 16 years later: “I’m the baddest, meanest, most politically incorrect guy in town and will say whatever pops into my head and I regard that as a political virtue.”

The “stand by your ad” law couldn’t prevent this attitude, but if it had been more effective, it might at least have spared the country the embarrassing spectacle of blaming bad ads on some low-level staff member somewhere. In 2015, when Trump retweeted a dumb post mocking Iowa voters for preferring Ben Carson, he later deleted the tweet and put full responsibility on an intern , who he said had apologized. (Trump himself, of course, almost never apologizes.)

In the case of the Reich video, the campaign said it was created by a “random account online” and reposted “by a staffer,” though the posting was done in Trump’s own name. (The campaign took it down the next day, after the inevitable outcry.) Too bad Congress didn’t prohibit blaming the help for a candidate’s deeply offensive messages.

Jonathan Alter

An Attack on Justice Merchan Is an Attack on the Rule of Law

No fair-minded person sitting in the courtroom of the Trump felony trial can doubt that Justice Juan Merchan is a wise, impartial and fair judge. He proved it again on Tuesday when he held an important “charging conference” to determine how he will instruct the jury before it begins deliberating next week.

That’s why I was so appalled to see House Speaker Mike Johnson standing outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse last week denouncing the trial as a “travesty of justice.” Echoing Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called the judge “corrupt” and the whole thing “rigged,” the speaker said he was “disgusted” by the trial, though he clearly knows almost nothing about it.

This kind of talk is not only wrong, it’s a threat to the integrity of the American judiciary, which, for all its faults, is the crown jewel of our constitutional system. Johnson, second in line to the presidency, is using some kind of authoritarian playbook when he assaults another branch of government. When an independent judiciary dies, so does democracy.

Inside the courtroom, my go-to guy is Judge George Grasso, retired from the New York bench, who is attending the trial as a spectator.

“This judge is evenhanded,” Grasso told me at the end of the day. “He makes rulings sometimes for the benefit of one side, sometimes for the other. He’s very careful on the facts and everyone has the opportunity to be heard. Even if he’s decided already,” Grasso said, referring to pretrial motions, “he’s willing to listen.”

I got up to leave but Grasso, a former deputy New York police commissioner, wasn’t finished yet, adding: “To attack him is to attack the rule of law.”

Merchan’s Solomonic nature was in evidence Tuesday as he discussed with lawyers for both sides how he will instruct the jury.

On the critical issue of “accessorial liability” — how responsible Trump should be given his distance from the Trump Organization’s bookkeeping department — Merchan said he would instruct the jurors that they “need not to be unanimous on whether the defendant” is liable on each element of the case, though they do have to be unanimous on the overall verdict. This was a win for the prosecution. So was his ruling that the jury will be instructed that “intent to defraud can extend beyond economic concerns.”

At the same time, Merchan seemed to be leaning toward the defense in limiting how far the prosecution could go in pushing accessorial liability. When the district attorney’s office sought to broaden the concept, Merchan said that would mean a “material change” in the state statute and he would not use it in his instructions. And he reserved judgment on the extent to which Trump’s violations of tax laws can be brought into the case.

We won’t know until later this week exactly what the judge’s instructions to the jury will be. But we do know this: When you trash a judge like Merchan, you’re trashing America.

Charles M. Blow

The Viral Defiance of Jasmine Crockett

Why, exactly, was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s dig at Jasmine Crockett’s fake eyelashes so upsetting?

The two members of the House Oversight Committee tore into each other last week in a verbal assault that was widely seen as a new low for personal relationships in this polarized Congress. Greene began the descent by saying to Crockett that her “fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

For Crockett, it was about much more than a rules violation for attacking another member’s physical appearance. For her, it was an insinuation of inferiority.

As Crockett told me, “It triggered me because MAGA is constantly on social media doing all these wild memes about my lashes and talking about my nails.” She continued, “They call me ghetto trash and D.E.I. hire.”

Greene, in that moment, became the personification of her online harassment, Crockett said.

“I interpreted that as not, ‘oh girl, you don’t need to wear lashes because you’re more than enough and you’re beautiful,’” she said, “I interpreted that as, ‘you’re basically like, oh, you ghetto piece of trash.’”

So, Crockett shot back with her one insult about Greene’s appearance, asking the committee chairman, “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”

The alliteration became a viral sensation. People made songs about it. Crockett herself is making apparel featuring the phrase, and she moved to trademark the term.

Crockett has gained a reputation for producing such moments. But the incident also speaks to the nature of the modern Congress, in which spectacle generates its own form of power, in which being a social media clip star is just as important as being an advancer of legislation.

This is not to defend Greene in any way. She is a bully who has proved to be a bona fide stunt queen, exploiting outrage for personal advancement. I think Crockett was right when she told me, “People have really been waiting on someone to put her in her place, because she’s been so out of place and so outlandish this entire time.”

And yet, going toe to toe and tit for tat with someone like Greene is also to descend into chaos, and ultimately into indecorous absurdities, because that is precisely where Greene is most comfortable.

Even Crockett concedes that the clipbait-ification of Congress is a bad thing, saying, “I really dislike that social media and virality is playing a part in legislating.”

But she offered an explanation for her own actions: “I don’t try to create these moments, but I think that what’s happening is that Democrats have been craving someone who would be responsive in the moment to misinformation and disinformation and do it in a very forceful way.”

In her view, it is the motivation that matters most: standing for truth vs. standing for institutional and societal degradation.

The problem is that the country has been lied to so often and for so long that many people can only see their party’s representatives on the noble side of that equation.

Scarlett Johansson’s Voice Isn’t the Only Thing A.I. Companies Want

When OpenAI introduced its virtual assistant, Sky, last week, many gasped. It sounded just like Scarlett Johansson, who had famously played an artificial intelligence voice assistant in the movie “Her.”

On the surface, the choice made sense: Last year, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, had named it his favorite science fiction movie, even posting the single word “her” around the assistant’s debut .

OpenAI approached Johansson to be the voice for its virtual assistant, and she turned it down. The company approached her again two days before the debut of Sky, but this time, she said in a blistering statement, it didn’t even wait for her official “no” before releasing a voice that sounds so similar to hers that it even fooled her friends and family.

In response to Johansson’s scathing letter, OpenAI claimed that the voice was someone else and “was never intended to resemble hers,” but it took Sky down anyway.

The A.I. industry is built on grabbing our data — the output that humanity has collectively produced: books, art, music, blog posts, social media, videos — and using it to train their models, from which they then make money or use as they wish. For the most part, A.I. companies haven’t asked or paid the people who created the data they grab and whose actual employment and future are threatened by the models trained on it.

Politicians haven’t stepped in to ask why humanity’s collective output should be usurped and monopolized by a handful of companies. They’ve practically let the industry do what it wants for decades.

I am someone who believes in the true upside of technology, including A.I. But amid all the lofty talk about its transformational power, these companies are perpetuating an information grab, a money grab and a “break the rules and see what we can get away with” mentality that’s worked very well for them for the past few decades.

Altman, it seems, liked Johansson’s voice, so the company made a simulacrum of it. Why not?

When you’re a tech industry star, they let you do anything.

Serge Schmemann

Why the Crash in Iran Was Almost Certainly an Accident

When the first reports came out on Sunday that a helicopter carrying the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, had gone down, the first question on most minds was probably, “Who did it?”

That’s not a far-fetched question. Only last month, several senior Iranian officers were killed in a drone strike on Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria — a hit broadly attributed to Israel, though Israel rarely acknowledges such things. And in 2020 the United States acknowledged responsibility for the drone strike that killed Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian general.

This time, however, the United States and Israel were quick to say: Not us. Washington even expressed “condolences” after it was confirmed that Raisi had died . Iran was equally quick to declare that the crash, in foggy mountains, was indeed an accident and even reportedly asked the United States for help in locating it.

None of that reflected a change of heart or a disavowal of targeted killing as a clandestine tool or any regret outside Iran over the death of Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who was also killed in the crash. Both were full-blooded members of the Iranian theocracy, dedicated to its ruthless suppression of any dissent and its proxy wars, especially against Israel. Raisi, in fact, was discussed as a likely successor to the 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian exiles were reported to have celebrated their deaths in London and elsewhere.

But Iran, already deeply enmeshed in the Israeli conflict through its support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen, only recently risked getting into a major direct war with Israel by launching a massive wave of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the bombing of its Damascus embassy. Accusing Israel or the United States of the killing of the Iranian president would have risked a far more fateful exchange, which no one wanted at this juncture.

Besides, Raisi and Amir Abdollahian probably did not figure high on the American or Israeli enemies list, even if the president was a candidate for supreme leadership. However repugnant, both were tools of the theocracy, not architects of the nuclear, regional or domestic policies that they brutally enforced.

The broad consensus in the immediate aftermath of their deaths was that nothing much would change. There were plenty of other hard-liners lined up to succeed Khamenei, including his son Mojtaba Khamenei, and none of them suggested a promising future for Iran. The only immediate question was how many — or, more accurately, how few — Iranians would show up for the “election” of the next president picked by the supreme leader.

An earlier version of this article misstated the year of the drone strike that killed Qassim Suleimani. It was 2020, not 2000.

How we handle corrections

Romaissaa Benzizoune

Opinion Editorial Fellow

For Kendrick and Drake, Family Matters

Weeks after the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake began — triggered by competing claims to greatness — listeners are still electrified. There’s a general agreement that Lamar won, whether because of his masterly storytelling, triple entendres that stretch the horizons of meaning, or flow that feels like the sonic equivalent of an ice bath.

There’s also the fact that some of his most successful, emotionally resonant bars argue that his opponent has failed as a father, son and romantic partner. In one of the catchiest verses in “euphoria,” Lamar accuses Drake of knowing nothing about raising a son. He also raps as a sort of warning, while using coded Canadian slang for “bro” : “It can get deep in the family, crodie / Talk about me and my family, crodie? / Someone gon’ bleed in your family, crodie .” Days later, Drake dropped “Family Matters,” in which he questions why Lamar hasn’t married his fiancée. Drake accuses Lamar, without providing evidence, of abusing her.

Lamar counters with the tragic “Meet the Grahams,” a point-by-point takedown through a series of vignettes addressed mostly to Drake’s family members: his son, Adonis; his mother, Sandra; and an unnamed baby girl that Lamar claims is Drake’s daughter.

These digs are so provocative because the rich and powerful are beholden to few things other than family .

Family motifs carry hip-hop and rap. Rappers are obsessed with whether the women they’re involved with are wifey material. Are they capable of mothering, or are they just hos? The rapper Future, notorious for having seven baby mamas, apparently dreams of domestic bliss . Lil Wayne, Offset, DaBaby and Lamar have all featured family members on album covers. Artists grapple meaningfully with family, whether that family abandoned them or supported them on the come up.

In her 2022 book “Abolish the Family,” Sophie Lewis criticizes family as a norm that “makes a prison for adults — especially women — out of their own commitment to children they love.” But because there is no alternative, family is sacred; this is especially true for Black people.

The traditional family is an untouchable symbol. Women, who bleed more for it, are its figureheads. This is why attacking your competition’s family members — especially his partner or mother — becomes the most potent way to dismantle the honor of a man who appears to have everything.

It’s hardly Drake’s fault that Kendrick Lamar did it better.

A Tongue-Lashing for a Defense Witness Isn’t Great News for Trump

Eight times a day during his felony trial, a former president of the United States must stand and honor 12 jurors and six alternates as they walk past, eyes straight ahead or down, casting no glances at him. It’s inspiring to watch these ordinary citizens as sovereign soldiers for justice.

On Monday this calm processional was disrupted, as jurors were forced to hurry out after a witness for the defense mocked the authority of the court. Moments later, Justice Juan Merchan ordered the courtroom immediately cleared, and reporters fled in a frenzy.

The reason for all of this was the testimony of Robert Costello, an astonishingly arrogant former federal prosecutor who has defended the likes of George Steinbrenner and Leona Helmsley, borrowing a little of his nasty affect from each.

Michael Cohen testified earlier that Costello and Rudy Giuliani were assigned by Donald Trump to open a back channel to Cohen to keep him in the Trump fold.

Costello testified before a friendly House subcommittee last week that Cohen was a liar. This apparently impressed Trump and — presto! — Costello was the first important witness the defense called after the prosecution rested.

On direct examination, Costello did next to nothing for the defense beyond landing a few more mostly irrelevant blows on Cohen.

On cross-examination by the prosecution, however, you could almost see steam coming out of Costello’s ears. The temerity of this lowly local female prosecutor asking him questions! Merchan ruled earlier that Costello could testify only on certain subjects. When Merchan sustained several objections from the prosecution and struck a couple of Costello’s answers from the record, Costello decided to play judge.

He muttered “ridiculous” and “strike it” after disliking a question. An enraged Merchan excused the jury and said sharply, “I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom.” He continued, “You don’t say, ‘Geez,’ and you don’t say, ‘Strike it.’ And if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side-eye and roll your eyes.”

Merchan apparently didn’t want reporters to hear the rest of his tongue-lashing and cleared the courtroom.

None of this was good for the defense, which struggled all day to build on Thursday’s success in making Cohen seem he was lying about the purpose of his calls to Trump in late October 2016. Cohen looked bad admitting he passed $20,000 in cash in a paper bag to Red Finch, a tech firm that uses algorithms to rig online polls. But Trump looked even worse by directing Red Finch to cheat his way onto CNBC’s list of the most famous business leaders of the 20th century. Classic Trump.

Jurors may conclude that the whole bunch of ’em are liars and reasonably doubt every word out of all of their mouths. At this point, that may be Trump’s best hope of avoiding conviction.

When Michael Cohen’s Lies Help the Case Against Trump

Is it possible to use a lie to illuminate the truth? If the lie is told by the serial liar Michael Cohen in the right context, the answer is yes. Credit the prosecution in the Trump felony trial for pulling off this tricky maneuver.

On Monday, we finally got closer to a key factor in this case: campaign finance law. To convict Donald Trump of a felony, the jury must find that he falsified business records (or directed that they be falsified) with “the intent to commit another crime.” Trump need not be found guilty of any of those other crimes — in this case, it could be tax fraud, intervening in an election or violating campaign finance laws — in order to convict him. But he needs to have crime in mind in at least one of those areas.

Late in the morning, Susan Hoffinger — a prosecution lawyer on her game — drew Cohen’s attention to a letter written by his lawyer, Stephen Ryan, after the Stormy Daniels hush-money story broke in The Wall Street Journal in 2018. At that time, Cohen was still in Trump’s camp, telling the world that he had paid the $130,000 to Daniels on his own. In his letter, Ryan wrote, “The payment in question does not constitute a campaign contribution.”

Hoffinger asked, “Was that a true statement?” Cohen, in his new, polite incarnation, replied, “No, ma’am.” This told the jury: Here goes Cohen, lying again. In other words, because Cohen was such a known liar, it is more plausible than not that he was lying when he said the payment was not a campaign contribution, to protect Trump and himself.

After a sidebar, Justice Juan Merchan turned to the jury and repeated instructions he had already given, during direct examination of Cohen, when the subject of his 2018 guilty plea in the criminal case that sent him to jail for 13 months came up: “Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea is not evidence” of Trump’s guilt.

The judge was basically saying to the jury, “I know you may think these two guys both intended to commit this other crime, but you can’t use Cohen’s guilty plea to convict Trump.”

As Norm Eisen, an expert on campaign finance law, told me during a break, “The jury will listen to the judge, but that’s like saying, ‘Don’t look at the elephant.’”

To emphasize the point further, Hoffinger asked, “Did Mr. Trump approve the substance of these false statements by you?” This brought another “Yes, ma’am.”

The prosecution caught another break when Merchan refused to allow Bradley Smith, a Republican and former chair of the Federal Election Commission, to testify about his conservative interpretation of campaign laws. The judge said if he allowed that testimony — which the defense desperately wants — he would have to let the prosecution call an expert witness with his or her opposing interpretation. Merchan concluded that as judge, it was his job — and his job alone — to interpret how campaign finance law should be regarded by the jury.

All in all, this was an unsexy but significant win for the prosecution.

Nicholas Kristof

Israel’s Denial of Gaza Aid May Lead to an Arrest Warrant

The decision on Monday by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for leaders of Hamas and Israel probably will not result in anyone being put on trial immediately for crimes against humanity. But it does further tarnish Israel’s invasion of Gaza, add to the isolation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raise questions about President Biden’s steadfast support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

It’s no surprise that the prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking to arrest Hamas leaders for their rampage of murder, rape, torture and kidnapping on Oct. 7, which clearly constituted war crimes. Those protesters making excuses for Hamas should read Khan’s statement and understand Hamas’s brutality.

The allegations against Netanyahu seem to focus on the Israeli government’s decision to throttle aid, including food assistance, to civilians in Gaza and thus cause starvation. The very first allegation listed by the prosecutor against Netanyahu is “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

That has always seemed to me a part of the Israeli operation in Gaza that is particularly difficult to justify. My view is that Israel absolutely had a right to strike Gaza militarily after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, to destroy Hamas leadership and to try to recover hostages. I have argued that the military operation should have been far more restrained, calibrated to target Hamas officials rather than to level entire neighborhoods, but bombing targets in Gaza was not inherently wrong or unlawful.

What has seemed utterly indefensible has been the constraints placed on aid entering the territory, so that Gaza is teetering on the edge of famine — even as trucks filled with food are lined up at Gaza’s border, waiting to enter. That is what seemed to galvanize the International Criminal Court.

A panel of international experts convened by the International Criminal Court unanimously backed the prosecutor. “Parties to an armed conflict must not deliberately impede the delivery of humanitarian relief for civilians, including humanitarian relief provided by third parties,” the experts said.

I’m not an expert in international humanitarian law, so I’ll leave it to others to argue about whether a prosecution of Netanyahu is justified. But the court’s efforts underscore the moral stain of the starvation in Gaza, in which the United States is complicit.

America’s highest-priority response needn’t be a flurry of legal arguments, but instead could involve a far greater effort — using all the leverage we have — to persuade Israel to allow more aid into Gaza and to ensure that the aid is actually delivered to starving children. Whether or not one agrees that starving children is criminal, it is unconscionable. And preventable.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

The Dangerous Political Headwind Facing Biden

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

All eyes will be on Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan this week. His lawyers are expected to wrap up their cross-examination of Michael Cohen on Monday, and then will reveal if Trump is going to testify in his own defense before heading to closing arguments, probably on Tuesday. As much as Trump might be tempted to take the stand, he knows very well the lies he has told about Cohen, Stormy Daniels and his business records over the years — lies he could get caught telling under oath. The risk of testifying is enormous for a born liar, and Trump wasn’t born any other way. I don’t see him taking that chance.

For me, this trial has underscored two things: The enthusiasm and loyalty that the Trump base feels for their man, and the dangerous political dynamic that President Biden faces this year. That dynamic, as I see it, is this: Many Americans want change, and while they may respect Joe Biden, they don’t want Joe Biden anymore. Even the Trump criminal trial hasn’t been enough to make Biden look good by comparison, if the latest polls are any measure. My colleague Ezra Klein has a great new column about why this may be , but whatever the reason, the Biden campaign has big choices to make.

The biggest choice to me: His campaign has been focused on getting people to respect Biden — by portraying him as a defender of democracy, a champion of a normal America, a trusted ally to the less fortunate, a more decent man than Trump — rather than on making people want the Biden presidency to continue. He gave a good speech Sunday at Morehouse College in Atlanta about manhood and faith, but given his weak polling in that battleground state, I was surprised he didn’t make a stronger case for why people should want him in office for another four years.

He then headed to another battleground, Michigan, where he is also struggling in the polls. Based on his speech at an N.A.A.C.P. dinner there, I’m sure there was a lot of respect for him in the room, but what’s he doing that’s new or especially persuasive to make more Black voters and others want him for another four years?

On Tuesday, Biden heads to New Hampshire, another traditional battleground where he is polling strongly. As Trump gets closer to a verdict on that day, I’ll be watching New Hampshire to see if Biden and his team demonstrate any new thinking to make the case for why Americans should want another four years of his presidency.