Replies

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.