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
Time to start axing some liberal arts professors.
Simeon, sure. Willie Gary, no. I know Mangum's mom met with him early on, but with everything that has transpired since then, I doubt that Gary would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. Mangum is too flakey, too trashy, and too impeached for him to take a suit on her behalf. He's a big fish and doesn't want nor need to have his name attached to Mangum. If she went to Gary now, he would refer her to some third-stringer, hungry little fish in a Durham or Raleigh firm.
Private database information, like I said 8 months ago.
Since many of the gang of 88 continue to make hostile statements about the incident, I don't blame them.
Brodhead should clean that place up. If he can't then the trustees should get someone who can.
She and her boyfriend and/or pimp and their friends could have put their heads together and accomplished it. A PI or a law office could have provided the information on the players' families for a fee, or they could have gotten a referral to a database with the information they need or searched for one themselves on the internet and subscribed for a month. It's not rocket science.
I hope the boy's attorneys are just being coy, and actually there are no plans to return to Duke, leaving Brodhead and Duke to twist in the wind. Of course, they hopefully have explored other university transfer options before deciding this important question and are waiting to here if there's a better option elsewhere.
Yes, I know, but those don't reflect the market value or the existing mortgages or other encumbrances. They just show the census tract and maybe the assessed value for taxation.
A county recorder's office has a great deal more information than an assessor's office, but it's a place to start.
I seem to remember a request for her computer, but, as far as I know, nothing came of it.
As to the calculating behavior possibly surrounding the choice of the (true) victims in this case, the accused boys, I have a feeling that Mangum's mother has a larger role in this case than we realize.
This came up in one of the early motions by the defense and was discussed at one of the hearings before Judge Stephens. The defense was concerned about safeguarding the data on her computer, IIRC. Here we discussed why LE would even have her computer. There didn't appear to be a subpeona for it.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-22-duke-lacrosse_x.htm?csp=34
Among the items the defense is seeking is an analysis of the accuser's computer, which Nifong said was still pending, and records from the mental health facility where authorities took the woman before she told police she had been raped. The only record from the facility, Nifong said, is a single page from a log book he is still working to obtain.
"She and her boyfriend and/or pimp and their friends"
Probably had enough dirt on someone with resources....and for a drug taking, alchohol drinking stripper, this is a young woman quite capable of "thinking on her feet" when she's standing.
sp
Brodhead is a major part of the problem. Whatever, if anything, is done by Duke about the G88, with Brodhead in charge they will lapse right back into the PC BS academia that enabled the G88 in the first place.
Could be. As I say, the info isn't hard to get. A pimp would be the kind of person who would readily know how to get the information or who to go to, whether he had any dirt on the person or not. It's also not particularly expensive.
I think too much is being made of the question of Mangum's ability to get the information. It's not at all difficult, even for an unsophisticated person like Mangum who no doubt has a lot of street smarts, as you say.
"Mangum's ability to get the information"
Would any (Duke's) student records be available at another (NC State) university - say for instance student loan info?
Nifong issued two subpoenas asking Duke University to hand over the home addresses for all of the lacrosse players as well as two other people.(from June 8, 2006)
From wral.com
Arrest Made in Shooting Death of NCCU Student
Posted: 2 minutes ago
Durham — Sources tell WRAL that Durham police have made an arrest in Greensboro in connection with last week's shooting death of a North Carolina Central student.
The suspect is a Guilford Metro 911 operator, they say. She is being brought back to Durham tonight to face charges.
Authorities said Denita Monique Smith, 25, a graduate student from Charlotte, was shot inside a stairwell of the Campus Crossing Apartments Thursday morning and then fell down several steps to the sidewalk.
A maintenance worker at the apartment complex found her body.
Sources say Durham police arrested the suspect, whose name was not immediately available, at around 7 p.m. with the help of the Greensboro Police Department.
Durham police spent the last five days interviewing more than a dozen people, including Smith's family members, friends and neighbors.
WRAL learned on Monday that investigators were focusing on Greensboro. It was not immediately clear why because Durham police would not confirm the information
Wasn't that subterfuge? IIRC, Nifong wanted the key cards of all the players. IOW, he wanted to go on a fishing expedition.
http://wral.com/news/local/story/1131742/
Arrest Made in Shooting Death of NCCU Student
Durham police have made an arrest in Greensboro in connection with last week's shooting death of a North Carolina Central student.
Shannon Elizabeth Crawley, whose age was not immediately available, was arrested Tuesday evening in connection with the death of Denita Monique Smith, 25.
Smith, a graduate student from Charlotte, was shot inside a stairwell of the Campus Crossing Apartments Thursday morning and then fell down several steps to the sidewalk.
A maintenance worker at the apartment complex found her body at about 10:15 a.m. Police had responded to an earlier call for shots fired at approximately 8:30 A.M., but found nothing at that time.
Sources tell WRAL that Crawley, a Guilford Metro 911 operator, was arrested at about 7 p.m. She was being brought back to Durham Tuesday evening to face charges.
Police have refused to discuss any possible motives but said that Smith's death did not appear to be a random act of violence.
Detectives spent the last five days interviewing more than a dozen people, including Smith's family members, friends and neighbors.
Investigators also spent several hours Friday interviewing a person of interest in the case. Police said witnesses saw a woman driving away from the apartment complex in a burgundy Ford Explorer less than two hours before Smith's body was found.
WRAL first learned on Monday evening that investigators were focusing their attention in Greensboro. It was not immediately clear why because Durham police would not comment.
In response to the shooting, the Durham Police Department will conduct a Project Safe Neighborhoods Community Response on Wednesday. It is a strategy utilized for violent incidents or crimes likely to have a retaliation effect among those involved.
The response consists of a door-to-door canvassing of the neighborhood where the crime occurred and where the victim live.
Smith received a bachelor's degree in English from N.C. Central and had planned to wrap up her thesis this semester. She was also engaged to a Greensboro police officer.
Her funeral is scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday at University Park Baptist Church in Charlotte.
Stay tuned to WRAL.com and WRAL-TV for more details as they become available.
!!!
Wasn't Smith engaged to a Greenboro PO?
Sources tell WRAL that Crawley, a Guilford Metro 911 operator, was arrested at about 7 p.m.
Smith (the victim) received a bachelor's degree in English from N.C. Central- was also engaged to a Greensboro police officer.
A love triangle?
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