From the "I'm still skeptical" file:

Why is it that the only black people we've heard about when it comes to Harvard University are people who get arrested?

First, Henry Louis Gates gets pinched for basically telling a cop off while in his own home. Now, there's a more serious case involving a senior from Harlem who has been charged in connection with a drug-related homicide on the Ivy League school's campus.

Brittany Smith, 22, has been indicted as an accessory to the cover up of the 2009 murder of Justin Cosby from Cambridge, Mass. She pleaded not guilty to the six charges against her. Police say Smith, who was denied her diploma, was the girlfriend of Jabari Copney, one of three men being questioned in the case.

She's accused of giving Copney the key card to her dorm where he, Blayn Jiggets, 19, and Jason Aquino, 23, planned to rob Cosby in a drug shakedown, police said. The robbery went awry, resulting in Cosby's death. After the shooting, she allegedly hid the firearm under a friend's bed and lied to authorities about it.
Prosecutors say Smith cooperated with police at first, but was really planning to get the weapon herself in order to give it to Copney so that he could destroy it. They also said she lied when questioned about her knowledge of Copney and Jiggets being involved in the drug robbery of two Yale University students.

This is where the DA's case begins to smell funny.

It's not that Cosby's family doesn't deserve justice for their son's killing. After all, he died over just four ounces of weed. But when you read the court docket, the prosecutor's case seems circumstantial at best. It does not say who told police that she hid the gun, or if the source was an anonymous tip. It does not say where they got the information that she aided the assailant's getaway in a cab. It does say she used the cabbie's phone to call them down to the cab, but doesn't mention any phone records of the call.

The docket seems to build a better case against Copney, Jiggets and Aquino, who has since been cleared of murder charges, but also faces accessory charges. The other two are facing murder charges, but pleaded not guilty. None of the three are Harvard students.

The D.A. has also linked Smith's friend Chanequa Campbell with the crime, but it is not clear exactly why, although the school also denied her the honor of graduating as well. Still, Campbell has not been charged with anything, nor has she been pinned with possession of drugs, a weapon, or accused of aiding and abetting the alleged perpetrators. She just happened to know Smith. That's it. Apparently, that's enough to get you kicked out of Harvard.

Smith has maintained her innocence all along, and has said she's being treated this way simply because of where she's from and how she looks. That may or may not be true, but I don't see how the prosecutor is going to hold a case against her without more concrete evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

She may well be guilty, and she may well be lying, but there seems to be nothing material in the case the points to the guilt of anyone but the three assailants. That Smith is an accessory simply seems to be a shaky argument.

So, this case is an unclear mess, and as far as I can see, a case of Harvard and the Cambridge Police (once again) covering their asses on a botched police action.