Posted on 05/28/2006 9:59:32 AM PDT by Perdogg
I described Steven A. Smith in a similar manner on another thread. He is not someone to be taken seriously. He stick is to be loud and loudly have an opinion.
He is not a serious thinker nor someone who is particularly well informed. He can be entertaining and often is not.
Love that line.
Well, okay, but the larger point is even with this horrible abuse of power going down in Durham, look at the coverage.
I did a Google News Search for Nifong and you know the stuff that is out there is the uninspired 50/50 stuff - you have to give him the benefit of the doubt crap. There is no outrage (other than a couple conservative minds), there is no one asking for Durham and the DA to account for their actions. You'd think someone would exploit the story for ratings/readership because people are compelled by stories where someone is wronged. If these guys haven't been wronged, I don't know who has.
3 University Protests. Another March on the City/University. NAACP meetings/forums/threats. Published Team Posters. Sexual assault awareness meetings/campaigns directed at them. Their "Culture'" explored and blamed ad nauseam. Their Coach was fired. Their Season was cancelled. People were up in arms because the team was practicing. I'm not kidding. The University stopped that too. These guys were assumed guilty from day one by our National Press.
Shocking? To this degree, yes. O'Reilly had 2 shows this week and the tone/tenor were that the woman's (AV) is being torn to shreds and O'Reilly was wondering what, if any, recourse the woman may have.
The woman's past is her past. Her bad story is HER bad story. No one is tearing her apart or dismantling her, they are holding her up to the light of day. The Defense lawyers are juxtapositioning her story A to her Story B. They are highlighting anomalies and abberations. But the coverage is (even by O'Reilly) we know what they're doing here. It's really a shame; is there anything that can be done about this? Can the Defense lawyers be sued or disbarred if they are lying. Again, why is the presupposition that the defense is lying?
GAgal, what do you think about the "on this image" remark about image #5? Sounds weird to me. Sounds like she has been shown other images of #5.
"How um, how sure are you of that on this image?"
Why the added qualifier about "on this image"?
Gottlieb doesn't follow up on #4 at all, and says something odd (to me) about #5.
Examine this quote from an article published this weekend:
"The men's lacrosse players came across as spoiled children of privilege whose often rowdy behavior had gone unchecked well before they hired strippers for a party at which one of the dancers alleged she was assaulted and raped."
How did they come across as spoiled and privileged? We didn't hear them in interviews or see anything that would convey that. The coverage - the reporting - the words, that is what told us these 46 White lacrosse players were rowdy, spoiled, and privileged.
http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/cs-0605260292may26,1,781752.story?coll=cs-college-print
I think the interesting communications on that lineup was probably 15 minutes before in another room.
No reason to believe otherwise in this case.
Sounds like sour grapes over the fact that the defense is winning, and Nifong has clammed up. Still plenty of evidence out there that Nifong has not turned over¹, so they can look forward to that as well when it comes to light.
¹Evidence requested by the defense:
1. The first two lineup transcripts.
2. Complete notes from the initial police encounters.
3. Evidence from the cell phone seized in March.
4. The missing portions of the SANE exam.
5. Notes (if any) from the detox center prior to going to Duke Medical Center.
Someone on the WTVD posted the David Brooks editorial from Sunday's NYT. Not sure what the FR policy is on copying and pasting "pay per view" articles, so I'll just link to the WTVD forum.
Ken and all,
#4: Missing portions of the SANE exam. Could this be trouble for the players?
In other words, when the Defense says there's no abrasions, no tearing, and no bleeding, is it because they are only in possession of a small portion of the SANE exam?
(I am aware of the larger problems with SANE examinations. The same symptoms are also consistent with some types of consensual sex, how do you tie them to one individual rather than another, and the WHEN question? When were the injuries
incurred?)
Yes, I am getting impatient with the media. I have not previously seen what you posted.
Thanks
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/05/29/lacrosse-women-ignorant/
I think the SANE report as you described it is the gold standard. I can't imagine anything else in the report that would harm the players' case. If there were anything remotely helpful to Nifong, he would have released it, IMO.
My WAG is that the withheld portions contain accounts given by the accuser, and/or impressions of the SANE nurse that cast further doubt on the case.
Here's more of the same. This Wash Post article starts out:
"As Kathy Ferguson followed the story of rape allegations at Duke University, one fact struck her: not that the black woman hired to perform a striptease accused lacrosse players of assault or that the white men proclaimed their innocence.
Rather, it was that the woman had reported the alleged incident at all: Thirteen out of 14 black women who are sexually assaulted do not tell police"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052901012.html?nav=rss_metro
Then, this despicable column in the North Carolina News and Observer when the predominant story is the alleged Duke Rape and this writer (Ruth Sheehan) has continually condemned the LAX players:
SORRY HISTORY OF RAPE . . 5/23/06
Re: my Thursday, 5/18 column about race and the DUKE lacrosse case, an interesting story about race, and rape, and the criminal justice system. In this one, an African-American woman driven to murder, wins a jury trial.
From David Cecelski's column in Sunday Journal a few years back...
[More:]
On the day she passed her bar exam in 1974, Karen Galloway, now Karen Bethea-Shields, was named co-counsel in the first-degree murder trial of Joan Little. It became one of the most controversial civil rights cases in U.S. history. Little, a 19-year-old black woman, had stabbed her jailer to death with an ice pick in Washington, N.C. She claimed he was sexually assaulting her.
On the face of it, the case was a simple murder trial, but Bethea-Shields and the rest of Little's defense team saw it differently. Led by native son Jerry Paul, they turned the trial toward a question that was far from simple: Did a black woman in the American South finally have the right to defend herself against a sexual assault by a white man? Heated, often moving, always sensational, the trial made front-page headlines around the world.
Bethea-Shields told me that her upbringing in Method, an African-American community since annexed to Raleigh, prepared her for the trial of Joan Little. "I came from a home full of love, full of high expectations, but also a whole lot of faith," she said. She was one of the first black students at Broughton High School, one of the first black women to graduate from Duke University Law School and one of the state's first black judges. We talked at her law office in downtown Durham.
Joan Little lived in little Washington, North Carolina, Beaufort County. She was very young, cute, a tiny, tiny little girl. She was from a poor family and she was a survivor. She knew the streets. She was not a pretty person to deal with. I'm not talking about looks: I mean she was cunning and she could be kind of brash. She was in the Beaufort County Jail for breaking and entering and larceny, and her case was on appeal.
There was a jailer named Clarence Alligood, who was 62 years old. He had a reputation of asking sexual favors from the female inmates after bringing them treats. He would give them these little treats and then at some point ask them to pay up with some sexual favor.
This particular night, and it was in August '74, Joan was the only female inmate in the women's section. Alligood was the only jailer on duty. He went into the women's section with an ice pick. He went into the cell where Joan was and told her that it was time for her to pay up.
Alligood sat on the cot and made her ... It was rape. At some point, he relaxed his hand, the ice pick fell out, she got the ice pick, they struggled, she was able to stab him multiple times. He fell, and when he fell she went to the next cell, grabbed her clothes, ran out and was able to get out of the jail.
Joan knew that nobody was going to believe her. Alligood had already told her that. He told her that "nobody is going to believe you. There's no use you yelling." And she knew that was true. No one was going to believe her. She's in jail. She's a black woman. He's white. He's a male. He believes he can do anything he wants to do to a black woman. He's been taught that all his life.
My former mother-in-law was so scared that something was going to happen to Joan. She had never heard of a black woman accusing a white man of doing something and not ending up dead. And so the reason why Joan runs is because she's scared.
She hid out for a while in the black community. She was hidden by an old black man in the community. They came and searched his place at least twice, but they never found her. A friend of Joan's contacted Jerry Paul, and he and a professor in Chapel Hill went down and got her out of Beaufort County. She was offered an opportunity to leave the country at the time, and she said she didn't want to go because she wasn't guilty. She wanted to tell her story, so she turned herself in to the SBI.
Joan was facing the death penalty. Then Dr. Page Hudson, the state medical examiner, called Jerry when he did the autopsy. He said, "You need to look at this." Based on the autopsy report, he said there's more here than Alligood dying in the line of duty, and it was consistent with what Joan had told us had happened.
We had a dead jailer with his pants down and proof of sexual misconduct, which they kind of forgot to tell when it was first announced to the public. And you only had one stab wound that was fatal. The rest were defense wounds, and the way they were located showed that the person was coming at her. We also had other female inmates testify that they had been victims of this exchange of sexual favors for snacks and magazines.
We worked on preparing her case for about a year. I had to go see Joan every day when she was at the prison in Raleigh. At some points we were very, very close. I thought she needed a friend, someone who believed in her. Oh, we were like sisters at times: I got angry with her, she got angry with me, but I believed in her.
When it came time for jury argument, I didn't write anything down. I just felt it and gave the jury argument. What I did was put the jury in Joan's cell the night of the rape and made them feel what she felt. Yes, she was a convicted felon. Yes, she had had problems in the past. But she still was a young woman, and she was vulnerable with all that power and control he had.
When I got up in court, we had a taped-off area that showed really how small the jail cell was, so I gave my arguments from the jail cell, the little box area. I put the jurors into her body and gave her story. I asked them to imagine themselves as Joan and feel what she was feeling. I'd say, you are 19. You are alone. In comes Mr. Alligood. You've always trusted him. You liked him. And then I led the jurors through the rape scene.
As I gave the argument, some of the jurors started crying. Remember now, I'm young. This is my first jury argument. I thought I had done something wrong. And when I finished, the courtroom was silent. Nobody was saying anything and the judge is looking stunned. I didn't realize that I had succeeded, at least to some degree, in making them feel what Joan felt in that prison cell.
The verdict was not guilty. And when I finished, I went straight to the bathroom and just cried and cried and cried."
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Check out this response on the website (I'm sure it'll be deleted or the story removed from the blog):
Ponder this:
Why doesn't Ruth or her "colleagues" at the N&O, ever interject race into Rapes when the perpetrators are black and the Rape-victims white?
Black on White Rape - Suddenly Silence. Ruth and Friends take the opportunity to slam Men in General then and the American culture, no doubt. But, No Race injection - Not a mention.
How about Daryl LittleJohn, the Bronx Bouncer, on parole, that raped, sodomized, tortured, mutiliated, and murdered a young college student drinking at the bar where he worked?
Mr. LittleJohn was black. His victim was white. Find an article mentioning his race or the race of the victim. Find an article that mentions the case in some terms of Black men raping white women.
Well, Ruth really had to dig because statistics show Black women getting Raped by White men is a rare crime indeed.
Instead of being intellectually honest and admitting that her biases and prejudices played a large part in the total acceptance of the Lacrosse Player's guilt, despite the lack of evidence, Ruth sinks further and finds some obscure crime in the past to justify her suspicions or further vilianize the Duke players through some type of association.
Boy, did Ruth dig. This case was from 1974. The Lacrosse players at Duke were not born yet! How much do you think this 62 working the night shift at the Prison had in common with the young Duke students? I'm left to wonder why Ruth in her consistency didn't use this case of a 62 year old working the night shift at the prison to make the argument that poor, White Senior citizens are out of control, racist rapists.
But, Ruth had to work the research department overtime to find this case. Beaufort County? Not a University anywhere close? And Can ANYONE believe that Clarence went right by those White women inmates and didn't offer them gifts for sex?
Actually, the Tawana Brawley case is a much more appropriate case to juxtapose with the Duke Lacrosse Case.
Tawana Brawley's fantastic lies were also swallowed whole and hard by the Liberal Media. Al Sharpton launched his career by supporting Tawana Brawley; I think he now works in the same field as Ruth Sheehan. But, I think the Tawana Brawley case ended with her making even more outlandish rape claims against the District Attorney when her previous lies started to unravel. Mike Nifong should watch out!
If the false accuser in the Duke Case does end up claiming she was raped by one Mike Nifong, does anyone believe that Ruth Sheehan will disbelieve her?
After all, Mike Nifong - a white male - has much more in common with Clarence Alligood and his abuse of power and position than the 18 and 19 year old lacrosse players at Duke.
Ruth Sheehan said in one of her blog entries that she was raped twenty years ago. If true, her zealotry is understandable.
If what I've read is true, Gottlieb was a patrol officer for 15 years, working particularly with domestic violence cases. I bet he's seen many truly abused women and his sympathies lie with real victims.
Then he is promoted to investigator in February, and for some inexplicable reason, is put in charge of the biggest Durham case in memory, media frenzy wise. I think he and Himan, who only became a detective in January, are likely well meaning, honest cops whose lack of investigative experience led to the missteps we've seen. As far as Image 5 (Evans), Gottlieb's asking the accuser specifically "OK, so the person had a mustache?" cleared up any ambiguity Nifong could point to later. That's good.
Nifong may have used their inexperience and PC Chalmers absence as reason to insert himself inappropriately in this case. With 27 years in that office, Nifong has no excuse for his part in this fiasco. One of the "cliffhangers" to me is when will someone in the PD or DA's office break "the wall of silence" and tell the truth about what's going on there. As the pot bangers said, "Please come forward."
Fantastic response to that race-baiting, attention-redirecting column in the WaPo. As you say, Mike, it will probably be deleted for that very reason.
There is no doubt that one can find instances where black women have suffered, both at the hands of white men and even more at the hands of black men. None of that justifies stringing up a group of young white men who did nothing of the sort.
"The brutality of the slayings shook Durham, a community with the highest homicide rate of any large North Carolina city. Seeking to reassure the public, Durham's mayor and police chief said on television that the killings weren't random."
...."the highest homicide rate"
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/444574.html
Can you believe that with all the homicides in Durham, this DA makes it a priority to "lynch" obviously innocent students after a prostitute, with a criminal record, a history of mental instability and drug or alcohol abuse, cries rape. And the people still vote for him?
Today's Herald Sun has an interesting article in which Assistant DA Tracey Cline seems to be caught lying to a judge about Freda Black. Cline also seems to share Nifong's disdain for expensive lawyers, and those who hire them.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-739559.html
Cline appears to be the Asst. DA most likely to be second chair to Nifong in any lacrosse trial. She's been there before with the previous DA Jim Hardin in a fascinating 2002 case that is frightening in what it reveals about the integrity and competence of those in that office.
Basically, the DA gave immunity to a white man in exchange for his testimony against a black man charged with rape. Only the DNA evidence was from the white man, who the accuser had ID'd as her attacker. The jury found the defendant not guilty and chided the DA. Unfortunately, Mr. Brown spent a year in jail before being vindicated.
(scroll way down to 10.2.02)
http://www.monkeytime.org/archive/October2002.html
That DA, Jim Hardin, is now one of the Superior Court judges who will preside over the Duke case.
Very interesting! That 2002 case seems to be unpleasantly familiar!
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