Posted on 02/27/2007 9:43:42 AM PST by abb
02/27/07 -- DURHAM) - New motions have been filed in the Duke Lacrosse sex assault case.
Defense attorneys for Collin Finnery, Reade Seligmann and David Evans filed the 39-page motion at the Durham Courthouse Tuesday morning. In it defense attorneys for the three former Duke Lacrosse players say the prosecution is still holding out on potentially-explosive DNA evidence.
The DNA was taken in a rape kit the morning after the now-infamous lacrosse party on March 13, 2006 where the accuser says she was gang raped.
This new filing says they've not been given all the DNA evidence that excludes their clients but includes more unrelated male DNA.
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong dropped rape charges against Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans last December. All three defendants still face kidnapping and sexual offense charges.
The news that there are more "missing" DNA results highlights another puzzle in this case that I have mentioned previously: With so much DNA floating around how come the State lab couldn't find any or did they? I believe that there are folks in that lab who know exactly what Nifong was up to from day 1. I strongly suspect that he went to another lab not for better techniques but greater pliability.
I would be interested if anyone has seen anything on this.
I don't know if all of it is but I think LEO's routinely give DNA samples when they handle evidence. If it is later found on the evidence then that DNA is ruled out.
Could be the state lab merely told Fong that the Lax team exemplars didn't match. The didn't specify what or how much DNA they found on CGM.
I have not read the complaint. My comment was pure snark - I am not aware that the DNA is identified; I just assume it is different from the DNA already discussed/identified earlier.
I understand and do not necessarily disagree with your comments about going ahead with a hearing. I do not want it to go to trial, however. And yes, I understand that the May 7th date is just a hearing.
As I understand it, the state lab looked for DNA the simplest, and cheapest, way, and found nothing from the lax players.
Nifong then opted for a more sensitive but also much more expensive test, Y-STR testing; which revealed maybe much more than he wanted to find out--multiple DNA donors (but again, none from the players).
Someone who knows much more than I about DNA testing said he shot himself in the foot by ordering the more expensive tests; he may have been desperate by then to find SOMETHING; but instead of players' DNA all he found was more exculpatory evidence--which he didn't want and didn't turn over to the defense.
No, not routinely, and they would not have directly handled rape kit swabs.
Good summation of the point.
Why not?! After all, they found Dr. Brian Meehan's in there!
I disagree with you on this one. He is an embarrassment to the state of North Carolina Bar association. As long as he is serving Durham as DA, members will be ridiculed by their peers in the state and nationwide. Lawyers don't usually take too well to ridicule...
LOL! Maybe little princess's baby is a little chieftan.
But they would have handled other evidence and thus their DNA on file.
Wouldn't that take the cake.
It is so odd that the chief is totally missing. Yet no one around Durham seems to think it strange.
Actually, there was a recent article about the missing chief. The city council or some local government body was discussing it as an agenda item. Maybe somebody else here remembers more about it.
No, cops, crime scene specialists and forensicists wear gloves when they collect and handle evidence. Each item is photographed where and how found, then collected, bagged and labeled and numbered before going to the next item.
It is against federal law to submit DNA profiles to CODIS from individuals who voluntarily give a DNA sample, and it is not supposed to be submitted to any state record system, either. In this instance, "voluntary" means it's being submitted for purposes of testing for just the case at hand. "Voluntary" does NOT mean voluntarily submitting to retention of your profile, once excluded from the case at hand, for any future reference.
If a cop was found in the professionally embarrassing position of mishandling evidence such that he needed to submit a DNA sample, he'd probably hear from at least a captain about it and would be severely razzed by his brothers. His DNA profile would not be submitted to a database.
Perhaps, but the technicians at the State Lab now know that the FA's story about no prior sex are clearly outrageous lies, yet they are silent. Or are they? The defense team may be making informed hunches based on "insider" information.
This is going to make one hell of a TV movie. I could see a whole new Law and Order series based simply on the events of this case: battling ADAs in election, corrupt DA investigators, DNA lab compromised, rape scam, Media distorting facts about a non-crime, lives ruined by false accusation, fake injuries to obtain drugs, corrupt Ivy League Professor, race baiting by radical Panther group, violence by campus radicals, out of control cop, cover up of police brutality, DA coercing witnesses, robbery, prostitution ring protected by police, ... Come to think about it, you would have to make it a series because nobody would believe all of this could happen in one story line.
I do not know for certain but it defies imagination that the State Lab could find none of this other DNA stuff. Moreover, if in fact the State Lab could not find it, then it seems to me that any crimes where the finding or not finding of DNA at a crime scene played a significant role in a prosecution would have grounds to appeal based on the lack of competence of the State Lab. This is a Catch-22 situation. This crime could make LE in (and the tax payers of) North Carolina wish that Nifong had never been born.
"This crime could make LE in (and the tax payers of) North Carolina wish that Nifong had never been born."
That train, in my humble opinion, has already left the station.
LOL!
Actually, Law and Order is so leftwing it would never step close to this story because all the bad guys are either the beloved pets of the left or the progenitors of leftism in this country.
Well, as I understand it, SBI did one kind of test that didn't get a match so Nifong had the samples sent to the private lab to have another kind of test performed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.