Posted on 01/09/2007 7:40:35 AM PST by freespirited
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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