Late last week, Philip Cooney, a 19 year old Georgetown student, was arrested on suspicion of a bias attack against a homosexual individual on September 9th. Cooney is the son of former White House official Philip Cooney, which is why the story came to my attention in the first place.

There was a large protest on Georgetown’s campus yesterday against Cooney.

Here’s the problem/issue with the arrest, however. Philip Cooney was identified by the victim after the victim spent some time going through Georgetown Facebook profiles. This sounds a lot like the Duke case where the alleged victim found her “assailants” by looking at lacrosse team photos.

Justin Scott, staff writer for Georgetown’s paper writes:

Look, I don’t want to be “that guy”, but how are we all forgetting what happened at Duke University last fall? I shouldn’t have to remind anyone about that case, but I will. Three innocent students were prematurely indicted by an out-of-line rogue attorney, and his manipulation of evidence captivated the entire country while completely destroying the lives of those kids.
And though this is to an admittedly smaller degree, at least on the national scale, it seems like the same kind of case. It’s the accused’s word versus the word of the accuser. How can we arbitrarily side with the accuser just because the media has so willingly done so? And as for using Facebook as a way to identify someone who attacked you in a flash in the dark of night? Please.
Despite what this looks like, I’m not taking sides, but it seems I’m about the only person remaining neutral. As far as I can remember, people in the United States are always innocent until proven guilty, and nothing at all has been proven. While hateful slurs have no place in our society, due process does, and we need to heed the lessons learned from the Duke case and wait this out before we destroy the potentially good name of one of our own.
-Justin Scott, staff writer

There are really not a lot of facts out there yet, which makes coverage of the story pretty one sided against Cooney. I’m really not weighing in one way or another, but this is a story to keep an eye on.