Imagine my shock when I read in my hometown newspaper, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, that Craig Tolbert, a student at the University of Mississippi, had been arrested for rape at Ole Miss. Tolbert was a year behind me at Tupelo High School. We worked on theatre productions together, and he always struck me as a funny, laid-back kind of guy. He definitely didn’t fit my profile of a potential rapist.
As it turned out, my instincts were right. Tolbert is not a rapist.
Instead, he lived through a nightmare scenario: being arrested for one of the most heinous crimes because of a mistaken identity.
The short version of what happened is this: There was a party at an off-campus apartment. An Oxford local, Kendrick Goolsby, showed up at the party, allegedly claiming he was Tolbert. A girl fell asleep on a couch. She woke up to find a man having intercourse with her. She got up an ran off. The incident then ended.
She didn’t know who the guy was, but some other people at the party said he was Tolbert. The girl filed charges against Tolbert, and he was arrested the next day. Tolbert was freed after the girl saw a photo of Tolbert and said he was not the suspect. She later identified Goolsby as the suspect.
Tolbert and the girl certainly had the worst experiences of anyone involved with this incident. However, their lives were not the only ones affected.
The Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department and several local media outlets were dragged through the mud. For the purposes of this column, I’m going to focus on the media outlet that did most of the original reporting, Ole Miss’ student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian.
The DM initially printed a report on the front page using public information made available to them by the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department. There is no doubting the newsworthiness of the event. If an MSU student was raped arrested for raping another MSU student, it would certainly make the front page of The Reflector.
A lot of criticism came from the fact that when The DM reported on the arrest, they published Tolbert’s name. However, Tolbert is 20. It is standard procedure to publish the name of a person who has been arrested on felony charges, especially if the person is not a minor.
At the time, The DM had no knowledge that it was a case of mistaken identity. They were simply reporting the facts as they knew them.
When the charges were dropped against Tolbert, the paper reported it on the front page under a banner headline. The DM also published a staff editorial where they explained the situation, but did not apologize. Their view was this: “Sometimes in the most sensitive of news stories, people get hurt and there’s no one to blame.”
Those who accuse the paper of sensationalizing are off the mark. It is a given that in highly emotional cases such as this one, even the most sedately written articles will attract a lot of attention.
Not suprisingly, all of the criticism has been in the form of messages left of The DM’s Web site by anonymous people. Julie Finley, the editor in chief, said that she has not received any angry letters or telephone calls. Reading the messages online reveals several inaccuracies regarding The DM’s policies and a general lack of knowledge about how reporters gather the news.
The Sheriff’s Department has taken some heat as well, but they were simply following normal procedure by arresting Tolbert. A witness had sworn a Justice Court warrant. It is the Sheriff’s Department’s job to arrest a suspect once a warrant has been sworn against the suspect. They also did nothing wrong in making the arrest known to local media organizations. Arrest reports are public information.
Actually, I think the Sheriff’s Department should be commended for acting as quickly as they did to rectify the situation when the mistaken identity became known. Tolbert’s attorney, Jason Shelton, said, “The Sheriff’s Department acted responsibly once the facts began to come to light.”
Some criticized the sheriff’s department for not getting a physical description of the perpetrator before making the arrest. However, as Deputy Jay Hill explained, in this particular case, the Sheriff’s Department had to arrest Tolbert because a citizen had sworn the warrant instead of the government. While the government must have evidence before getting a warrant, a citizen can swear on based on a name.
Despite all the controversy, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that two lives have been radically altered by these events. Hopefully, Tolbert’s reputation will recover and his life can get back on track. He’s a good guy and deserves no less. I also hope that the victim can recover from this horrible incident. As was shown by the controversy, rape is one of the most heinous crimes and justifiably sparks a lot of public outrage. There is no question that the victim had the worst experience.
It is important for newspaper readers to realize that most reporters don’t have any malicious intent. Neither do police officers. Like most people, we simply do the best job we can.
Wilson Boyd is a senior economics major. Send comments to [email protected].