Duke Rape Case Defense: Throw Out DA Nifong and Photo ID

ABC ^ | May 1, 2006 | CHRIS CUOMO, ERIC AVRAM, and LARA SETRAKIAN

[don'tbedenied]

Accused Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann's attorneys want Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong thrown off the case.

Today, they filed a legal motion specifically asking for it.

"DA Mike Nifong neglected his duty as a prosecutor to seek the truth and a fair prosecution," the defense's motion reads.

The motions were filed just 24 hours before Nifong's Tuesday election in which he's fighting to keep his seat. Nifong is being challenged by former prosecutor Freda Black and private lawyer Keith Bishop

[Neverforget01]

"Butch" Williams, the lawyer who hugged Nifong, is currently an assistant professor at NCCU.......Would that position and his representation of one of the LAX students be considered a conflict of interest?

I have no legal knowledge at all. Something tells me, that if my kid was on the team , this guy wouldn't be my first pick.

[Dukie07]

My only agenda on this thread is what I thought everyone else's is: to find the truth.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Athens, GA
Hell, UGa and the State of GA are one.

[Neverforget01]

Good to see you. How's your daughter's finals going?

[Carolinamom]

A staff member of the student newspaper at NCCU said they would support her "whether she's telling the truth or not." It's that mind set that is so insufferable.

[maggief]

Opinion
Nifong Wins. Will Justice Win, Too?

Tom Bevan 1 hour, 27 minutes ago

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong won reelection in the Democratic primary last night, beating challenger Freda Black by close to 4 percentage points, 45.2 to 41.5. He is running unopposed in November, which is ironic, because if yesterday's primary vote hadn't been closed Nifong almost certainly would have lost:


"We had a lot of irate, irate Republicans who couldn't vote for district attorney," said Mike Ashe, director of the Durham County Board of Elections.

Despite Nifong's assurances that he's acted appropriately thus far, evidence continues to mount that he bungled the investigation and rushed to get indictments against two individuals, at least one of which now appears to have a very solid alibi.

After thoroughly reviewing the case in his column on Monday, esteemed legal analyst Stuart Taylor, Jr. concluded that "accumulating evidence strongly suggests that the charge may well be a lie." He also put Nifong among a group of people - including Duke's professors and administrators - who should be "ashamed of themselves" for the way the case has been handled.

Last night in an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Nifong tried to portray the primary vote as a referendum on his integrity. Hardly. His behavior in this case has been truly disturbing: after giving more than 70 interviews in the immediate aftermath of the accusation where he spoke openly about the case and asserted that the victim was telling the truth, Nifong now won't respond to legitimate questions from either defense attorneys or the media about the various pieces of exculpatory evidence that have come out in this case. Furthermore, despite serious questions about how Nifong and the Durham police botched the identification process (by showing pictures of only Duke players to the alleged victim thereby making any sort of exoneration through misidentification impossible) Nifong indicates he's going to press ahead with a third indictment in the coming days.

Put simply, Nifong is stuck. If he drops the case now, or if it's dismissed or thrown out by a judge in the coming months, Nifong will be disgraced and branded a political opportunist. The only way he can salvage his reputation is to successfully prosecute the case against these boys, and that is an extremely dangerous position for a prosecutor to be in, especially when the evidence continues to build that the whole thing may be a fraud.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitics/20060503/cm_rcp/nifong_wins_will_justice_win_t

[snarkytart]

I cannot listen, I am at work, what exactly is Juan William's saying?

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Unless your kid is the one black player!

[Dukie07]

Perhaps because my college situation was the same as Duke's, I made an assumption. I went to Stanford, and we had much the same relationship with East Palo Alto that Duke has with Durham. It is my understanding from friends that the Yale/New Haven situation is the same.

I agree that there is a serious drinking problem at Duke - but from what I hear and read, it is a problem that affects colleges/universities across the nation.

I do agree with your assessment of what would have happened had there been no "cry of rape."

[snarkytart]

>>Opinion
Nifong Wins. Will Justice Win, Too?

Tom Bevan 1 hour, 27 minutes ago

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong won reelection in the Democratic primary last night, beating challenger Freda Black by close to 4 percentage points, 45.2 to 41.5. He is running unopposed in November, which is ironic, because if yesterday's primary vote hadn't been closed Nifong almost certainly would have lost:


"We had a lot of irate, irate Republicans who couldn't vote for district attorney," said Mike Ashe, director of the Durham County Board of Elections. <<<

__
Thanks for that article Maggie. It is a voice in the wilderness.

[Neverforget01]

I'm sorry. The Juan Williams piece is an NPR commentary on Durham and its realtions to Duke. Juan really didn't give his opinion, just a lot of quotes from local community people. Maybe you can save the link for home? I found it helped to explain how Nifong got elected.

I'd include the trancript, but I'd have to pay for it!

[Howlin]

"Cash Michaels says her jaw was swollen, she was having trouble moving, and she had a problem with her leg?"

Sure.

[Law is not justice but process]

Perhaps it is a characteristic of self-proclaimed "elite" universities. Across the South, though, a situation like Duke's is an exception. Even Furman, which is a private school with a suburban campus, is closer to Greenville than Duke's urban (in part) campus is to Durham. It may have a lot to do with the city as well.

It should not be that surprising in the case of Duke, I suppose. Most of the Duke student body (though by no means all) grew up in affluent suburbs not unlike those to the south and west of Duke's campus. Whether the suburb was in New Jersey or Florida, they wetre not anything like the urban core of Durham.

I remember there was always a gauntlet of aggressively panhandling bums to run right off campus and just out of the reach of Duke Public Safety Officers. They would accost students walking to off-campus apartments or to nearby Ninth Street (shops and restaurants around some old tobacco warehouses and a former cotton mill). The students would usually give something to these bums because they were afraid of them and because they probably seldom encountered such people at the mall when they were growing up. I was not so soft a touch. There was this one guy we called the Sergeant Major because his line was he had been a Sergeant Major in the Marine Corps and had fallen on hard times. It was a pretty good racket. One day he came up to me stinking of booze and drunk as a coot. He was holding a prepackaged sandwich like it was a dead skunk. He said someone had given it to him when he hit them up for money. He tried the old Sergeant Major line on me and actually said - while he held the dead-skunk-sandwich - that he had not eaten for three days. I told him I hoped he never really was a Marine because he would be a disgrace to the Corps in his present state. He showed no anger or shame (which leads me to conclude he was no more a former Marine than I was Zimbabwean Royalty), just dumbfounded amazement. I guess I was the first one that ever told him where to go for his panhandling.

I would go work on a Habitat for Humanity house near an apartment I lived in just off campus as sort of physical therapy to help me make it through law school. As I would walk to the house through about three blocks of the bad neighborhood that started just across the street from my building, someone would always offer to sell me crack. They could think of no other reason a white guy would be walking through their neighborhood.

That gives you some idea of why Duke is isolated from Durham. Duke and Durham represent cultures perhaps more different that the United States and Mexico.

[maggief]

Butch Williams, who represents team captain Dan Flannery, also said prosecutors told him that his client was not among those charged.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12289760/

[Neverforget01]

Butch Williams, who represents team captain Dan Flannery, also said prosecutors told him that his client was not among those charged

quid pro quo?

Yet I seem to recall Flannery was the one who was going to have charges reinstated against him?

[ladyjane]

Your story about the Marine made me chuckle.

One day I got hit up by a similar kind of guy claiming to have been a Marine. For some odd reason - I usually don't do it - I handed him some money and said, "Semper Fi."

He responded, "Huh?" LOL

[darbymcgill]

"Cash Michaels says her jaw was swollen, she was having trouble moving, and she had a problem with her leg?"

Sure.

She went a$$ over tea kettle down 3 or 4 steps of brick porch with house on one side and iron guard rail on the other, and a bunch of trash in between.. Someone might be able to make a case that a fall like that could hurt one's leg and or jaw...

You think?

[GAgal]

Nifong once again used his ridiculous "They're afraid to face me in court" line in his post-victory interview with Greta. By "they" he meant Seligmann's attorney Kirk Osborn.

I just ran across an interesting mention of Osborn. Does anyone remember a riveting Frontline story about the Little Rascals Daycare Center child molestation witch hunt? The community hysteria, the false allegations, the out-of control DA, the ridicuously inept investigation are so similar to what's happening now. Osborn argued/won the appeal of one of the innocents railroaded in the Little Rascals debacle.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/innocence/profiles/wilson.html

It will be a joy to see what Osborn does to Nifong et al.

[CondorFlight]

"The only way he can salvage his reputation is to successfully prosecute the case. . .and that is an extremely dangerous position for a prosecutor to be in, especially when the evidence continues to build that the whole thing may be a fraud."

One reason why I've always considered that Pontius Pilate is probably the usual role model for politicians and judges. . .

[Neverforget01]

It will be a joy to see what Osborn does to Nifong et al

I think Nifong is in over his head. That being said, if there isn't a venue change, I hope they allow cameras in the courtroom so the evidence will be heard outside of Durham. I'm very afraid it won't matter what the evidence is if it's a Durham jury.