Posted on 04/20/2006 6:54:31 AM PDT by mlc9852
The victim, a single mom who turned to exotic dancing to support her two kids, attends North Carolina Central University, a mostly black college in Durham.
She plans to keep a low profile until the students go on trial to avoid inflaming tensions in the black community, where opinion is running heavily against the privileged students.
One of the most hurtful things for the woman about the media circus surrounding the case, the cousin said, is the tendency to assume the worst about her because she is a stripper.
"She's a victim and she's a human being," the cousin said. "Her occupation couldn't justify that a crime like this was committed."
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I wonder if it applies to municipalities? If so, I can easily see the City of Durham cutting Nifong loose. He refused to look at defense evidence before pressing charges. That seems negligent to me. If Howlin is right, his stock downtown would be pretty low right now. In that case, it's all on his head and he, individually, can't possibly defend himself from what would happen.
No one deserves to get raped but no one should show up as a "drunken stripper" posing as a good mother and student. Get real!! Who's watching the kids?
I doubt she would sue on civil rights claims though. Her lawyers would do anything they could to have it stay in the Durham area.
Someone help me out here. In California, District Attorneys are county employees. Some cities use a City Attorney for real minor stuff, but 9999.9% is done by county DA's. Is NC different?
I'm not so sure. I think the DNA evidence swung a large part of the students. The ones you see on TV are cherry picked for the agenda the TV producer wants to follow. There have been writeups recently that the Duke University Store can't keep Duke lax shirts in stock. I think any student who has ever had a drink before 21, who has ever been hassled by a Durhamite, and who has ever done anything "wild and crazy" has got to feel a certain sense of solidarity with the players even if they do "swagger".
Won't that be comfortable.
Whoa! Sounds like it just might be. And if so, I wonder how much more her story will evolve.
What locomotive said.
And he meant waiting while they got their food at the Burger Biggie (or whatever).
One has to be careful concerning 'negligence'. Conducting a negligent investigation does not necessarily make the DA liable. It's kind of complicated once you get into that aspect. A sham investigation, or one that displayed a deliberate indifference to the facts, does attach liability in most cases.
As for the expendature of government funds to defend nifong, it would likely be up to the state AG to make that decision. it is also possible that if the state AG claims Nifong was acting within his official capacity in good faith, the liability could be transferred to the state, and not the City of Durham.
Keep in mind that Nifong was appointed to a vacant position not too long ago, which may account for his utter stupidity about his potential liability. Unfortunately for him, stupidity is not a defense.
In the state o f Washington, there is a state SC ruling that says "every sane person is presumed to know the law." In Nifong's case, an insanity defense just might work.
You know what the bible says right....
It says a woman demands mercy. I really hope she wasn't raped. If she was raped then everything wrong in her life or what she has done doesn't matter no more.....
I hope you're right but I have seen a lot of them in demonstrations and marches. Duke's basketball team may be unfazed by this but I think the rest of their male sports will suffer.
I imagine that the fallout from this will be severe - even if the charges are admitted to be false. The restrictions on the athletes will most likely be severe as well. I don't see many stellar athletes wanted to go to a school where the town hates them and the administration is super strict.
I've articles about this "town vs gown" issue but I don't think it's that common elsewhere - especially in the southeast. Athens loves UGA, Atlanta loves Tech, Tuscaloosa loves the Tide, Auburn love Auburn - maybe it is a North Carolina thing?
Replay of Abrams on MSNBC
More on the cabbie ...
Mostafa, 37, told the AP on Thursday he had spoken with Seligmann’s father, but no one from the police department or Nifong’s office had contacted him.
Mostafa said Seligmann appeared to be calm and jovial during the cab ride. After dropping off Seligmann, he said, he returned to the house to pick up another fare. When he arrived, it looked like a party was breaking up, with people crowded on both sides of the street.
While waiting on the four passengers whom he would later drive to a nearby gas station, the Sudan-born driver saw a woman walking through a crowd of men toward a car, and heard someone say, “She just a stripper. She’s going to call the police.”
Mostafa said the woman, wearing jeans and a sweater, appeared to exchange words with some people in the crowd before getting into the driver’s side of a car.
“She looked, like, mad,” he said. “In her face, the way she walked, the way she talked, she looked like mad.”
(snip)
(WHITE CAR!?!)
The car in the photo was black, while Mostafa said the angry woman got into a white car.
At 12:53 a.m., police received a 911 call from a woman complaining that she had been called racial slurs by white men gathered outside the home where the party took place. The defense has said it believes the second dancer at the party made that call.
(snip)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12366767/
Mostafa told MSNBC that he returned to the house later to pick up another customer. He told FOX News that when he arrived at the house the second time, some players were on the front lawn and a light-skinned black woman was walking away from the house. She was arguing with the players, then Mostafa said the woman said, "I am going to call the police."
Four of the lacrosse players then got into the cab; Mostafa described them as agitated. He then heard one player say to another, "don't worry, she's just a stripper." He also said, "it look to me like somebody get hurt. But what kind of harm ... I have no idea."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192404,00.html
It would be the players suing for civil rights violations. Crystal would have no ability to keep it out of federal court.
I think recruiting got much, much tougher for all of their coaches, including Coach K.
Wouldn't the accuser's case be heard in state court though? If the players sue in federal court, wouldn't that be a separate case?
I don't really see the players suing the girl.
I think NC is the same based on my reading of the statutes. I assume that felonies in California are prosecuted in the name of the state, so the DA is acting in the role of a state official when prosecuting crimes. NC, like washington, has a provision for the state AG to intervene and basically take over a case from the local DA when circumstances warrant.
In this case, I think the AG ought to get involved; even though I can understand why he wouldn't want to.
#983.......I took the taxicab driver's comments to mean that he waited a long time....ATM machine, drive-thru eating place...and then re the smelling up his cab...he said they started eating in the cab.
They kept trying to pin it on the dean and department head but they had their CYA memos in place that proved they had been warning the University for a long time about the safety issues that started the fire.
So they made every prof. write a safety plan for the lab for which he/she was nominally responsible. I refused to do it because it was quite clear to me that they were trying to create documentation to nail someone's hide to the wall if it ever happened again.
I had no doubt that if little Johny was hurt in "my" lab the AG would find that I was negligent by not, in some way, identifying the hazard that hurt him. Then it would have all been on my head. Most of my colleagues were so naive that they thought it was a great idea for them to write their own safety plans because it kept the bureaucratic interference to a minimum. Fools!
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