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
My guess is that the behavior of NCCU students is vastly worse than that of Duke students. A case in point is the beating to unconsciousness of a Duke student by NCCU students right after this story broke, and the threatening drive-bys Duke students suffered from NCCU students. A further example would be the now-famous remark of one NCCU student that "Two wrongs don't make a right but it makes things even" in response to the suggestion that Mangum made the whole accusation up.
Sometimes it takes a 'scuse me? to see how something reads, LOL! I need to go back to the Diet Cokes and Tequilla. Water is killing the brain cells.
abb, thanks for the ping. I haven't been around much at all due to a whole bunch of obligations taking up my time lately, but I still try to find a few minutes here and there to read a few posts. Of course I'll never get caught up, but I appreciate the pings to the articles and news.
Hope all is well.
Rush referred to a Mangum as a "ho" before anybody else did. Infortunately, he sor of apologized for it.
He shouldn't have. He was quite right. Of course, he also coined the term, "drive-by media", lol!
The Brits have a vastly greater facility with English than we do.
Yes, in Durham it doesn't even rate an investigation. Only alleged crimes against blacks are worthy of legal action. /sarc
I'm pretty sure that I've read elsewhere that the real father of the kids has been established as the father by court order. So, the kids McNeil's in jail for not supporting are probably some other kids. But that doesn't mean Nifong isn't using that as a hammer anyway. In other words, it doesn't need to be Mnagum's kids that are the subject of the failure to provide and domestic violence charges anymore than the charges against the cabbie needed to be associated with Mangum - no need in either case.
Thanks for the info!
That is true, it could be half the kids in Durham! It appears to be quite a circus over there.
Both kids have the same father and it's not McNeil. The oldest was conceived while Mangum was in the Navy and married to McNeil. The second kid has the same dad as the first kid and was conceived after the divorce and after Mangum separated from the Navy. The marriage was very brief and so was the stint in the Navy. I don't believe McNeail is on the hook for their support. I've read the real/natural father is and does pay some support.
But that doesn't mean Nifong isn't using that as a hammer anyway.
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Exactly! It the pressure Nifong wants. He can hold someone in jail for 14 months and drop the charges the day of court - or give probation. Or let a judge rule.
Look at what he did with Robbery charge. His "victim" says Kim took $2000.00. Nifong tells the Media the victim said the Players took $400.00 and he found the money in the house CONSISTENT with the AV's story. He tells the media over and over they took her money, he uses the Common Law Robbery charges to get search warrants and court approval - then the charge quietly goes away. No explanation from Nifong.
Jezebelle makes an excellent point - and I've said this from the beginning - we have to judge everything from Nifong's perspective, and his ethics. He really has no one to answer to.
Nifong is playing with fire if he's playing this extortion game with this many people. If the defense gets ahold of them and gets just one to spill his guts about being coereced into certain testimony in exchange for having charges against them dropped, they can get others to tumble and Nifong could face subbornation of perjury charges.
Wonder if we have been pulling too many records, LOL!
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You did it Now! LOL!
You're right. A circus.
I bet Father's Day gets very exciting in Durham.
Yeah, there are thousands of kids running in the streets trying to guess which one is their Daddy!
I doubt it. I think mangum would be happy to drop the case if she could withstand Nifong's duress. Look at the statements she made to UNC medical the next day. I think she and her driver and/or boyfriend attempted to queer the case the next day and thereafter in order to render it unprosecutable. The claim of being raped served its purpose - kept Mangum out of jail and the loony bin - so the next move was to stamp it out and not have it go any further.
They forgot about the election.
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