Posted on 08/15/2006 2:41:50 PM PDT by abb
DURHAM, N.C. -- A cab driver who has supported an alibi offered by one of the three Duke lacrosse players charged with rape had his own court appearance Tuesday for a larceny charge.
Moezeldin Elmostafa, 37, appeared briefly before a Durham County District Court judge who set a trial date of Aug. 29. Prosecutors also changed the charge against Elmostafa to aiding and abetting misdemeanor larcency.
Elmostafa was arrested in May after he surfaced as a potential alibi witness for Reade Seligmann, one of three players charged with raping a woman at an off-campus party the night of March 13.
The 2003 warrant accused Elmostafa of stealing five purses worth about $250 from a Durham department store. Elmostafa denies the charge, and has said he helped store security locate a woman after he picked her up from the store and drove her home. The woman later pleaded guilty to larceny.
Durham prosecutors said in May the warrant for Elmostafa's arrest was discovered in a routine background check of witnesses in the Duke lacrosse case.
Mostafa has said Seligmann, of Essex Fells, N.J., called for a ride at 12:14 a.m. on March 14, and was picked up five minutes later. The defense has argued those times help establish that Seligmann left the party without having enough time to participate in the 30-minute assault described by the accuser. Seligmann's attorney has also presented cell phone, ATM and dorm keycard records to help establish that timeline.
(Excerpt) Read more at dwb.newsobserver.com ...
NC governor Easely has ambitions to be more than just a governor--perhaps he hopes a Senate seat is in his future.
You can write and tell him what you think about that (and his failure to stand up to a corrupt prosecutor) at :
Governor Michael F. Easley
Office of the Governor
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301
Fax: (919)715-3175 or (919)733-2120
email contact form at : http://www.governor.state.nc.us/email.asp?to=1
That's the point. If they weren't Mirandized, nothing they said can be used as evidence, nor can it be used to develop any evidence against them - I think, lol.
I would like to hear from the legal types here on this...
Anyone who thinks Crystal went back in the house by herself hasn't paid much attention to the case.
"If they weren't Mirandized, nothing they said can be used as evidence, nor can it be used to develop any evidence against them"
I'm not certain about this. If they were offering statements voluntarily, and were not under arrest, then maybe what they say can be used--since they freely offered the info.
(Lawyer types may have to weigh in on this).
In any case, they didn't say anything incriminating, because there was nothing to be incriminating about.
Only in a corrupt jurisdiction like Durham (where, if there had been an honest judge, he would have stopped Nifong at the very first setting) could such a railroading be accomplished.
(Nifong is not acting alone.)
From John in Carolina :
"Members of the North Carolina Bar willing to file additional grievances against Mr. Nifong with regard to ethics rules 3.6 and 3.8 are encouraged to contact LieStoppers if in need of research or documentation assistance. Inquiries may be sent to: DisBarNifong@LieStoppers.com."
Cold case murder arrest is made
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun, Aug 21, 2006
DURHAM -- Durham police have charged a long-time suspect in the case with murder in connection with the 2001 strangulation death of Shirley Pounds, a 61-year-old woman who lived on DaVinci Street in the Kerrwood neighborhood.
The suspect, Webster O'Neal Steele, 40, of 1011 DaVinci St., was arrested at a state prison Monday and taken to the Durham County Jail, where he was being held without bond. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance in connection with the case this morning.
Steele also faces a charge of felonious breaking and entering that accuses him of breaking into Pounds' home at 803 DaVinci St. on Aug. 22, 2001, with the intention of committing a larceny.
Monday's arrest came nearly five years to the day after Pounds' grandson found her dead inside the home. Police initially believed that she died of natural causes, but began investigating the case as a homicide after hearing the results of an autopsy.
Steele became a suspect soon after when he was caught with Pounds' 1993 Hyundai Sonata, which was among several items that had been stolen from her house. But he claimed at the time to have gotten the car from an unidentified man named "JJ," and investigators weren't able to tie him clearly to Pounds' death.
That changed recently when the Durham Police Department's homicide unit reopened the case, assigned new investigators to it and developed "other leads," Police Chief Steve Chalmers said, without elaborating.**
"Right now, we're not in a position to discuss exactly what led to the information and evidence to bring about the case," Chalmers said when pressed on the matter.
The arrest was welcome news to Pounds' family.
"We are all elated," said Virginia Richmond, Pounds' daughter. "It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here, thank the Lord."
N.C. Department of Correction records show that since 1992, Steele, a native of Wilson, has been to state prison six times. Before Monday, he'd been arrested a total of 55 times since his 16th birthday in 1982.
Steele is in the midst of serving a 26- to 32-month sentence on unrelated charges of felony breaking and entering and possession of burglary tools. The charges in that case date from last summer, and he began serving his sentence on March 29.
Police arrested Steele Monday at the Tillery Correctional Center in Halifax County.
He has also done time in state prison for charges of assault on a female, assault with a deadly weapon and larceny.
Steele pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing stolen goods in connection with his having Pounds' car. Department of Correction records indicate that he served his sentence in that case in the Durham County Jail.
Police said Monday that they believe Webster and Pounds were acquainted. Their homes were about two blocks apart.
Pounds was a graduate of Hillside High School and worked as a licensed practical nurse at Duke University Hospital for about 20 years until she went on disability in 1996 because of back problems.
Her relatives have said they think she was outside of her house reading her Bible shortly before her death. A witness told police in 2001 that a dark-complexioned black man knocked on the front door of the house, and then walked around to the side. The man later emerged from the rear of the house and drove off in Pounds' Hyundai.
Investigators showed the 2001 witness two different photo lineups, but the witness was unable or unwilling to identify a suspect.
Police said in 2002 that they thought Pounds knew her assailant because they found no signs of forced entry in the house, and little to indicate that there had been a struggle.
In addition to the Hyundai, a Magnavox videocassette recorder and a Sony PlayStation 1 video-game console were stolen from the house.
Steele's arrest warrant, filed by police Cpl. Sheldon Perkins, didn't indicate whether Steele is being charged with first- or second-degree murder. A charge of first-degree murder would carry with it the possibility of a death sentence.
Richmond said she met with Perkins and another investigator, Sgt. Jack Cates, about a month ago after contacting Chief Chalmers to "see what was going on" with the probe in her mother's slaying.
Perkins and Cates told her that they'd reviewed the file on her mother's death and would pursue it, with Perkins doing most of the work. "They told us basically the old detectives that had the case did bungle it, but they were going to look into and do the best they could to resolve it for us," Richmond said.
Later, they called and said there was one person they needed to talk to who would "give them the answer of where they needed to go," Richmond said.
Eventually, the witness "gave them the answers they needed" to ask for a warrant and charge Steele, Richmond said.
Richmond praised the work of Perkins and Cates.
"The first crew didn't do crap. These officers here did an excellent job," she said, adding that police wanted to act before the five-year anniversary of Pounds' death. "I told the chief these officers restored my faith in the Durham Police Department. We've got some peace now."
District Attorney Mike Nifong said Monday that he hadn't seen a report or been briefed on the case. The phrasing of the warrant was standard and left open the possibility of a first-degree murder charge, he said.
Steele's arrest is the seventh recorded this year by Durham police in a so-called "cold case." Nifong said the department's work bucks the once-common assumption in the law-enforcement trade that if an arrest didn't come within two or three months of a homicide, there wasn't much chance one would ever be made.
"They've really done a remarkable job with that whole procedure," Nifong said, referring to the homicide unit's efforts to clear cold cases. "The people in the Police Department working with those cases have shown a lot of energy and dedication, and the results do speak highly of them."
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-762993.html
** Da Vinci St. Another old haunt of Crystal.
IIRC, her address was not far from that street number.
Nice neighborhood.
What is the saying? Lay done with dogs, you get fleas?
"Her relatives have said they think she was outside of her house reading her Bible shortly before her death. A witness told police in 2001 that a dark-complexioned black man knocked on the front door of the house, and then walked around to the side. The man later emerged from the rear of the house and drove off in Pounds' Hyundai.
Investigators showed the 2001 witness two different photo lineups, but the witness was unable or unwilling to identify a suspect."
* Sounds familiar.
Pertinent...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/22/DDGMQKH1EB1.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
JON CARROLL
Also pertinent...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0822/p09s01-codc.html
Overexposure: When media coverage blocks out the sun
Excellent piece @ FODU by Jason Trumpbour
http://friendsofdukeuniversity.blogspot.com/
Posted on August 22, 2006
On August 5, the N&O published an article by John Schwade entitled By staying on the sidelines, Cheek shows no bravado. Below is our spokesperson's response to the N&O article.
Guest Column
by Jason Trumpbour
Friends of Duke University
In a recent opinion piece in this newspaper, John Schwade weakly defends Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case. Schwade can find little positive to say about Nifong. Instead, he devotes most of his efforts to personally attacking Nifong’s critics, among them Lewis Cheek and the organization I represent, the Friends of Duke University. Cheek he dismisses with ridicule. As for FODU, Schwade borrows a page from Nifong and attempts to exploit or create prejudice within the community by using unfair caricatures. He compares us to the mafia and darkly suggests we are using “money”, “influence,” and “friends in the national media” to disrupt Nifong’s prosecution. Our sinister agenda that he finds so threatening: “to ensure that these three Duke students receive justice through a fair process.”
Far from some criminal underworld and hardly rich or influential, we are a group of alumni and parents who are deeply concerned about what is happening to three members of the Duke Community. We want to see justice served, not frustrated. I myself am a former attorney in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s office. I now teach law, jurisprudence and legal practice to law students and students in a graduate program in legal and ethical studies. In fact, I am supposed to be spending this summer working on a project to promote the rule of law in Nepal, not Durham County, North Carolina.
The source of our concern is Nifong’s egregious and systematic misconduct. Nifong has made false and prejudicial extrajudicial statements in violation of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct. He has invited the public to disregard the civil rights of the accused and made appeals to prejudice. He has a continuing conflict of interest due to his political alliance with another attorney who hopes to profit from the Duke case. He has manipulated witnesses. Worst of all is his violation of NCRPC Rule 3.8 which prohibits a prosecutor from avoiding “pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor’s case.” As recently documented by the News and Observer, Nifong ordered police to try to find evidence that supported the indictments he wanted to bring. He later pitied himself when it was not forthcoming. He also refused to even look at the exculpatory evidence offered to him by defense counsel. In making personal attacks on Nifong’s critics rather than squarely confronting their message about Nifong’s conduct, Schwade and others like him effectively concede these issues.
Corruption is defined as the conversion of what belongs to the public to private use. From the very beginning, Nifong has treated this case as a personal opportunity for himself. What even his most ardent supporters fail to notice is that many of the choices Nifong has made—assigning the case to himself, co-opting the police investigation, racing to obtain indictments before the primary election and conducting an unconstitutionally suggestive lineup that is likely to be suppressed—all undermine the case he insists is a personal mission for him.
The United States is the only western nation where local prosecutors are popularly elected and select their own assistants. In every other nation, prosecutors are selected by merit. They are centrally trained, supervised and evaluated according to exacting professional standards. Our system of elected district attorneys can work, but only if legal professionals do their part to educate the public about the proper standards for evaluating their conduct and citizens do their part to educate themselves about the issues rather than adopt the hear no evil, see no evil approach that Nifong’s defenders have done.
It was, therefore, appropriate for Cheek and the petitioners who supported him to challenge Nifong based on his conduct. Cheek showed a great deal of integrity and courage in putting aside his ties of friendship to Nifong and taking a politically risky position by first confronting Nifong about his misconduct and then working to defeat him. Cheek has made it painfully clear that he will not serve as District Attorney. He simply does not want Nifong to be District Attorney. If Nifong is defeated at election time, Cheek will have fought the good fight and won. If the people of Durham County are willing to look past the diversionary issues Nifong and his supporters are throwing up and critically examine Nifong’s conduct in light of all of the relevant legal, ethical and professional standards, then they can effectively exercise the unique power given to them and ensure their community’s well being.
909 to be exact. Wonder if she is still renting the house?
803 Da Vinci St. Pounds - victim
909 Da Vinci St. CGM
1011 Da Vinci St. Perp- Steele
In the parlance of DNA, this would
be a partial match.
"Overexposure: When media coverage blocks out the sun"
Good article. But I noticed at the site that the Christian Science Monitor accepts articles contributed by readers.
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/guidelines.html
"It means we look for the greater public significance of a story, and we seek to convey it with as much fairness and accuracy as possible. It means we care about social problems and people in trouble, and we're especially interested in finding progress against those problems...
"We love historical and international context whenever either is appropriate. We're always interested in the social and cultural trends that underlie events. . .
"Story lengths may range from 500 words for fairly simple stories to 1,400 words for more in-depth pieces."
We may have to write our own stories; so anybody want to take this up? 500 words is hardly a page or two.
National Review Online also takes contributions; we should check out some other publications as well--focus on one aspect of the case and go for it.
This can have as much impact as the Neff piece, if it is done right.
(You CAN make a difference!)
I'll send this to Jason @ FODU. He's a pretty good wordsmith...
Our own stories--try
"The cabbie from Somalia"
"Shadow boxing in DC"
"Six cops and a cook; are southern police attitudes returning to the 1950s?"
"Those curious arrests in Durham"
"How DNA and witness testimony come up zero for this DA"
etc.
(Anybody working on one of these, let the rest of us know, so we don't duplicate--or send to the same publications)
Letter to the editor would also help to keep the story alive as well as calls to talk shows by those well informed.
Duke students should protest gagging Duke case witnesses
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/060822
You're correct, CondorFlight.
Miranda doesn't kick in until you are in custody (i.e. under arrest).
Re: Gaynor, McKnight.
"The many Democratic liberals holding faculty positions at Duke should realize now, once and for all, that in North Carolina's single most powerful Democratic county out of all 100 — Durham County — the local Democratic Party has lost whatever sense of discipline and restraint it might previously have ....."
It's called the Committee by locals. Why make everything so complicated?
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