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.
Wendy Murphy never met a defendant she didn't want to hang.
She's crazy.
The problem is with the Lisa Weil's, Wendy Murhphy's, Nancy Grace's, Alan Colmes, Peter Johnson (FOX), Geraldo, etc. is that the casual observer (which is most) believe them and spread the word.
Educated, media savy people know what is going on, but most people turn on one show and then go back to the Entertainment type shows (Lifetime, American Idol, etc.)
Hannity said on the Radio this week that Fox is taking a lot of heat for covering the Lacrosse case now. I'm sure the average Joe was happy with their Duke Coverage in the beginning when all the reporting pointed to a terrible racist Gang-rape and beating.
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?
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My guess is that Nifong, Baker, Stephens (Durham Power) aren't of the belief that this thing is coming apart. After all, their constitutents have been convinced for some time that these guys are guilty. I think we have to realize in Durham they operate from a different platform.
It is like the News and Observer, they are still operating like the Duke Culture unleashed a racist bunch of rapists on the otherwise safe city of Durham.
One reading of this (from the sympathetic MSM) is that the first time she said she was sodomized was 36 hours after the party. Not to the SANE, not to anyone.
That could loom large.
Has any part of her story been true?!
This is tragic and patthetic, too.
When you read through, they use the word Rape. Rape is used, then there's a paragraph that uses the word sodomized; in that sentence they say about 36 hours later the woman told investigators she had been sodomized.
If you couple this with the fact the her father has said she was with her "boyfriend" during the time she was released from the hospital until she gave any details to Police.
Then you have 2 criminals (there have been comments from the AV's family that he has a rap sheet) spending time together immediatly before a critical statement is made to authorities and an highly unusual delay in communicating the details of the event - why? Her father told a paper that
the morning she was released she dropped her car off at his house (because she didn't want to drive it) and left with the boyfriend saying she had to go ID the guys at the police station. Some 24-30 hours went by before she actually did that. Why?
What were the 2 cons cooking up to serve the Police?
The LAX players are to be presumed innocent.
Some of them weren't there. Some of them left early. Some of them were just watching TV. So, many of them are likely innocent even of your supposed "bad behavior".
In this excerpt, the writer seems to be saying the Stripper-accuser will ruin DUKE (financially, Maybe?):
"an institution (Duke) that allowed a bunch of kids to nearly run amok in a public venue with Duke's name on their jerseys, bringing more unwanted attention to the deficiencies of a university deemed nearly perfect before a woman huffed and puffed and blew its house down by screaming "rape."
That's a tactic. The Ole Boys aren't saints argument.
After scouring the statutes of North Carolina and the City of Durham, there is no statute on the books regarding - not behaving like a Saint.
Only perfect people have redress when being wrongly accused?
Or, even worse, if you are not perfect, then the natural extension of that dictates you should not be defended in public when charged with crimes you have not committed.
Well thanks to Nifong, it's going to come out. 3 weekends in jail for stealing a cab, eluding police, and damn near running over a police officer?
Lil' Kim embezzles 25k, gets a slap on the wrist. AV gets 3 weekends in jail for grand auto theft, eluding police, and damn near running over a cop. If I were a criminal, I'd love to live there! Maybe if someone had access to random criminal records dealing with these types of crimes, we'd get a clearer picture of sentencing guidelines.
It's definately prosecutorial misconduct. They're all guilty of it these days. He needs to be run out of town on a rail, to serve warning on the rest of them. Threatening phone calls, my ass. She's already been quoted as saying that she moves from house to house. Probably because her pimp is after her.
I hope it doesn't end like you say, but in this day and age, nothing would surprise me.
On the night of his primary win, when being a gracious winner was expected, Nifong opined that "he was the best candidate by far" and mentioned that he had once fired the person who came in a close second. I believe this interview was also one of several where Nifong repeated his "the defense attorneys are afraid to face me" spiel.
Judge not...
Especially when a terrorist tries to run you down.
"I would not want to be in their shoes, no doubt about it. "And yes, shock of shockers, the real world isn't "fair". who'd a thought?"
So because life is not fair, these 3 who appear to be falsely accused of a crime should have to deal with it? I don't agree.
"But these were not innocents playing Canasta.
How is it you know they are not innocent? The information we have seen thus far increasingly seems to indicate they were innocent. In fact, at least 2 may not even have been at the party.
"These guys were an accident waiting to happen. and crime or not, it blew up on them."
Accident waiting to happen? Indictment of the entire team? Guilt by association?
"Crime or not?"
Bizarre statement.
The only issue here is whether or not a crime actually WAS committed - it is most relevant.
I have been curious how she has been receiving threatening phone calls. She lost her phone that night and the service was turned off the next day. Cell phone numbers generally are not publicly available anyway. If there are calls it must be from someone that knows her. I would say you are probably right that her pimp is after her and now that pimps initials might be M.N.
That is just loud mouth Steven A. Smith, not the Philly paper. He has a bad boring interview show on ESPN too.
That Smith is offended that the young women of the Duke women's lacrosse team support their friends who are being falsely accused of rape. Naturally he is offended that are not willing to play the group politics he wants. He wants them to identify as women rather than as Duke students or lacrosse players.
That is the racists/sexist left for you. They think group identity is all that matters and you better identify with the group they stereotype you into.
I made my original comment because you called the "boys". They are not boys and imply that they were behaving appropriately. They are men, not boys. Free to think and choose. And they chose to behave in ways that were potentially problematic.
One would have to go out and pretend that soliciting two women to your home to strip and whatever is a regular every day affair with no consequences. And while it may happen frequently in such situations, it does not make it smart. And do you know why?...cause stuff like this happens.
Travesty of justice or not, they landed themselves there. Be in denial if you wish, but it is very much both a part of this case and a part of how it came to be. Their behavior has caused the "cloud".
I wonder how many such parties they have had since? I would venture to say zero. Why, because they now know it was stupid. And their lawyers, who get paid to be smart for them, have advised them it would be a bad idea. It doesn't make their lawyers part of a vice squad.
Are they guilty of rape? I don't think so. Are they guilty of stupidity for putting themseleves in a compromising conditions? Absolutely.
Seems that puts me on the wrong "team" to the shoutdown crowd. Like I care.
Do you post these words of advice on all of the Darwin threads?
I don't know the answer, but I thought North Carolina, as a state, was tough on crime. I remember reading an article a while back saying just that and it said they have thrown people in Jail for not showing up for Jury Duty - in an adjacent county.
The 3 weekends for the AV, that's gotta be something related to an informer. I don't see how a judge looks the Police officer in the eye after he testifies in court that she tried to run him over - and the COP has been always been consistent on that.
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