Posted on 04/25/2006 2:34:48 AM PDT by abb
DURHAM - District Attorney Mike Nifong plans to reinstate misdemeanor charges against a half-dozen Duke lacrosse players, saying a March 13 party where a woman reported a rape broke the deals that the players made with prosecutors.
Nifong's decision could affect players who, before the party, had entered agreements in which prosecutors would dismiss the cases if the players performed community service and stayed out of trouble for six months or a year. Among the first to have his charges reinstated was David Evans, one of the team captains who lived at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., the site of the party in which lacrosse players hired two women from escort services to dance. One of the women told police that she was raped by three men in a bathroom.
Two players, Collin Finnerty, 19, and Reade William Seligmann, 20, were charged last week with first-degree rape, first-degree sex offense and first-degree kidnapping. Their attorneys say the men are innocent.
On Monday, an attorney for Seligmann filed a motion seeking information that would help attack the credibility of the woman, the only person, according to the defense filing, who says a rape occurred. The motion seeks information about the woman, including criminal charges, mental and emotional problems the woman has suffered as well as social services, probation, child protective services and victim's advocacy records.
Today, Finnerty is due in a Washington court where prosecutors in an assault charge are considering whether to revoke a deferred prosecution agreement similar to those affecting other players in Durham.
According to court records, 16 players were charged in the past three years with misdemeanor charges in Durham including noise violations, public urination and alcohol violations. The deals placed the men on probation for either six months or a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
My head is spinning..what is the jest of this?
thanks
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post Writers Group
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
That's the basic scenario, and it's impossible to avoid thinking of all the black women who were violated by drunken white men in the American South over the centuries. The master-slave relationship, the tradition of droit du seigneur, the use of sexual possession as an instrument of domination -- all this ugliness floods the mind, and refuses to leave.
Then there's the fact that the incident happened at Duke, which has never been able to shake its aura of preppy privilege, its reputation as a place where students are downright arrogant in their sense of superiority.
A couple of basic questions tend to get overlooked. What's the deal with any group of college students thinking it's a perfectly normal thing to hire strippers for a party? What do their parents say when they see that charge on the credit-card bill? For that matter, what's the deal with a college student, whatever financial pressure she might be under, thinking that working at night as an outcall stripper is a perfectly acceptable -- and safe -- way to support herself? It's not blaming the victim to ask if she couldn't have made better choices.
Those questions have to wait, however, while we pore over DNA test results, witness statements and dueling accounts of the evening's events from prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Not much attention has been paid to the fact that Duke has done much better than most of the nation's elite universities in promoting diversity in its student body. Around 30 percent of Duke students are minorities, including more than 11 percent who are African American -- approximately the percentage of blacks in the general population.
Yet Duke is still a place where the lacrosse team, which has but one black player, hires two black strippers for an alcohol-fueled house party. Was this just another night in Durham?
Here a minor is allowed to drink with their parent/guardian. Even in public!
See my post #63 in this thread...
Aw, come on -- tell us how you really feel!
Perhaps they can house them in a monastery.
No that want work.
Lets see where is there a place where alcohol is not consumed?
Is there such a place.
Even at Gitmo I'm sure someone consumes alcohol.
Of course I agree with you. I'm simply poking fun at the MSM.
Do you remember all the discussion about Bush trying to get his swagger back? In the eyes of the MSM, only privileged white guys are capable of swagger.
Is he in DC today?
That's the basic scenario, and it's impossible to avoid thinking of all the black women who were violated by drunken white men in the American South over the centuries. The master-slave relationship, the tradition of droit du seigneur, the use of sexual possession as an instrument of domination -- all this ugliness floods the mind, and refuses to leave.
AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Yes.....Fox has showed him leaving the courthouse and getting in his car in DC...
And it's somehow a sin!
There you have it. Reparations via the legal system..
Talk about race baiting!!!
Wow! I am impressed! They leave it up to the judgement of the parents!
Eugene Robinson: http://www.postwritersgroup.com/mugshots/bigrobinson.jpg
"It's quite possible we'll never have a truly satisfactory answer."
It's true that Robinson and those who support the false accuser may not be satisfied with the answer that the evidence reveals. I think I will find the truth very satisfactory.
That restriction would include all grocery stores of every kind. It would even include McDonalds, since orange juice contains some alcohol.
The context? A bunch of jocks at an elite university in the once-segregated South -- privileged white kids who play lacrosse, a sport that conjures images of impossibly green suburban playing fields surrounded by the Range Rovers of doting parents -- decide to have a party, so they call an escort service and hire a couple of strippers. The hired help arrives: two black women, one of them a 27-year-old single mother who is working her way through North Carolina Central University, a decidedly proletarian institution across town. Within a few hours the woman becomes simply "the accuser" when she tells police she was raped by some of those white jocks.
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.
