Posted on 10/18/2006 2:45:47 PM PDT by zaxxon
The charges against the Duke lacrosse players should be dropped immediately, and the people demanding the dismissal the loudest and most forcefully should be the very people who have made a living allegedly fighting against racial injustice.
I've said this before, but it's worth saying again: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should be in Durham, N.C., today, promising civil disobedience until the charges are dropped and prosecutor Mike Nifong resigns.
Ed Bradley and "60 Minutes" should never be mistaken for Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court. Bradley is just a TV reporter and "60 Minutes" is just a TV show, but you couldn't help but be moved by the story they aired Sunday night about the Duke lacrosse rape allegations.
The three accused players gave their first interviews, and two of them claimed they had airtight, documented alibis. The accuser's one-night sidekick, Kim Roberts, seems to have settled on telling the truth rather than trying to spin the story for fame or money. She contradicted several of the statements the accuser gave to police.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
xoxo got the name
Cole = Holt
Once again, outstanding first-hand report!
Nifong to give up more documents to defense
By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Oct 26, 2006 : 9:44 pm ET
DURHAM -- District Attorney Mike Nifong today will give defense lawyers about 2,000 additional pages of information about the Duke University lacrosse rape case -- the largest single batch of documentation he has surrendered so far.
Nifong turned over some 1,800 pages of information in one previous court hearing and another 615 pages last month.
After they receive today's batch, defense attorneys will have roughly 4,500 pages of documentation about the case that has polarized Durham, brought intense national publicity to the community and sparked a movement to oust Nifong as chief prosecutor.
In addition to paperwork, defense lawyers will receive 3 DVDs from Nifong today. Among other things, they reportedly contain e-mails generated by Duke students and lacrosse players.
The information will be surrendered in a hearing before Judge Osmond Smith, who was specially assigned by the N.C. Supreme Court to shepherd the controversial lacrosse case to completion.
Three suspects in the case, Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans, are not required to be present today. They are free under $100,000 bonds as they await a trial that is expected to occur next year.
The three are accused of raping and sodomizing an exotic dancer during an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March.
All have professed their innocence.
Other than the surrender of information by Nifong, no major developments are expected during today's hearing.
"I don't think anyone knows exactly what will happen, but I don't believe there will be much to it," said one lawyer, asking not to be identified.
Critical defense motions in the case have yet to be heard, but they will not be argued today.
Among other things, those motions accuse police of misleading a judge to obtain a search warrant, and of devising an unconstitutional photo lineup -- a lineup that allegedly was too suggestive because it included only pictures of Duke lacrosse players.
Several national television pundits, along with a host of Internet chatters, have blasted Nifong for allegedly rushing to judgment in the case and getting the three suspects indicted on insufficient evidence.
In addition, the lacrosse incident is responsible for an anti-Nifong movement in the Nov. 7 election.
Voters are being urged to cast their ballots for County Commissioner Lewis Cheek as part of an effort to recall Nifong.
However, Cheek has said he would not serve as district attorney if elected, meaning the governor would have to choose a replacement for him.
Another anti-Nifong faction is led by local Republican Party Chairman Steve Monks, who is running for the chief prosecutor's seat on an unaffiliated write-in basis.
Monks said in an interview this week that a combined oust-Nifong effort would be better than two fragmented ones.
"It is probable that one of us has to withdraw," he said. "It has to happen. Someone has to be the frontrunner for the anti-Nifong movement. Otherwise, Mike will continue to be DA?. I can't scream from the highest mountain loudly enough that we need a combined effort."
And Charlotte Woods, a campaign leader for Monks, said she had told Cheek "a multiplicity of times" that Monks would withdraw from the race if Cheek agreed to serve as district attorney if elected.
"We have made it plain over and over again," she said. "We've told him and told him."
But Cheek said Thursday that, "Service as DA is not an option for me."
He said he made it clear earlier that responsibilities to partners and employees prevented him from leaving his private law firm
"Nothing has changed," he added.
Meanwhile, Nifong said Thursday that he continued to stand by the rape case, and he denied he was responsible for polarizing the community.
"This particular case has not divided the community," he said. "It has pointed to divisions that already existed. It is a signal to us that we need to address these underlying divisions."
Nifong would not be specific, but he apparently referred to town-gown issues and racial issues, among others.
The accuser in the rape case is black. The three suspects are white.
"Another prosecutor might make the case go away, but he can't make the underlying issues go away," said Nifong.
The district attorney, who has been a prosecutor in Durham for 27 years and head of his office since April 2005, said he wasn't withering under a storm of adverse criticism about the lacrosse incident.
"It's the difference between character and reputation," he said. "Character is what you are. Reputation is what people say you are. As long as you know who you are, you don't have to worry over what people say about you. ?
"I might be better off if I wasn't DA," Nifong acknowledged. "It certainly would be less stressful. But this is a path I have chosen to take in my life. I'm seeing some of the not-so-fun part of the job right now, but you can't take a job and just do it when it's easy and fun.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-782289.html
I thought these documents were due on Oct. 20? Is Stevenson wrong?
And if nothing much is to happen at this hearing--is that because everyone is stalling until after the election?
Nice.
Convenient for everyone, except for the accused. The justice system in NC seems to be established to serve everyone's interest except a defendant's.
anonymous said...
Dean Sue was there tonight when KC Johnson and Steve Miller spoke very disparagingly of Brodhead's handling of the Duke case at the ACLU panel discussion. She sat in the back and slipped out when the Q&A got underway.
I think Prof. Baldwin was there too.
10:40 PM, October 26, 2006
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Victim not credible
In response to Kim Brummel's letter. She states that the accuser's father in the lacrosse case is not the one who invited his daughter to the drunken bash. That's true, however, she's the one who accepted the invitation. What's that got to do with my question, which was why we should consider the father credible.
She then asks why we should consider the players credible. Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that one wasn't present at the alleged time of the rape. The fact that one never had a mustache that the accuser claimed he had. Maybe the fact that there was no DNA. The eight different stories from the accuser. The questionable time lines. I could go on and on, but I won't.
Brummel states that people are being deranged because they know exactly what happened that night. I do not claim to know anything, but like everyone else, I'm 99.9 percent sure that no rape occurred. And why does it matter that "60 Minutes" didn't mention the club the accuser was dancing at? She was there. Also, the reason the show didn't interview anyone supporting the prosecutor is the fact that other than yourself and a very, very few, there is no one who believes this joke of an accusation.
MIKE LANEER
Durham
http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/503200.html
Perspectives offered on lacrosse case
Panelists discuss it at Duke event
Anne Blythe, Staff Writer
DURHAM - One panelist spoke of prosecutorial misconduct in the Duke University lacrosse case.
Another railed against the school's faculty and administration for not standing firmly behind the lacrosse players while the judicial process unfolds.
Another described a community that was so fed up with the drunken and rowdy antics of some Duke students that there might have been a rush to judgment without many facts.
On Thursday night, nearly 100 people packed into the Duke Bryan Center to hear three panelists discuss a case that has three lacrosse players awaiting trial on charges of gang-raping an escort service dancer at a team party in March.
Daniel Bowes, president of the ACLU chapter at Duke and the Duke-Durham community liaison, organized the panel discussion.
"This is not meant to be an anti-Nifong event or an anti-lacrosse event," Bowes said. "This is a forum meant to facilitate an honest discussion of various perspectives surrounding the social and legal aspects and repercussions of the Duke lacrosse case."
KC Johnson, a Brooklyn College history professor and author of the Durham-in-Wonderland blog, outlined at least five points where he thought District Attorney Mike Nifong had either violated the N.C. State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct or police procedures.
Larry Holt, a representative from the Durham Human Relations Commission, spoke of a history of off-campus behavior problems that had led the Trinity Park neighborhood to lobby police to aggressively target rowdy Duke student parties.
Stephen Miller, a Duke senior who writes a column for the student newspaper and leads the Conservative Union on campus, was outraged by an ad that ran in the student newspaper last spring signed by many faculty. He described it as a missive in which professors and students had assumed a crime occurred, regardless of the results of the police investigation.
Audience members described the case as one with major legal flaws that had made victims of the accused. One speaker said he wished the administration had stood behind the lacrosse team. Donald Ceres, a Duke divinity school graduate student who grew up in Durham, said he thought the case was polarizing because many in Durham thought of Duke as a walled-off campus of elitists.
Staff writer Anne Blythe can be reached at 932-8741 or ablythe@newsobserver.com.
http://www.amsterdamnews.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=73530&sID=34
Comparing the Duke Rape Case with Tawana Brawley
by ALTON H. MADDOX JR.
Originally posted 10/26/2006
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/0610261
Dismiss D. A. Nifong and Duke President Brodhead
Michael Gaynor
October 26, 2006
Another 2500 pages of WHAT?
http://www.nysun.com/article/42409
Brooklyn College Professor's Web Log Defends Duke Players
BY ELIANA JOHNSON - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 27, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/42409
Before April, Brooklyn College's K.C. Johnson didn't have any ties to Duke University or Durham, N.C. Then, three members of the Duke lacrosse team were indicted for raping a black stripper who performed at a party.
Ever since, the professor of American history has used his Web log, called Durham in Wonderland, to chronicle the developments in the case, castigate university administrators, and cast aspersion on the motivations and actions of Durham's district attorney, Mike Nifong.
Mr. Johnson told The New York Sun that Duke faculty members have "gone out of their way to harm the players, none have defended them." He said Mr. Nifong's prosecutorial work is "one of the worst instances of prosecutorial indiscretion in American history."
"Professors at Duke should be doing what I'm doing," Mr. Johnson said. "But since the Duke faculty isn't doing it, I think it's important that a faculty member somewhere be doing it."
Mr. Johnson, a Harvard Ph.D. who won tenure at Brooklyn College in 2003 after a much-publicized battle, has been to Durham several times now; he was there yesterday, speaking before Duke's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He still posts about 1000 words a day on the case. His work on the Duke case has received national press attention in the online magazine Slate. "I had to immerse myself in the case to do this well," Mr. Johnson said.
He surged into action when 88 Duke professors signed a letter in support of an advertisement published in Duke's student newspaper, the Duke Chronicle. The advertisement, titled "We're Listening," featured statements from Duke students indirectly condemning the players and exculpating the victim.
Students were "upset about what happened to this young woman and to themselves" the ad began. The statements included: "We go to class with racist classmates, we go to the gym with people who are racists"; and "no one is really talking about how to keep the young woman herself central to this conversation, how to keep her humanity before us."
As for Mr. Nifong, Mr. Johnson said he has politicized and racialized the case because his November re-election bid rests on it. "If the case goes up in flames, he's not likely to win in November," Mr. Johnson said.
The Duke case may well provide a record of "how many procedural irregularities a prosecutor could commit in a single case," Mr. Johnson wrote on his Web site. Mr. Nifong demanded DNA samples not only from the suspects, but from all 46 members of the lacrosse team; he let an officer working the case conduct a March photo identification session with the victim — an independent investigator is to preside over the procedure; and he failed to include photos of non-suspects, known as "filler photos," in an April photo lineup. All acts, said Mr. Johnson, violate North Carolina police procedure.
DNA tests produced no matches and the victim failed to identify her alleged perpetrators in either lineup.
A law professor at Duke, James Coleman, corroborated Mr. Johnson's assertions. The DNA tests, Mr. Coleman said, were "a way to bring the students down, to make them do what looks like a perp walk." Mr. Coleman said "The lineups were even more objectionable."
Mr. Nifong told the Raleigh News, "I'm confident a sexual assault took place in that house." Mr. Johnson's presence at and commentary about Duke have not been well-received by many Duke faculty members. "I don't want to dignify that baloney," the dean of the faculty at Duke, William Chafe, said in an e-mail. A professor of philosophy, Alex Rosenberg, said he received an e-mail from Mr. Johnson accusing him of prejudging the case. Mr. Johnson noted that Mr. Rosenberg signed the letter supporting the "We're Listening" advertisement. Mr. Rosenberg said he did so because he was concerned with the prevalence of alcohol on campus and bothered by "affluent kids violating the law to get exploited women to take their clothes off when they could get as much hookup as they wanted from rich and attractive Duke coeds."
Mr. Johnson, who's tried to keep up with his scholarship in American history while devoting hours to his Web log, says he looks forward to life after the case. "It'll be nice when things go back to normal," he said. On that score, certainly Mr. Johnson and the Duke professors share common ground.
er....make that 2000, not 2500.
_____________
A great big thanks to both xoxoxox and LB for your reportage! :>
""We go to class with racist classmates, we go to the gym with people who are racists"; and "no one is really talking about how to keep the young woman herself central to this conversation, how to keep her humanity before us."
If she wants to be central to the conversation, all she has to do is call the media for an interview.
As to the rest of the quoted statement, the only racism I've seen from Duke and Durham has been anti-white hatred from blacks and the self-loathing variety from white leftist so-called professors (and students) feasting at the trough who couldn't last one week in the real world were they to be expelled from the womb of the communist academia that conceived them.
I did not see her but it sounds like she was hiding.
I remembered one other thing that was interesting. KC said that CGM had, in the several lineups, consistently ID'd one player who had been proven to the DA as being out of town at the time. That's probably Mr. #4 in that final lineup and explains why she was steered past him.
I remembered reading about KC's tenure case but I had not remembered his name and made the connection.
http://hnn.us/articles/1470.html
I guess he knows what it's like to be screwed over by morons.
So now the Fonger can just turn in discovery whenever he wants? It was due last Friday.
It'll be interesting to see if Smith lets this slide...
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