Posted on 05/11/2006 6:19:27 AM PDT by rwilson99
DURHAM - A Durham police detective investigating the Duke University lacrosse case arrested an alibi witness Wednesday on a 2 1/2-year-old misdemeanor warrant. Taxi driver Moezeldin Elmostafa said Investigator R.D. Clayton and another officer asked whether he had anything new to tell them about the rape case before driving him to the Durham County jail. He said no and was held for five hours, until a friend posted his bail on a shoplifting charge.
Ernest Conner, a Greenville lawyer who represents defendant Reade Seligmann, said the cabbie's arrest amounted to intimidation. "It appears to me they are trying to pressure a witness who supports our defendant's rock-solid alibi," Conner said.
Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the supervisor of the investigation, refused to answer questions Wednesday night.
Elmostafa signed a sworn statement in April saying he picked up Seligmann from a Duke lacrosse team party just after midnight March 14. Seligmann and another player, Collin Finnerty, have been charged with raping an escort service dancer during the party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.
Elmostafa's affidavit said he picked up Seligmann at 12:19 a.m. that morning and drove him to an automated teller machine, a fast-food burger joint and back to his dorm. To corroborate the taxi driver's statement, Seligmann's lawyers filed copies in court of phone records, security photos from the ATM and electronic records showing when Seligmann entered his dorm.
The lawyers have said that Elmostafa's account and the records exonerate Seligmann.
Clayton, who is working under Gottlieb on the case, picked up Elmostafa on Wednesday afternoon.
"The detective asked if I had anything new to say about the lacrosse case," Elmostafa said. "When I said no, they took me to the magistrate."
2003 charge
Elmostafa was charged with a misdemeanor larceny that occurred Sept. 2, 2003, when a woman stole five purses worth $250 from the Hecht's department store at Northgate Mall.
Elmostafa said Wednesday that he had picked up Lisa Faye Hawkins and her daughter at their home and had taken them to the mall. Elmostafa said he waited in the taxi with the daughter while Hawkins shopped and then he drove the two home.
Elmostafa said he later received a call asking him to speak with Hecht's security. The security officer at Hecht's said Hawkins had stolen some purses before getting into the taxi, Elmostafa said.
Elmostafa said he gave the woman's address and a copy of his driver's license to the security guard, who thanked him for his help.
"I am not responsible for what she did inside the store," Elmostafa said. "I am just a taxi driver."
Hawkins pleaded guilty to the larceny three months later.
Elmostafa said he heard nothing about the case until his arrest Wednesday. He spent five hours at the Durham County jail before a friend put up $700 for the bail.
A Hecht's spokesman could not be reached Wednesday evening.
Conner said it was highly unusual for police to arrest someone for a misdemeanor more than two years after the crime. He contrasted the treatment of the taxi driver with that of Kim Roberts, the other dancer at the party. Conner said Roberts initially told police no rape occurred at the party but changed her story after she was arrested on a probation violation. District Attorney Mike Nifong later reduced Roberts' bail.
The ATM short changed someone $20 3 years ago and will soon be arrested if it doesn't erase the video.
He should sue the bastids.
Sure it does.It is called witness intimidation. If they could have got the cbbie to recant on just one aspect of the story, any aspect, they get his testimony tossed and can say the defence witness lied or changed his story. Prosecutors, especialy this on, sometimes are as bad as the crooks that roam our streets, facts be damned.
Suborning perjury from a potential witness? I wonder what Betty Currie thinks about that?
Exactly. He should hire a sleezeball attorney himself and counter sue.
So somebody please tell me why this lawyer does not have a bar complaint against him?
Prosecutors have a seperate section of the ethics rules devoted to prosecutors.
Why did you feel it necessary to amend the headline to state
that the cabby is black? What does that have to do with anything? If your point is that the DA is trying to intimidate a witness are you saying that he would not have done so if the guy were white?
This is so outrageous that I can't even believe it. I'm speechless.
I am now stisfied that even if this corrupt DA can get a corrupt jury to convict on his manufactured case, any verdict should be immediately overturned on appeal, because this prosecutorial misconduct is just egregious at this point.
evidence gets lost.
video tapes get erased.
It is amazing how prosecutors have a win at ALL costs attitude.
Seriously, to know how prosecutors work is to be very scared. Prosecutors are like police today, the good ones are the exception not the rule.
the prosecution will argue that Seligmann could have given someone else the password for his ATM card and that the video is so blurry that someone of Seligmann's general description could have passed for him.
Eyewitness testimony by the cabbie gives extra weight to the ATM timestamp and video evidence.
Obstructing "justice" is a worse crime!
But the time stamp at the ATM and the video at the dorm tell their own story, i.e., when he was gone and when he got back.
Add to that a cab driver that first says he drove the kid, then recants.
It seems to me any lawyer could easily turn those facts into not only an alibi, but also pretty damning evidence of witness tampering.
All together it's hard to believe that the DA could be stupid enough to orchestrate such an attempt.
NiFong is beginning to make New Orleans seem law abiding.
Jail the witness instead?
I pointed out that the cabby is black to point out the irony of the situation.
In order to get 40% of the Democrat vote in Durham to keep his job, Nifong obviously pandered to African-Americans.
Now that the job is firmly in place... he turns his pattern of prosecutorial misconduct turns to a person of color.
That's Irony.
Nifong made such a big deal about protecting the City of Durham's reputation when he started this whole mess, but he and the local police are making Durham look like a cesspool of corruption. The old stereotypical Southern town where the good old boys (some of whom are now black) lean on everybody in a bid to railroad some hapless person off to prison.
I believe the term prosecutorial misconduct is becoming the operative phrase.
I would love to see the RINO attorney general of the US step in and investigate these smarmy Dims...
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