THE CRUMBLING CASE – AT 10:07 A.M. ET:  The Dominique Strauss-Kahn case continues to make waves.  After all, a American district attorney charged a potential president of France with sexual assault and threw him in jail, only to find out later that the accuser had, to put it mildly, as credibility problem.  Now it appears the case will be dropped altogether:

Pop the champagne, DSK.

Prosecutors will agree to drop the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- either on his next court date in two weeks or even sooner, according to a top investigator in the case who called the eventual dismissal "a certainty."

"We all know this case is not sustainable," the source told The Post exclusively yesterday.

"Her credibility is so bad now, we know we cannot sustain a case with her," the source said, referring to the Guinean hotel maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in his plush Midtown hotel suite -- shocking charges that got the international banker bounced as head of the IMF and also derailed, at least for now, his bid to become president of France.

And...

"She is not to be believed in anything that comes out of her mouth -- which is a shame, because now we may never know what happened in that hotel room," said the source, who is at the center of the investigation and would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

"Did [Strauss-Kahn] use force? Was there actually a crime? I don't think we'll ever know."

Meanwhile, defense sources described a different scenario, in which DSK admittedly engaged with the maid in a consensual, sex-for-money exchange in his Sofitel suite, with no force involved -- and she turned against him only when he stiffed her.

COMMENT:  There is no doubt that Strauss-Kahn is a sleaze.  His reputation preceded him.  That doesn't, however, make him a criminal.  There was a rush to judgment here, frighteningly similar to rushes in other, similar cases, like the Duke University lacrosse case. 

We simply have to do better.  This has been an international incident, costing a man, however slippery he may be, his job and probably his future.  We should begin reform by eliminating the "perp walk," the practice of parading the accused in front of TV cameras.   The presumption of innocence is lost.  It's demeaning to our justice system.

And as we must insist on justice for a legitimate accuser, we must be on guard against the false charge.   The tradition of our justice system is that we'd rather see a hundred guilty people go free than see one innocent person imprisoned. 

I'm certainly no bleeding heart, as readers know, but there have been too many disturbing cases like this.  I once interviewed a man for The Tonight Show who'd spent 25 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.  He was eventually pardoned.  But who gives him back the 25 years? 

July 5, 2011