Posted on 01/09/2007 7:40:35 AM PST by freespirited
Until relatively recently, it was possible to view the accuser as a secondary victim of Mike Nifong—someone who, as she had done in the past, filed a transparently incredible claim of rape without any expectation of seeing it through, only to see the “minister of justice” exploit the case for his own political purposes.
On the early morning of the 14th, with the accuser about to be involuntarily committed, a Durham Access Center nurse asked her if she had been raped. (It’s my understanding that prompting a patient in this fashion is not standard procedure in such circumstances—yet another example of the peculiar conduct associated with this case.) The accuser responded yes, fully realizing that this answer meant that she wouldn’t be committed.
Since the accuser was developing the tale on the fly, she couldn’t come close to creating a consistent story. But she would have every reason to assume, as in Creedmoor a decade before, that the matter would not be pursued in any significant degree. How could she (or anyone else) have realized that the “minister of justice,” desperately needing black votes and with nearly $30,000 of his own money riding on the outcome of the case, would adopt the pretense of acting upon one or more of her myriad, mutually contradictory, stories?
In some respects, this view of events always required suspending belief, since the accuser, apparently without anyone forcing her to do so, publicly offered her tale to the N&O for its March 25 article. In light of reports over the past month, it’s no longer possible to see the accuser, in any way, as an innocent “victim” of Nifong’s procedural fraud.
Let’s begin with what is known:
* At the time she was telling UNC doctors she was experiencing crippling pain, she was videotaped at a strip club performing a pole dance in a most limber fashion. As Kathleen Eckelt has pointed out, this behavior is consistent with prescription drug fraud.
* Four days after she made her allegation, the accuser reportedly told the security manager of the strip club, “I’m going to get paid by the white boys.” In recent days, some Nifong enablers who post on case-related forums have dismissed the comment’s significance. They have contended that the accuser was referring to her claim of being robbed, not implying that she planned to use the claim as part of a civil suit. The enablers’ theory seems extraordinarily far-fetched, in part because the accuser never claimed that “the white boys” robbed her. About the only aspect of her tale to remain consistent was a charge that Kim Roberts, the second dancer, took her money, which varied between $400 and $2000, depending on the version of events.
* The accuser’s mother met with civil litigator Willie Gary and told Essence that she was “very much interested” in “getting Gary involved.”
* Mark Simeon, the lawyer for Kim Roberts and an unsuccessful candidate for district attorney in 2002, expressed his interest in filing a civil suit.
* The day after Nifong began his procedurally improper publicity barrage against the lacrosse team, Simeon endorsed Nifong’s primary campaign, stating that while he always had known Nifong was a “good prosecutor,” he had only recently learned Nifong was a “good man.” Obviously, any adverse publicity Nifong could generate in the lacrosse players would help in any civil suit.
For reasons that remain unexplained, police ignored the results of two early lineups in which the accuser couldn’t identify any of her alleged assailants, and then waited 19 days until after first interviewing her to show her the final lineup.
In the March 16 lineup, the accuser remarked, “This is harder than I thought,” according to the notes of Inv. Michele Soucie.
On March 21, Inv. Benjamin Himan recorded, “I asked her questions trying to follow up on a better description of the suspects. She was unable to remember anything further about the suspects.”
In the April 4 lineup, the accuser’s memory dramatically improved, with her sudden ability to recognize many members of the team and to identify her alleged assailants. Yet, as Iowa State professor Gary Wells, a national expert on photo lineup identifications, commented, “Memory doesn’t get better with time. That’s one of the things we know. How does she get more positive with time?” ---------
Changing any one of the nine items above—i.e., had the police done their job and taken the accuser’s statement, including a lineup session, immediately; or had the accuser and her family not expressed an interest in getting money out of the incident; or had a dubious partnership between Nifong and Simeon coalesced around Nifong’s decision to abandon legal ethics in handling the lacrosse case; or had police either accepted the results of the early lineups or recognized what Wells termed the “red flag[s]” associated with the April 4 lineup—would make it irresponsible even to speculate about the relationship between a possible civil suit and the identifications the accuser made.
But, of course, all of the above factors did occur.
Given the accuser’s stated desire to “get paid by the white boys,” it’s worth taking a look at the “white boys” that she ultimately picked. In a normal case, the police would have taken a statement from her immediately after the incident, and also asked her to identify the alleged assailants. In this case, however, the police waited three weeks to take the accuser’s official statement, and gave her 19 days to research the backgrounds of the people she would ultimately choose.
This inexplicable delay gave an accuser out for money the opportunity to research her prey. But her stated desire to “get paid by the white boys” would be frustrated if she happened to select three players from financially modest families.
It seems difficult to believe that the accuser could have conducted a detailed background check on the players. But she quite easily could have located the players’ hometowns (from the Duke lacrosse webpage), and from there obtained from the Census Bureau’s website the median income of the cities in which they lived. Of course, wealthy people live in poor towns, and vice versa. But this approach would have given a figure who wanted to “get paid by the white boys” a better chance of selecting someone who fulfilled her needs, especially since she had many days before the photo ID session to study the photographs.
Below is the relevant data*:
Accused Players
Essex Fells, NJ......175,000
Bethesda, MD...... 130,160
Garden City, NY...120,305
Other Players
Great Falls, VA......170,618
Potomac, MD........142,472
Darnestown, MD....136,507
Mendham, NJ.........129,812
Chevy Chase, MD..127,254
Summit, NJ.............117,053
Swarthmore, PA.....105,874
Manhasset, NY.......104,601
Setauket, NY..........102,472
Sea Cliff, NY..........100,506
Syosset, NY..............99,704
Glenview, IL..............96,552
Massapequa, NY...... 88,571
Ridgewood, NJ..........85,108
East Northport, NY....80,291
Baldwin, NY...............78,400
East Rockaway, NY...78,363
Orchard Park, NY......70,483
Farmingdale, NY........68,235
Norwalk, CT..............68,219
Gaithersburg, MD.......66,669
Cazenovia, NY...........61,750
Freeport, NY..............61,673
Durham, NC...............51,162
Webster, NY..............49,471
Dover, DE..................48,338
Charlottesville, VA......45,110
Dallas, TX..................40,921
Richmond, VA............38,348
Philadelphia, PA..........37,036
Baltimore, MD............35,438
The accuser thus selected the player (Reade Seligmann) whose hometown reported the highest median income of any player on the team. Her choice of Dave Evans (or at least his mustachioed alter ego) gave her someone whose hometown was in the top five. Collin Finnerty’s hometown ranked as the eighth wealthiest on the team, but other reasons existed for selecting him: reports of his D.C. arrest had appeared in the media around 10 days before the April 4 lineup.
The income table reveals one other interesting item: the only player that the accuser twice said she was absolutely certain to have seen at the party (Brad Ross, who wasn’t even in Durham on the night in question) comes from the fourth wealthiest town on the team (Darnestown).
The accuser, meanwhile, claimed to recognize a much smaller percentage of the lacrosse players who were from towns and cities with lower median incomes. Of the nine players who came from the cities and towns with the lowest median incomes, the accuser recognized only three. And, of course, she claimed that none were her assailants.
---------
I concede that this post, unlike others on this blog, is speculative. It’s entirely possible that the accuser randomly picked the three she wound up choosing under the watchful, if procedurally improper, eye of Sgt. Mark Gottlieb.
But Wells’ comment is worth pondering. “Memory doesn’t get better with time. That’s one of the things we know. How”—and why—“does she get more positive with time?”
*--The hometowns of two players (New Vernon, NJ, and Cos Cob, CT) did not come up
I think the argument was that the cry of rape was a spur of the moment thing to get out of involunatry commitment. But like any con artist on the make, when she saw Nifong was going to run with this and people started telling her should could sue these guys, it was in her interest then to pick 3 guys from pretty wealthy families.
Fortunately for the US justice system and unfortunately for Nifong, Mangum picking people with enough money to fight back was not in Nifong's interest. I do agree Mangum did not do any research, but I bet someone did.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/18407
Scripps News
Nifong Should Face Prosecution
(Editorial)
It had all the makings of a boffo case. Rich, white, arrogant jocks from a prestigious Southern college hire strippers for their drinking party and gang-rape a poor, black, single mother, holding her against her will in a bathroom.
The case drew national headlines, spurred a debate about privilege and race, led Duke University to ax its lacrosse coach and program, and propelled District Attorney Mike Nifong to re-election, after he had appeared to be losing to a woman whom he had once fired.
Nifong's good political fortune, however, seems to have come at the expense of justice. He now stands accused of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The North Carolina State Bar has announced it has found reasonable cause to refer him to its Disciplinary Hearing Commission for trial; he could be disbarred. And the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called on Nifong to recuse himself from the case.
But as well as quitting the case, he should resign, and face criminal prosecution.
After dragging three students through the mud for months, Nifong dropped rape charges last month, when the alleged victim said she was no longer certain she had been raped. He was still proceeding with kidnapping and sexual-assault charges.
Meanwhile, the head of a DNA laboratory testified under oath last month that he and Nifong knew back in April that there was no DNA evidence from the lacrosse men on the woman who accused them. And there was DNA of several other men in her underwear and in intimate areas of her body.
Even though they knew that, they agreed to keep it a secret from the public _ and from the defense. In May, Nifong signed a statement saying the prosecution "is not aware of any additional material or information which may be exculpatory in nature." The law requires him to turn over such evidence, and such a statement could expose him to charges of perjury.
There's more. In disregard of standard practice, he presented the alleged victim with a lineup that included only Duke lacrosse players. She seemed an unreliable witness in many ways, telling different stories. And the DA seemed uninterested in evidence strongly suggesting that the accused could not have committed the alleged crime.
Nifong told the media that he believed the alleged assault was racially motivated, and he called the accused students "hooligans," in apparent violation of the state Code of Professional Responsibility, which requires prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." It seems clear he made such statements to swing enough votes to win his election.
Prosecutorial misconduct strikes at the heart of our criminal-justice system, destroying public trust and subjecting innocent people to the abuse of the state. In cases of rape, such misconduct could have horrific consequences, in making it harder for women who are genuine victims of these crimes of violence to come forward and put predators behind bars.
Justice demands that the rights of the innocent be protected. It is an encouraging statement about our system that now Nifong will be required to defend his actions. Let's hope that sterner steps follow, sending a message to headline-grabbing prosecutors.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-lafs...l-_b_38202.html
Melissa Lafsky
01.09.2007
Media Completes Its Full 180 On Duke Rape Case (4 comments )
Newsweek has an exclusive interview this week with Reade Seligmann, one of the three Duke lacrosse players embroiled in the much-rehashed rape case. It's a tear-jerker of a piece, with tales of dashed innocence, traumatized siblings and parents stretched to near breaking points after their son was identified by a North Carolina stripper as one of her attackers.
We learn that the exiled Seligmann, still an undergraduate, has been permitted to finish his acedemic semester at home, where he's since made the athletic-conference honor roll, volunteered at a soup kitchen and coached football at his old junior high school. To deal with the stress and depression of the scandal, Seligmann, who was reportedly recognized and offered good wishes by one of the soup kitchen's homeless patrons, turns to Kipling poems and close friendships with his fellow accuseds (Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans) for solace, and plans to eventually channel the experience into a career as a criminal defense lawyer.
While journalist Susannah Meadows is careful not to make proclamations of innocence, the sympathetic profile represents a full 180-degree turn from the fire-and-brimstone declarations that dominated the scandal's early coverage. The story, which broke last April, led to a cannonade of anger over the alleged rape of a low-income black woman by three privileged white men in a town known for heavy class and race disparities. Public furor grew as witnesses recounted racist expletives hurled at the women by Duke students, and the subsequent resignation of the school's lacrosse coach and cancellation of the lacrosse season only deepened cries of outrage. The New York Times in partcular was charged with pushing an anti-Duke agenda, with articles highlighting the university's fears over its sullied reputation and columns asking hedged questions like "What happens when a school sells its soul for sports?"
Gradually, the pendulum began to swing back as reports of lack of evidence, botched investigations and prosecutorial and police misconduct hit the airwaves. Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong came under fire as his self-declared air-tight case against the three men crumbled into a soupy quagmire of inept investigations and shaky-to-nonexistent evidence. Times columnist David Brooks, who initially grabbed a pitchfork in the anti-frat-boy charge, was offering mea culpas by the end of May, and in August the Times ran a 5,600-word front page reassessment of the case. The story was quickly shredded by angry bloggers and other writers crying foul over the Times' supposed bias against the students.
October brought further redemption for the defendants in the form of Ed Bradley's "60 Minutes" interview. The three were now described in terms like "honor student" and "one of most talented young players on the team," and given the opportunity to defend themselves on national TV. While the piece didn't lay out much evidence not already covered in the Times' Page One story, it emphasized the fact that a question now existed as to whether a rape had ever occurred. Legal analysts declared the interview a "great idea," and speculated that it may even lead to all charges being dropped.
Three months later the tide has officially turned, with reports of Finnerty and Seligmann being invited back to campus and given the chance to rejoin the lacrosse team while they await trial. Meanwhile the accuser has given birth to a baby (not sired by any of the defendants), and had her credibility heavily eroded. Reports that the rape (but not the kidnapping or sexual assault ) charges had been dropped led to bizarre debates over the definition of "penetration" as necessary for rape in North Carolina, with journalists rushing to specify that penetration of the accuser's vagina by a penis, rather than a mere object such as a broom handle, was the fact at issue.
Now, MSNBC legal analyst Susan Filan asks "What's left to say in the Duke rape case?" (plenty, apparently, given that the piece is almost 2,000 words). In addition to her lamentations over the failure of the justice system, there's much to be said about the media's role in manipulating the scandal, from the early rush to cover Nifong's guilty-before-proven-innocent speeches to broadcasting photos of the victim on MSNBC and a North Carolina NBC affiliate to subsequent calls for the D.A.'s head on a platter. It's clear that early judgments were based on incorrect or inaccurate information, and that these students have been potentially maligned and their futures damaged by the court of media and public opinion. Still, Filan's calling them potential "poster boys for justice" and "icon[s] for our criminal justice system" seems somewhat premature given that there case has yet to be heard by a judge. While plenty has been terribly wrong with the investigation, prosecution and coverage of the alleged incident at Duke, as law professor Susan Estrich, who reported on the case for Fox News, noted, "[n]one of this means the woman is lying." As with all criminal cases, the burden of proof lies firmly, and beyond a reasonable doubt, on the state. While the media is obviously not so constrained, it behooves us all to use reasonable care in making wide proclamations of guilt - or innocence.
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/1131331/
Attorney: Lacrosse Players Still Unsure About Returning to Duke
Posted: 26 minutes ago
RALEIGH, N.C. — Two Duke University lacrosse players charged with sexual assault haven't yet decided whether they will return to the university, one of their attorneys said Tuesday.
Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans still face charges of sexual offense and kidnapping after being accused of assaulting a stripper at a team party in March. Evans graduated in May, while Finnerty and Seligmann were barred from attending class during the fall semester while their case made its way through court.
The university last week invited Seligmann and Finnerty to return to campus as students in good standing.
"They have not made a decision on that yet," James P. Cooney III, an attorney for Seligmann, said Tuesday. Cooney said the university would allow them to return this semester, or they could come back next semester.
Classes on the campus in Durham resume Wednesday, but Cooney said Seligmann and Finnerty could arrive late if they decide to return.
University officials last week sent letters to the players, noting that circumstances had changed in the case and suggesting that more time off would harm their educational progress. Last month, rape charges against all three players were dropped, and the Durham County prosecutor was charged with ethics violations.
If the university could promise the classes I wanted, at the times I wanted, returning would be a consideration. I actually think it would be good for them to get "back to normal" as much as possible. The selection of dorm rooms is going to suck tho'....
I think the largest offices of the 88 would do just fine. One each. With an extra one for a sitting room.
I think that newspapers are writing will they or wont they articles is a sign maybe the should not. But they also both have their lacrosse careers to consider.
NCAA rules give them five seasons to play four. If I understand correctly, lacrosse is a sport that they could transfer and not have to sit out a year. They possibly could do that and go someplace without as much publicity and where no part of the local community might seek retribution against them.
Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006651.htm
p.s. Go here and annoy these people.
http://foxrants.com/2007/01/08/due-process/
Nice... Do any of those come with private baths?
Imagine? Heck we decided months ago that it was over 1,000 to 1.
As you know, I can be quite annoying. So I went right over there.
There's also epodunk, among others. Mangum is or was a college student, so it's not beyond the pale that she would be able to locate the information, especially if she had help. Further, if she had another kind of help, like somebody with access to one or more of the several good subscription databases that provide information on private individuals such as property ownership, property valuations and mortgages, SSN, and other personal information, it would be easy to find out which boys came from a level of wealth and which did not.
Remember, she'd already had plenty of time to see faces and names on the wanted posters. All she had to do was try to remember what faces were familiar as having been at the party, and then run those family names and pick some out.
I doubt that she got their credit reports. The reason is that not just anybody can get a credit report on somebody else and, more importantly, credit inquiries actually show up on the report by the name of the entity making the inquiry. The entity making the inquiry had better have an authorization from the subject person to make the inquiry or be a governmental agency with a bona fide need-to-know or they're in deep squat.
There are private databases that provide wealth profiles and locate information by gleaning selective information from public records. They're useful in getting a working idea of somebody's personal wealth. The only record of the inquiry lies within the operation of the private database. The people who are subjects of such inquiries never know about the search (unless someone tells them). Such databases are widely used by law firms, law enforcement, private investigators, collection bureaus and a LARGE variety of businesses.
That's why it would be interesting to see what was on her computer. Was not her computer part of the discovery requested early on? Or am I thinking of just her cell? I seem to recall some discussion of her computer, though. Somebody? Anybody?
Many county tax assessor's websites allow you to find property records just by entering a last name.
No, it wouldn't require a very informed knowledge of research resources. Mangum has some education, so it's certainly not impossible or even unlikely that she wouldn't know about epodunk or some such comprehensive census-specific site.
Specific information on individuals is available in privately operated databases and is available by subscription. Such databases are used extensively by law firms, law enforcement, privates detectives, collection bureaus and a wide variety of businesses.
A number of us said or speculated way-back-when that Mangum had gotten the names of the players from the Wanted posters, looked for vaguely familiar faces, and checked them out relative to their wealth before she made the IDs at the later rounds of ID carried out in April.
Has a statistical analysis been done on the selection of high income hometowns?
STATISTICS PING
Not likely her attorneys. If it ever came out in a civil suit discovery that she had picked the defendant for the suit after reviewing his family's wealth profile in comparison to others, that lawyer would be presented with a possible ethics charge and also a possible charge of suborning perjury, even if it was just in the form of signing a sworn affidavit as to the defendant having done such-and-such to her on such-and-such date.
It would have to be finessed in such a way that she got the wealth profiles from another source, and then went to an attorney to represent her specifically against the individual(s) she decided on before going to that attorney.
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