(bold mine)
heraldsun.com: '60 Minutes' interview draws lo...
'60 Minutes' interview draws local reaction
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg@heraldsun.com
Oct 16, 2006 : 12:31 am ET
DURHAM -- Sunday's report by "60 Minutes" on the Duke University lacrosse case delivered a wounding blow to District Attorney Mike Nifong's image, but its impact on the course of the prosecution is more doubtful, participants in a Herald-Sun roundtable said afterward.
The report, a double-length segment that consumed about three-fifths of the program, highlighted inconsistencies between witness accounts of the now-infamous team party and doubts about the process Nifong and Durham police used to identify suspects in an alleged gang rape.
It gave the three indicted players -- David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty -- a chance to proclaim their innocence, and featured video obtained by CBS News that purported to show the accuser dancing on stage at an area strip club two weeks after the March 13-14 incident.
But it nonetheless didn't establish that the prosecution should drop the case immediately, said Kevin Troy, a member and sometime spokesman for Duke Student Government who participated in the post-show roundtable.
"One could come away from watching this segment, view it in a vacuum and see it as clearly [saying] the state's case is incorrect," Troy said. "It shows us not that the players have been exonerated, it shows us that we need to let the judicial process play itself out. It shows us judgments early on were premature about guilt, but it would be premature to declare them innocent."
Troy attended the roundtable in place of Duke Student Government President Elliott Wolf. Also present were Duke senior Trisha Bailey, Durham minister Carl Kenney and NCCU law professor Irving Joyner.
Most criticized Nifong's conduct, particularly his public statements early on about the case and the conduct of the lacrosse team. Kenney, who's talked with the accuser's family and says he's heard "a lot of information that's not making sense," said the hit the program administered to the DA was "a big one."
Joyner -- who's been monitoring the case for the state NAACP -- said Nifong's early comments "went over the line." He said Durham police mishandled the investigation by being slow to search the team captains' house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., by not questioning witnesses more and by not looking harder at and for medical evidence.
But like Troy, Kenney was nonetheless unwilling to say Nifong should drop the case.
"It's important that we not minimize a claim of rape," he said. "It's important that when there's a claim of rape, the accuser has her day in court. I think it's up to the judicial process to determine whether or not those claims are accurate."
Bailey, a senior majoring in public policy and religion, said she thought Sunday's report will "agitate people" at a moment when the level of political activism among students at Duke is higher than it's ever been in her time there.
Kenney and Troy, however, said there are clear differences in how comments on the case are interpreted nationally, in Durham and on the Duke campus.
The minister said national media covering the case tend to miss the underlying context in Durham, a city that's had plenty of racially charged court cases and political squabbles over the past 15 years.
Kenney was less critical than Joyner of Nifong's early comments to the press, saying that at least part of what the prosecutor was responding to was the belief among local blacks that he would sweep the case under the rug rather than cross "the money and prestige" of Duke students.
Troy, however, said the same comments played badly on campus.
"The important thing to recognize is that there are serious divisions within Durham," he said. "There's a real divide between Duke and Durham, but it's not an absolute divide, it's not an impenetrable divide, and we need to resist the temptation to impute a certain character to all Duke students. That's why Nifong's comments were received so poorly by students at Duke, because it was felt he was demonizing not just the university, but the students who attend Duke University."
Sunday's "60 Minutes" segment also featured an interview with Kim Roberts Pittman, the second dancer at the March 13-14 party. She disputed the accuser's claim that the players began the assault by forcibly separating the two women. But correspondent Ed Bradley said there were two five- to 10-minute stretches when the women were apart.
Pittman said she saw no reason to believe her dance partner was attacked after the first time they were separated, and the accuser said nothing of having been attacked.
"She wasn't --- she obviously wasn't hurt or -- cuz she -- she was fine. She wouldn't have went back in the house if she was hurt. She was fine," Pittman told Bradley. The accuser wanted to return to the house to make more money, she told Pittman.
Pittman also acknowledged that she likely instigated the much-debated exchange of racial remarks outside the house by insulting shortcomings of one player's white male anatomy.
"It obviously provoked that remark," she said of the player's use of the N-word in return. She also told "60 Minutes" that none of the indicted lacrosse players used the racial epithets.
Pittman's comments appeared to carry little weight with roundtable participants. "She seemed very sincere, but just like everyone who is not one of the accused or the accuser, she has limited access to the truth," Troy said.
God help us.....these idiots are allowed to walk around free among sane people??
How about the part where SHE couldn't get her story together; isn't that why the city manager said they could not get over there for several days???
by not questioning witnesses more
More? How about ANY?
Troy is a PC idiot... But Kim is still lying and still can't get her stories straight...
A proud moment for Kevin's parents. All that money spent on his education. Yet, he is unfamiliar with the presumption of innocence.
Kevin Troy gets the Brodhead "illiberal liberal" award for bad logic. The LAX players are going to have a tough time with many of their "unthinking liberal" peers.
Re: Re: told ya she was still dancing! Author: try_ton_x reply
If you said she was dancing, she was dancing.
I have read enough of your posts to know that.
I am struck by the continued presumption of members of the HS panel and the article on WRAL.com, quoting Prof Joyner from NCCU, that somehow the accuser's statement that a rape occurred should be taken at face value. This should only ever hold if there is physical evidence that a crime actually was committed. Over recent months I am sure we have dicsussed the incidence of false rape accusations, but I decided to check it out again and came up with the following link:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1719
It seems from the data that false accusations or more specifically falsely identified rapists occur between 25% and 40% per cent of the time. These numbers are somewhat surprising and they do need to be interpreted carefully.
This data clearly suggest that Nifong's rush to judgment cannot be based on the assertion that such false accusations rarely occur. The author of the above commentary clearly indicates that the oft quoted "less than 2% false accusations" has no empirical basis.