Posted on 06/22/2006 2:23:47 AM PDT by abb
DURHAM -- District Attorney Mike Nifong plans to give defense lawyers at least 300 additional pages of information about the Duke University lacrosse rape case, adding to 1,298 pages of documentation surrendered previously.
Without describing their contents, Nifong said the new documents would be handed over during a preliminary hearing today for three recently indicted lacrosse players: Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans.
The three are accused of raping, sodomizing and restraining an exotic dancer in a bathroom during an off-campus party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March.
All are free under $400,000 bonds as they await a trial that, according to Nifong, might begin next spring.
None is expected to attend today's hearing.
In addition to a transfer of documents, the hearing will include a request from Seligmann's lawyers that his bond be lowered to roughly one-tenth its current level. The lawyers filed an affidavit in support of that request Wednesday.
Signed by Philip Seligmann, the defendant's father, the affidavit said that Seligmann had been recruited by every Ivy League university to play football or lacrosse, and that he accepted a 90-percent scholarship to be on the Duke lacrosse team.
"This case has taken an unbelievable and horrendous emotional toll on all my family, especially my wife," the elder Seligmann wrote. "We are committed as a family, along with Reade, to do everything necessary to restore our good name."
According to the affidavit, Seligmann's bail money was provided by a family friend whose "loss of income is substantial" as a result.
In a related matter, the News and Observer Publishing Co. moved Wednesday to make public certain documents -- reportedly pertaining to the alleged rape victim's medical records -- that were filed by defense lawyers under seal.
"In this case, the fact that there are charges of sexual assault is unfortunate and controversial -- either because a woman has been sexually violated or because the defendants have been wrongfully accused -- but neither is a justification for sealing a court proceeding," a lawyer for the newspaper wrote.
The lawyer, Hugh Stevens, also said the sealed documents raised questions about Nifong's handling of the case. He said that when the conduct of public officials is at issue, it is an added reason for making the pertinent files public.
Meanwhile, several defense lawyers predicted Wednesday that Nifong's latest 300-plus pages of documentation would do little to help him, since earlier paperwork -- in their view -- was more beneficial to the defense than the prosecution.
For example, attorneys Joe Cheshire and Brad Bannon have said the earlier documents showed a "very significant and disturbing deficiency" in Nifong's evidence.
Specifically, there were indications that Nifong began making public statements about the accuser's medical records even before they were in his possession, according to the two lawyers, who represent Evans.
Cheshire and Bannon said the District Attorney's Office subpoenaed the accuser's medical files from Duke Hospital on March 20 -- six days after the alleged rape.
However, the files were not printed out in compliance with the subpoena until March 30, and Police Investigator Benjamin Himan didn't pick them up until April 5, Cheshire and Bannon wrote in court paperwork last week.
But the lawyers said Nifong told a local television station on March 27 that he had no doubt the exotic dancer was raped, based on a "personal review" of her medical records. They quoted the district attorney as saying, "My reading of the report of the emergency room nurse would indicate that some type of sexual assault did in fact take place."
Citing the 1,298 pages of documentation given them by Nifong earlier, various defense lawyers also have contended there were numerous inconsistencies in the accuser's version of events, along with unacceptable omissions in a sworn affidavit prepared by police. The affidavit was used by Himan to obtain judicial permission for his evidence-gathering efforts.
Among other things, Himan failed to mention that a co-dancer had described the rape allegation as "a crock," even though she was with the accuser for all but about five minutes on the night in question, according to defense lawyers.
Nifong has bristled at that and other defense characterizations of his evidence, while attacking the national press corps for -- in his opinion -- blindly reporting the characterizations without checking their accuracy.
"Is anyone surprised that the defense attorneys are spinning this case in such a way that things do not look good for the prosecution?" Nifong wrote in an e-mail to Newsweek magazine last week.
"Their job, after all, is to create reasonable doubt, a task made all the easier by an uncritical national press corps desperate for any reportable detail, regardless of its veracity," the district attorney said.
The e-mail traffic was made public by Nifong on Monday.
URL for this article: http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-746370.html
I agree it is a small point whether or not she actually ever said 20, she said plenty of other things that are clearly not true. I too am intested in:
1. Her statement.
2. How Sgt Shelton will testify. I can imagine someone like him at DPD will let this go only so long. He knows this is to coin a phrase "a croc." He is the first officer to see her and he will make a very effective witness for the defense. [BTW, he is the one positions at Pittman [aka Roberts] was trying to position herself. Really anyone at DPD who spills the beans on this mess might well get lucrative security job offers after this is over, if telling the truth hurt their DPD career.]
3. More about the various photo arrays.
We are left with two options with Linwood Wilson:
A) He is an outright liar that is attempting to manipulate Public opinion on this case. Representing the DA's office, he has made that office vunerable to additional charges of making knowingly false public statements. He has invited an investigation of the DA offices in this regard. He has created another entire avenue of opportunity for the Defense in regard to unethical and illegal behavior on the part of the DA's office in the handling of this case.
B) Linwood can't read.
Write the NC Governor
Linwood and his gospel quartet had a scheduled "gig" last night. I can just imagine the Christian lyrics flowing from his lying lips. What part of "Thou shall not bear false witness" does he not understand?
Linwood is the huge one: http://www.spokesmenquartet.com/
One of their most requested songs is "The Lord Scared the Devil Right Out of Me.", but I fear he might have returned.
Her trip to UNC MC on Mar. 15 is a mystery to me.
Of course you're right... DUh.. Who's buried in Grant's Tomb...
The part that puzzles me about Day's report is he makes the 20 assailant and changing story claims as though he heard it first hand... But in the end only hints of the possibility that DPD stated all of the above and not just the misdemeanor stuff....
I'll stop... I just see the presentation in Day's report to be a bit of grandstanding or deceptive, and almost completely irrelevant
And this guy was hired specifically to investigate murders, rapes and bad checks?
How would he know a check was bad?
You are right, if he is the Christain man he claims to be, he needs to step forward and speak out about the injustice being done to these young men in this case. I think Christians here might want to e-mail the address on the group's website spoke@spokesmenquartet.com and encourage him to read the case file and do the Christain thing here and do his part to stop this railroading.
Also there are a number of future concert dates listed here:
http://www.spokesmenquartet.com/schedule.shtml
most of which are at churches. Now certainly sinners should always be welcome at church, but I am not sure they should be putting on musical performances in the middle of their sin. Perhaps some would want to let these churches know they are sponsoring this type of person.
There does not seem to be a message board on his site.
I haven't heard of a subpoena of her bank records, have you? She said she may have made a deposit... It would be simple enough to validate that claim... She should have read the Reade Seligman book on keeping bank slips and getting your picture taken...
If she got a whoopin for not having her money and she doesn't have a deposit slip... Kim wrote in her statement she asked the AV several times if she had her money and the AV said "yes, it's here".... Hmmm...
Things have changed, today there were 2 guests on the Radio, interviewed separately, and they ended up discussing trial strategy and how things were going to go at trial. Up until now, every interview was, what can Nifong have and will he drop the case. Now, it seems the conventional thinking is that the case is going to court and then to a jury.
Here's the BIG problem, in my opinion: The Main Stream Media has accepted the BIG LIE that everyone gets their day in court. If that is combated and it's made clear that our justice system does NOT work like that - then the Media may come around (admittedly unlikely).
The MSM can derail this thing. They can force change. They can bring pressure. I think we all know that if the races were reversed, the media coverage would've brought the Feds or the Gov of NC to take action in about 72 hours.
Basically, the fallacy that everyone gets their day in court and a jury should decide, is providing cover for the MSM.
The Media is the key.
Yeah, it is very hard for me to understand how a Christain so devout he has had a Christian singing group for almost 40 years, would participate in Nifong's attempted lynching of these young men. You would think a Christian that devout would have a conscience that would not allow them to participate in such a thing as this.
You might think a Christian would feel his religion required him to stand up and put a stop to this. I know lots of Christians are hardly perfect in their workplace, but this is a man who so devout he founded this quartet almost 40 years ago and this is not the badcheck writing unit accepting cash against the rules, but a serious matter that should cause a serious Christian to think about what he is participating in.
No disrespect Mikey, but you are dreaming... This is a media wet dream... Since when did they give diddly about justice for white males... Just look at every commercial, movie, drama, or sitcom they produce....
The key is the people of Durham... They need to be marching in the streets, banging on Nifong's office door and registering to vote... Nifong would go down like Kim on a Coke date if he saw his chances fading as November approaches...
I have until now doubted very much there was a deposit. But heck maybe will driving around Pittman [aka Roberts] took her by an ATM machine to pretend to deposit her money so she could steal it and if questioned blame the bank?
So maybe there is an ATM photo? I am pretty confident there was not a deposit or if there was it was for like $20.
Linwood and his gospel quartet had a scheduled "gig" last night. I can just imagine the Christian lyrics flowing from his lying lips. What part of "Thou shall not bear false witness" does he not understand?
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Can a tearful TV breakdown be in the near future?
Kind of resembles Jimmy Swaggart to me.
She went from being robbed of $2000 to $400 to, maybe I made a deposit... Heck.. maybe she did, nobody has been charged with robbery....
But if that we the case Kim would have no reason to not disclose they had visited a bank...
Don't hold your breath for Durham to react.
1) They've put up with polictical corruption for decades.
2) Regardless of the demographics, the Judges, DA's, and the Dog Catchers all covet the Black vote. It's an established belief in Durham that the Black community is the block that establishes who does or doesn't make it into office.
3) Local Durham coverage is bent to the LIBS. It would take the National Media to make it known to the larger Durham community the damage the case is doing to they city.
Good point.
Staff at Durham Access may be able to shed some light on whether that occurred and what else was said.
abb, thanks for the ping-a-ling.
Pinging with Saturday Morning's NandO story
http://www.newsobserver.com/100/story/454117.html
Woman altered stories of rape
A Duke player's attorney makes public a report saying the accuser was inconsistent
Benjamin Niolet and Joseph Neff, Staff Writers
DURHAM - Hours after a March 13 Duke University lacrosse team party, the woman who said players raped her that night told police changing stories.
An officer at Duke Hospital wrote in a report released Friday that the accuser said she was one of four women who danced at the party; every other account of that night says only two women danced.
The woman said that night that five men sexually assaulted her; District Attorney Mike Nifong and investigators have said there were three.
Durham police officer G.D. Sutton noted that the woman also said at one point that she had not been raped. "While being interviewed at Duke, her story changed several times," the officer wrote in a report.
That document was attached to a letter that a defense attorney sent to an investigator in Nifong's office Friday and copied to reporters. The day before, the investigator, Linwood Wilson, interrupted lawyer Joseph B. Cheshire V as he talked at a news conference Thursday after Nifong gave hundreds of pages of evidence to defense attorneys. Wilson asked to see the document that stated the woman had changed her story.
"Since you are the District Attorney's Investigator, the press could have assumed -- falsely, as it turns out -- that you had actually read your file," Cheshire wrote in his letter to Wilson. "I can only assume your motivation in questioning my assertion was simply ignorance. A simple reading of your file might solve that problem in the future."
The letter was another escalation in the continuing public acrimony between Nifong's office and defense attorneys. Cheshire represents David Evans, one of three indicted lacrosse players.
The report, one of 536 pages handed over to the defense at a court hearing Thursday, is another piece of evidence made public by the defense that could cast doubt on the reliability of the woman, an escort service dancer. Her testimony might be the most important part of Nifong's case.
Evidence made public
North Carolina has rarely, if ever, seen criminal evidence spill so rapidly into the public eye. Police reports, handwritten witness statements and reports on photo identification lineups have all become public.
This steady flow is a direct result of a 2004 law that forces prosecutors to share all their evidence with defendants. Lawmakers made the change after several cases in which prosecutors withheld such material, particularly in the case of former death row inmate Alan Gell. Prosecutors withheld statements showing Gell was in jail when the murder occurred.
Under the old law, Cheshire said, "We would get this evidence when the trial started, if at all."
Nifong has said he has always provided the type of evidence now required by law. Efforts to reach Nifong and Wilson failed Friday.
The accuser has been in hiding for months and could not be reached. The News & Observer generally does not identify people who report that they have been sexually assaulted.
Court filings
Nifong has stopped discussing the case, but lawyers representing the three players have stepped up their attacks through court filings that question the accuser's credibility and Nifong's case. The police report, an account of the early morning hours of March 14, adds to the list of apparent problems with the case against the three lacrosse players.
Evans, 23, of Bethesda, Md., Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y. and Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J., each face charges of rape, sexual offense and kidnapping.
The lawyers say that no rape or assault happened at the party and that for at least Seligmann, bank machine photos and the testimony of a cab driver would help show he could not have committed a rape.
The woman has given, by Cheshire's count, at least a half-dozen different accounts to police, doctors and nurses. The woman first said she was raped to someone at a mental health facility where police took her for detoxification. At Duke Hospital, her story changed several times:
* She told police she was dancing at a party with three other women when she was pulled into a bathroom and raped by five men.
* She told another police officer that she had been groped by some men in front of the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. but had not been raped.
* She told a doctor that three men had assaulted her vaginally.
* She told a nurse that three men had assaulted her vaginally, anally and orally.
* She told the same nurse that two men had assaulted her.
The taxi driver
In an interview Friday, Cheshire said much of the evidence handed over Thursday duplicates documents previously turned over or consists of the players' academic records.
Cheshire said he was struck that police apparently had not investigated the escort services where the two dancers worked, yet they conducted an extensive investigation of a taxi driver whose sworn statement is part of Seligmann's alibi.
When news of the investigation broke in March, protests erupted and Nifong told interviewers that he was sure a crime occurred. Nifong has not changed his mind. But even Nifong supporters are shifting their opinions.
"Unless he has a player from the team who is going to testify that this rape occurred, there is no way he will win this case and there is no way this case should have ever been brought," said Mark Edwards, a Durham criminal defense lawyer. Edwards appeared in an advertisement on Nifong's behalf during the prosecutor's successful campaign in the Democratic primary for district attorney.
Staff writer Benjamin Niolet can be reached at 956-2404 or bniolet@newsobserver.com.
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