DA on the spot for comments

Raleigh News &Observer ^ | April 22, 2006 | Michael Biesecker, Benjamin Niolet and Joseph Neff

[abb]

Defense lawyers and legal experts say District Attorney Mike Nifong may have crossed ethical lines in public comments about rape allegations involving Duke University lacrosse players, potentially prejudicing jurors and setting off a media maelstrom.

Nifong says that he has done nothing wrong, though he has ceased talking with reporters about allegations made by an escort service dancer hired to perform at a March 13 team party. He would speak only about his handling of the case Friday.

"In terms of what I said, no, I wouldn't say I regret anything I've said," Nifong said. "I think what I have learned, basically, is that if you cooperate with the media out of a sense of duty to public truth, you make yourself a victim."

Local observers were hard-pressed this week to remember a case with so much back-and-forth between the prosecution and defense playing out in a 24-hour news cycle. It has some suggesting a judge should step in with a gag order.

Defense attorneys for the lacrosse players say it is their clients who have been victimized by Nifong, and they blunt criticism of their own extensive public comments by saying they are just attempting to limit the damage. Some also said photos, ATM receipts and other evidence they claim exonerates the two team members arrested Tuesday were given to the media only after Nifong refused to look at them.

In its ethical rules, the N.C. State Bar orders lawyers to refrain from statements outside the courtroom that they know might have "a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing" legal proceedings. But once one side talks to the press, ethics rules say the other side can make statements "a reasonable lawyer" would believe are required to protect a client from bad publicity.

[TexKat]

Sounds like a real university friendly place. Isn't most housing around a college campus....college students?

Affirmative!

[Jeff Chandler]

Who hired them?

Whore hounds.

[Neverforget01]

Apparently not. Didn't you see them listed on one of Nifong's search warrants? : )

ROFL

As a female, there's no way on God's green earth I could be forced into "Oral Rape" The poor guy would certainly not feel like going out for a "bite" to eat when it was over.

[abb]

Kimberly Guilfoyle coming up on fox now. may be aruba only, tho

[Krodg]

Krodg, don't understand what you are saying here. These three posts are linked together, the first my original post to get her attention, then her reply and my response.

The problem was you keep responding to yourself. Normally you hit the reply to at the end of a message and the appropriate name will be in the To box. If you missed a point before you get another reply just change the name in the To box at the top of your response. Someone will be along shortly and give you better advice.

BTW, I was teasing.

[pepperhead]

Well thank you. Another thing I thought about is if the police wanted to search the house, could Duke University give them the ok to do so? No, that would be illegal, unless such a provision is specified in the lease.

[Fido969]

Here is Ruth Sheehan's "Tawana Brawley" column she referenced in her reply to me posted at #169

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http://www.newsobserver.com/138/story/428190.html

Ruth Sheehan: Published: Apr 13, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Apr 13, 2006 12:20 PM

If lying, take her to task

Ruth Sheehan, Staff Writer

The first e-mail message invoking Tawana Brawley arrived in my inbox at 11:36 on the Monday morning after the Duke lacrosse story first broke.

In the two-and-a-half weeks that followed, the messages citing Brawley ebbed and flowed depending on the news of the day -- until Monday, when DNA showed that none of the lacrosse team members matched the samples taken from the woman who alleged rape during a team party.

Suddenly Tawana Brawley became a poster child.

For those of you who don't remember Brawley, she was the 15-year-old black girl from New York who was found in November 1987 covered in feces, with racial epithets written on her body in charcoal. She claimed she had been raped by six white police officers. Rallies and marches followed. The Rev. Al Sharpton got involved.

But soon after, the girl's story unraveled. When the case was brought before a grand jury, the charges were deemed baseless. The police officers later sued. Although Brawley continued to maintain her tale, even years later, it is widely accepted to have been a hoax.

I hope that is not, as so many readers have suggested, what we have in Durham today.

It's not that I want the lacrosse players to be guilty of rape. I don't. I don't want anyone to have been raped. I don't want anyone to have been wrongly accused of a terrible crime.

But I really don't want this woman to have made up these rape allegations. False accusations, in any case, are morally abominable.

In this particular case, false accusations would have sullied the reputations of dozens of players, ruined a team's season and poisoned town-gown and race relations in Durham.

There is no punishment on the books sufficient for a woman who would falsely accuse even the biggest jerks on campus of gang rape. If that is what happened, the accuser must be named and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Because if a woman falsely accuses a man, or in this case, a group of men, of raping her, her treachery reaches beyond the confines of her own case and the wreckage it has caused there.

It reaches beyond, into the lives of every woman who has ever truly been the victim of a rape. It reaches into the lives of every woman yet to be a victim.

There is no one who abhors a false accusation more than a true victim of this crime.

I know because I was raped 21 years ago, on my 20th birthday. Twenty years ago this week, in fact.

I never turned the man in, never reported the rape, never even told family or friends until many years later. Not because I feared the police. Or the prosecutors. Or my rapist.

I feared the disbelief.

In the end, that is what Tawana Brawley sowed in the racial tinderbox of New York state in the 1980s: disbelief and distrust and, out of that, animosity.

With her discredited tale, she undermined years of public education about rape as an expression of power and violence, not of sexual desire.

With her discredited tale, she spit in the faces of all true rape victims who find the courage to come forward and challenge those who do not want to believe.

Ruth Sheehan can be reached at 829-4828 or rsheehan@newsobserver.com.

[TexKat]

tks abb!

[Neverforget01]

Is Kimberly ready to "Stand up and be a Woman" and admit she was dead wrong???????????

[abb]

she'd slit her wrists first.

[Locomotive Breath]

Nice chatting with you.

[abb]

Kimberly said she'd have AV's dad on tonite.

[Locomotive Breath]

Don't forget hosting raving moonbat Harry Belafonte for MLK day.

[pepperhead]

Sounds like a real university friendly place. Isn't most housing around a college campus....college students?

It is where I live. But our university is gobbling up land and building housing and parking lots ASAP. I constantly joke with my friends that they are trying to take over the city.

[pepperhead]

Google is your friend.

I did google and I don't appreciate your comment. And where does it say they signed a new lease?

[Neverforget01]

Remember Kimberly ranting about how the guys KNEW who did this? Guess she wanted someone to make up a name like the AV did ;-)

[Jrabbit]

Oh joy! What new version will he have for us? At least, he's more articulate than the ex....scuse me?

[sissyjane]

I guess not only can't read and write, but can't hear either!!!

Scuse me.....

[mystery-ak]

LOL...I was just going to ping you about her dad....if he's anything like her ex...scuse me!

[Neverforget01]

Duke hosted Harry Belafonte?? Are they trying to get kids to not want to go there???