The following are several reading recommendations for a busy Wednesday:
In this TCS Daily article, Hoover Institute fellow David R. Henderson examines the media coverage of the criminal trials of Frank Quattrone and concludes that it left much to be desired:

The evidence seems to suggest that [Quattrone] was innocent. And even in the unlikely case that he was guilty, the prosecutor never made the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for conviction for a crime. What wasn’t a victory, though, was the media’s role in this. Many reporters pandered to their audiences’ desire to see a wealthy man take the fall because of the dotcom bust.

Meanwhile, the always insightful Stephen Bainbridge posts this interesting TCS Daily article on New York’s next governor, the Lord of Regulation, Eliot Spitzer, in which the Professor makes the following observation:

A fair reading of Eliot Spitzer’s record as presented by [Brooke Masters’s biography of Spitzer] suggests that he is both a genuine cause crusader and a career political hack. Spitzer has consistently used — and abused — his authority as New York attorney general to level sweeping accusations against a wide swath of American business. In some cases, like the proverbial stopped clock, he got it right. In a lot of cases, however, the much ballyhooed charges got a lot of press attention but then quietly went away. Indeed, on the few occasions he’s taken one of these high profile business cases to trial, he’s lost at least as often as he’s won. Instead, his record consists mainly of using media pressure to extort settlements from frightened executives.

Finally, I’ve not addressed the sad case of the the Duke University Lacrosse team members accused of rape, but this recent NY Times article provides a comprehensive review of the case. Perhaps not surprisingly, the two NY Times reporters who reviewed the public documents in the case concluded that the evidence against the three students is neither as strong as prosecutors have publicly claimed nor as weak as defense attorneys have asserted. However, where the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt, this would appear to be a case where prosecutors should have concluded on the front end that the allegations are better left for resolution in the civil justice system rather than the criminal justice system. It’s an ugly case that promises only to get uglier as the criminal trial nears.