Let us consider the newest adventure in the inimitable life of Crystal Gail Mangum, bearer of false witness, accomplished pole dancer, N.C. Central University honors graduate and now defense attorney.

In a manner of speaking, that is, thanks to Superior Court Judge Jim Hardin.

If you have not been taking the cure on another planet, you know that Mangum has worked her way up the criminal justice ladder to a felony murder charge. Her boyfriend, the one she was charged with stabbing in 2011, got the better of her: He failed to survive the experience.

Mangum is the only Durham pole dancer whose photo has graced the front page of The New York Post, hardly a point of pride even in these celebrity-besotted times. She got there, of course, because in 2006 she falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her in the course of an off-campus team party.

For a while, Mangum was the darling of the victimization class. The New Black Panthers came to town, proclaiming her their “princess” and vowing ruin upon those responsible for her public and private humiliation.

It was all nothing more than a crude attempt to extort money from scions of the Northeast monied class, who surely learned more about the other half of America than they ever expected, even in Durham.

Not to belabor the lacrosse hoax and its cast of characters once more, but the trajectory of Mangum’s life is such that her newfound authority to represent herself before the bench on a murder rap begs for an objective view of the issue.

So here it is.

It’s possible, of course, that Mangum will take a plea bargain and never face the vagaries of a jury of her peers. Most people in her position would seek a plea bargain, but then Mangum does not and never will fit into the category of most people.

Why Judge Hardin signed off on Mangum’s request to represent herself in the event of a trial is beyond me, but constitutionally she is as entitled to self- representation under the Sixth Amendment as any other American.

However, Mangum may well learn to her distress that if she is convicted of the felony murder charge, she cannot argue on appeal that counsel wasn’t up to the task. She likely will have a court-appointed lawyer looking over her shoulder, but that doesn’t count – she alone is responsible for the quality of her argument at trial.

Very few defendants who think through the high price of a failed self-representation will proceed with such audacity. Any counselor worth his degree from the Lizard Lick School of Law will tell you that the more serious the charge, the greater the stakes for failure.

That’s not to say everybody strikes out, but the odds of buying a winning lottery ticket at your neighborhood cash-and-dash are far better. One who did pull off a self-representation victory was Clarence Gideon – in 1961. To make a long story short, out of Gideon’s labors came the constitutional right to a lawyer for indigent defendants.

Crystal Gail Mangum’s life is a sad one and not unworthy of a modicum of sympathy. Nonetheless, she is a master of unwise decision-making. Judge Hardin knew what he was doing. Mangum, nary a clue.