Posted on 05/27/2006 5:24:47 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Lacrosse defense: Stories changed
By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun
jstevenson@heraldsun.com
May 26, 2006 : 10:20 pm ET
DURHAM -- Two weeks before identifying lacrosse player David Evans with "90 percent" certainty in a police photo lineup as one of her attackers, the accuser in the Duke rape case failed to pick him out in an earlier photo lineup, according to a defense motion filed Friday.
The motion hammered yet again at the prosecution, saying among other things that the accuser changed her story at least twice during the initial investigation, that the nurse who examined her in the emergency room was in training, and that police investigators failed to document their activities as required by law.
Many details in the motion, based largely on nearly 1,300 pages of documentation compiled by District Attorney Mike Nifong, were not previously made public, including a copy of police Sgt. J.C. Shelton's report detailing his dealings with the accuser in the hours immediately after the alleged assault.
Nifong said Friday he was "not going to comment on anything at all about this." A spokeswoman also said the Durham Police Department would have no comment, referring a series of questions to Nifong.
According to the motion, filed by Evans' lawyers Joe Cheshire and Brad Bannon, the exotic dancer viewed a police photo lineup on April 4 -- over three weeks after the alleged rape in mid-March -- and said Evans "looks like one of the guys who assaulted me sort of." Asked to elaborate, the woman said she was 90-percent sure but that the person who assaulted her had a mustache.
Defense lawyers have previously said Evans had no mustache on the night of the alleged crime, if he ever had one.
But when the dancer was shown a photo array containing Evans' picture on March 21, much closer to the time of the alleged assault, she failed to identify him in any way, the new motion says.
The motion includes a copy of the photo of Evans shown to the accuser, along with a written instruction form used in the lineup. Apparently affixed to the form is a Post-It note, in what appears to be the investigator's writing, saying, "Did not pick any."
"Thus, eight days after the alleged assault, and two weeks before the April 4 identification procedures in which she selected the Defendant with 90% certainty if he had a mustache, the complainant viewed a picture of the Defendant in this case and did not identify him as one of her alleged assailants," the motion states.
According to the motion, during the March 21 lineup and another one on March 16, the photos were divided into groups. It couldn't be determined from the filing whether either of the two other defendants, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, were in the group in which the accuser failed to identify any assailants.
Seligmann's and Finnerty's defense attorneys could not be contacted Friday afternoon to determine whether the accuser had identified either of the men in any earlier lineup.
Friday's defense motion also said there was no report about the earlier photo lineups included in the documents Nifong gave defense lawyers. But the April 4 session in which she identified the three suspects was videotaped, and both the video and a written transcript of the session were included in the material given to the defense teams.
The motion uses the apparent discrepancy in record-keeping as one example to suggest the defense hasn't yet been given all police records related to the case, even though Nifong said in a court filing May 18 that the state's "entire file" had been handed over.
"Multiple law enforcement officers who participated in investigative activities in this case did not record their activities as required by law, or they did not turn those records over to the Durham County District Attorney's Office as required by law, or the District Attorney's Office did not turn them over to the Defendant as required by law," the motion argues. It goes on to ask a judge to issue a series of orders ensuring that all records of the investigation are given to the defense.
Included with the motion, the handwritten report by Shelton, the Durham police sergeant, provides far greater detail than anything previously in the public record about the accuser's demeanor and statements on the night in question. Shelton was the first officer to arrive at the house where the lacrosse party took place at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. the night of March 13.
Police went to the home after an unidentified woman told a 911 operator that she was driving by when men began calling her racial slurs.
In fact, the woman, Kim Roberts, was an exotic dancer hired to perform with the accuser at the party. Roberts has since acknowledged contacting a New York publicity firm trying to capitalize on her involvement in the case.
According to Shelton's narrative:
-- Shelton left 610 N. Buchanan after finding no one home. A neighbor told him a "rowdy" party had recently broken up.
-- A few minutes later, police were called to the Kroger on Hillsborough Road because a woman wouldn't get out of another woman's car. Again, Shelton was nearby and was first on the scene.
-- The owner of the car told Shelton that she had been driving down Buchanan Boulevard and saw the other woman -- now in her passenger seat -- walking along the street and that a group of white men at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. were yelling racial slurs at her, so she offered her a ride to safety. (In fact, though, the car owner was Roberts, the second dancer.)
-- The woman in the passenger seat was "wearing a see-through red outfit, with no undergarments and one white high-heel shoe." She appeared unconscious, so Shelton got an ammonia capsule from his car. In response to the capsule, the woman began "mouth breathing, which is a sign that she was not really unconscious," Shelton wrote.
-- Shelton said he tried to pull the woman from the car, but that she grabbed the emergency brake handle to keep from being pulled out. He finally got her out and she collapsed on the ground.
-- Because the woman wouldn't tell officers her name or where she lived, they decided to take her to the Durham Access Center, a mental health and substance abuse facility. There, the woman said she had been raped at 610 N. Buchanan. So Shelton directed that she be transferred to Duke University Hospital's emergency room.
-- At Duke, the accuser told Shelton she was a stripper and had been hired to dance at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. After their show, she said, she and the other dancer got in a car to leave, but that some of the men wanted them to go back inside. "She said at the point some of the guys from the party pulled her from the vehicle and groped her. She told me that no one forced her to have sex," Shelton wrote.
-- Shelton went outside to call his watch commander to tell him the woman had recanted her rape allegation. But then someone told him the woman told a doctor that she had been raped. Shelton called the watch commander back to tell him "she had changed her story back to being raped."
-- Shelton went back inside and asked the woman "if she had or had not been raped. She told me she did not want to talk to me anymore and then started crying and saying something about them dragging her into the bathroom."
Shelton says he left the hospital after the watch commander told him the Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division had been notified.
About 36 hours later, the woman told investigators she had been raped, sodomized, beaten and strangled by three men in the bathroom at the lacrosse party house, according to police affidavits.
The defense motion filed Friday says that, "incredibly," the information provided by Nifong contains no record about the woman's time at Durham Access Center. Nor does it contain reports by two other police officers who were involved in the situation that night, the motion complains.
In addition, Nifong provided documentation pertaining to only five of 17 sections of a Sexual Assault Exam Report, the motion adds, indicating that the exam was performed by an in-training forensic nurse.
All three defendants are free under $400,000 bonds as they await trial.
Nifong has said he hopes to try the suspects together, possibly beginning in the spring of next year.
an accident waiting to happen just because there were a couple of strippers at a party? Pleeease. Like it or not they seem like typical college kids. If anyone was an accident waiting to happen it's the girl.
I am not a lawyer, I just know a few who drink coffee and gossip...
You are right. These parties happen multiple times every day throughout this country without this type of repercussion. These guys had no reason to expect what is happening to them. False accusations, being thrown under the bus by their school and skewered by the news media weren't even in their wildest dreams. Dumb move to allow the black strippers to dance at a party of all white males, yeah. I am glad none of my dumb moves in life have had results like theirs has.
The false accuser has been on a slippery slope for a long time. The next logical progression in the process for her is streetwalking.
You know lots of good info is learned that way. I know it wouldn't work in Ohio, maybe it would in NC.
It's possible. Let me put it this way -- if such a connection is discovered, I wouldn't be surprised. But, personally, I don't think their light punishment is anything but a coincidence.
"Can he convince the woman to drop the charges? Nope."
I don't think there's any other way out. A) He can't just decide on his own not to prosecute -- not now. And B) He certainly can't proceed to trial with what little he's got. It's a joke, approaching prosecutorial misconduct.
She (the AV) has been quoted as saying that she's afraid to proceed, she's getting threatening phone calls, etc., leaving a way out for her (and Nifong). That's what will end up happening. That's the only way this can end. Not that I like it.
Interesting agreement. Sounds like something that might go over in Durham. The white boys get charged with something and everybody from Durham gets absolution for their crimes.
Since the white boys don't get charged with rape - that will be enough for hoodlums to start a riot and trash some stores.
Sounds like a great agreement. /sarc
Come on. What do you mean, party hard. The drank beer and had parties with high grades. Don't just repeat the lines from media. The police searched high and low the house and the dorm rooms and no drugs whatsoever. How many twenty year old men do you know who don't drink beer. Did you drink beer when you were twenty, I did.
The did make a mistake inviting a skanky stripper, but this whole party hard thing is a media fabrication. did they party harder than other students, louder, perhaps, but to protray these incredibly high achieving Duke students who were succeeding both academically and athletically beyond what 99% of the people in the world can do (and more than the nccu critics) is just false.
If the case EVER goes to trial -- I wonder if the boys are going to be tried by a jury of THEIR peers -- or a jury of Durham's "finest"?
Semper Fi
But if I were a parent of one of these boys, I would have him transfer to another school and begin several suites, one against Duke, and one against Nifong and the informant. They would take years to reach fruition, but maybe it needs to be done?
Fox The Lineup with Megyn Kendall on now. Teaser: "Is the prosecution's case crumbling?"
Thanks. As to the question "Is the prosecution's case crumbling?". I have this question. What case?
He never had one and never will have one.
Nothing new there. Just amazing how they can get people like that Lis gal. I bet she has to be reminded to come in out of the rain. Is there a mental classification lower than idiot? If there is she is in it.
A good recap of some of what was already discussed here.
We have been way ahead of them for 24 hours. That Lis or Lisa has tried in two different reports I have watched to use the phrase "post traumatic stress disorder". She has yet to get the four words out in the proper order. Tonight she didn't even get all four out. Just amazing.
As Mark Furman said, the only thing that could save Nifong is a video of the three indicted players commiting the assault.
_______________________________
Does anyone know when Judge Stpephens will rule on defense motions for Nifong to turn over the evidence from the police notes and cell phone?
WENDY MURPHY, FORMER SEX CRIMES PROSECUTOR: Hi, Tucker.
CARLSON: Virtually everything in this case is falling apart. We learn now from the more than 1,000 pages of evidence that the prosecutor is obliged to turn over to the defense that medical technicians at the hospital found no tearing of any kind, contrary to rumors we had heard, in the alleged victim in this case. No DNA, of course, has been found from the lacrosse players on her body. You know, what is there to suggest these guys did anything wrong at all? I'm kind of confused at this point.
MURPHY: You know, I have a new nickname for you, Tucker. I'm going to start calling you Tucker the Sucker. Because...
CARLSON: You are being suckered. You give me-I want evidence on what these guys did. They've been accused of a very serious crime here.
MURPHY: Let me tell you something. You are being spun like a dumb dog. Every time the defense just spews nonsense you accept it as fact and you put it on your show.
Yep after being completely wrong about the Bryant case, shows have the completely idiotic Murphy on for this case. If there were any accountability on news shows, people would take them more seriously.
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