Posted on 08/15/2006 2:41:50 PM PDT by abb
DURHAM, N.C. -- A cab driver who has supported an alibi offered by one of the three Duke lacrosse players charged with rape had his own court appearance Tuesday for a larceny charge.
Moezeldin Elmostafa, 37, appeared briefly before a Durham County District Court judge who set a trial date of Aug. 29. Prosecutors also changed the charge against Elmostafa to aiding and abetting misdemeanor larcency.
Elmostafa was arrested in May after he surfaced as a potential alibi witness for Reade Seligmann, one of three players charged with raping a woman at an off-campus party the night of March 13.
The 2003 warrant accused Elmostafa of stealing five purses worth about $250 from a Durham department store. Elmostafa denies the charge, and has said he helped store security locate a woman after he picked her up from the store and drove her home. The woman later pleaded guilty to larceny.
Durham prosecutors said in May the warrant for Elmostafa's arrest was discovered in a routine background check of witnesses in the Duke lacrosse case.
Mostafa has said Seligmann, of Essex Fells, N.J., called for a ride at 12:14 a.m. on March 14, and was picked up five minutes later. The defense has argued those times help establish that Seligmann left the party without having enough time to participate in the 30-minute assault described by the accuser. Seligmann's attorney has also presented cell phone, ATM and dorm keycard records to help establish that timeline.
(Excerpt) Read more at dwb.newsobserver.com ...
No doubt she's gunshy, as well she should be. Early on, though, I think she "could" have been another runaway like Nifong...
I remember when my older brother the lawyer was reading "The Man to See" which is about famous trial lawyer Edward Bennett Williams. My brother's favorite Williams quote was "Client's money is like toilet paper. When the roll runs out, go get another roll." Most lawyers share that attitude.
Reade seems like a great guy and I'm glad he's getting alot of support. I'm sure it's comforting for him that so many people believe in him and want to help. I can't believe the guys will actually be convicted either but I guess you have to prepare for anything.
"I can't believe the guys will actually be convicted either but I guess you have to prepare for anything."
Remember that to some factions of the public, they are still the hooligans and thugs depicted in the first news reports. ("hubris", "duke", "white privilege", etc.)
Slightly OT, but related to the above, I just saw that the Finnertys also contributed to the renovation of a house off the Duke campus, for a Catholic student center. It's apparently only a few blocks from the Buchanan house.
(When Duke loses these students, both Duke and Durham will be losing some worthwhile contributors for their future.)
There were almost 100 other of my husband's relatives there, and I had to move on :(
Plus I think he wanted to get back to his peers (younger relatives he hadn't seen in a while) and "hang out"...LOL
This was the highlight of the party to me....LOL
I did tell him, if he heard anything else that wasn't public to let me know ;)
He was curious as to why I was so interested, as he had forgotten I was from NC and a DUKE fan..LOL
I bet a lot of the DukeLax types would be surprised if they knew how deep their support is among us Freepers. This bulletin board was the first organized support for the team, other than their families, lawyers and teammates.
Hell, I had to look up Lacrosse on Wikipedia when this thing first hit. It isn't played very extensively here in the Deep South...
Re: Catholic student center:
http://www.duke.edu/web/catholic/house.html
Formerly housed J B Rhine parapsychology center.
http://www.rhine.org/
Many famous visitors including Princess Grace
before she died. Spooky place.
I told him about us, and he has read here a bit, but not lately. His side of the family are huge and I mean huge tow the line libs, so he whispered that to me...LOL
Mid-aftertoon musings (not necessarily logical at this time of day) . . .
First, consider an aspect of the Tawana Brawley scandal :
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/1998/01/articles/RP-mahoney.htm
"Patricia Williams. . . acknowledges it was hoax. But Williams suggests that it doesn't really matter. For Brawley was the victim of "some unspeakable crime." "No matter how she got there. No matter who did it to her-and even if she did it to herself...her condition was clearly the expression of some crime against her, some tremendous violence, some great violence that challenges comprehension."
"I read this passage over and over. I felt like I had made one great loop around the circumference of the Brawley case to arrive back at the beginning, and was being scolded for even attempting to understand it. For all I had were the facts, the evidence, and the facts said no crime had been committed.
The reality of the meta-narrative of racism was all well and good, but racism did not force Tawana Brawley to jump into a bag and smear sh-t on herself and dupe the world. William's argument pitted the facts against the rabid belief that Tawana Brawley's story was true irregardless of the facts, or even if it wasn't true, it didn't matter, because as Brawley herself said at her recent press conference, "what happened to me happens to hundreds of thousands of women every day." Hundreds of thousands?
"I was in a maze of smoke and mirrors. The facts were meaningless. I could stand on a soap box in downtown Poughkeepsie and read the grand jury report in its entirety and it wouldn't make a difference. People believed what they wanted to believe. Hearts and minds were long past changing over something as evasive as "the facts." (Brian Mahoney)
Then consider the world-view of the nazis during the 1930s about the Jews. If a Jew were to be put on trial, his individual guilt or innocence wouldn't matter, because he had to be found guilty--because in the nazi view all Jews had to be tainted, to have inherited "crooked" natures from their ancestors, and to bear the "crimes" of all the previous centuries within their genetics.
For a Jew to be acquitted would be to have to renounce that world view, and admit that there could be a Jew who was innocent, and not tainted. And that would cause the whole nazi world-view to fall apart (because it required all Jews to be guilty).
So, now it seems that for some of the modern feminazis and some in the AA community, all white males must be guilty, even if they are not guilty--"because of all that has gone before". If they are not--if there are individual white males who are innocent, then the whole structure of their world view falls apart. And they no longer have a basis on which to base their anger.
So the lacrosse players must be guilty, they have to be guilty, even if they are not. Or else the pot bangers
and the liberal professors who sign manifestos have
got something wrong about their world view; and that
can't possibly be. . .
YES. You got it.
Great Idea CondorFlight !
We can all "run" our mouths our here, but we should also commit to writing a short letter per week - if at all possible.
I think most of the people on this site understand that, if left unchecked, it could be you or someone you love next.
.
Yeah, I know. There are some people who just want to punish them for something.
The Finnertys seem to have made alot of contributions at Duke. Collin's older brother went there too. At this point, I really wonder if Collin will ever go back though.
Oh God. Those comments about the Tawana Brawley incident are downright scary. It doesn't matter if it's true or not? What else matters besides the truth? If the truth doesn't matter we are all lost.
Such people take reparations one step further. It's not enough to get money for past injustice, they want blood.
This is the degree to which people are willing to go to "get"
these players!
FROM TALKLEFT, in a disussion of the Medical Injuries, whether the woman was raped, and whether the DA's office lied in the documentation to get court approvals along the way. This is the complete post:
Isn't having "no injuries" consistent with rape?
Charges dismissed against city official
From Staff Reports, N&O: Aug 18, 2006 12:30 AM
DURHAM - The Durham District Attorney's Office has dropped charges against a city official accused of stalking and harassing a subordinate.
Mike Barros, the director of Durham's Department of Housing and Community Development, was arrested June 1 on misdemeanor charges of trespassing, communicating threats and injury to real property. The charges were rooted in a sworn statement by Nicholas Eze, an accountant and compliance officer in the housing department since 2003,** that Barros threatened to destroy him and bashed in a window of the family's minivan in a late-night tirade, causing about $200 in damages.
Three days after Eze filed the criminal complaint against his supervisor, the accountant was placed on administrative leave at his city job. Court records show Eze has made similar harassment complaints about at least six other people with whom he has had dealings over the years.
Tim Gould, an assistant district attorney, said he dismissed the criminal case against Barros "due to inconsistencies in eyewitness statements and lack of relevant or incriminating evidence from other potential witnesses as well as the pendency of other civil and private proceedings, prosecution is not warranted."
Eze still has a pending civil complaint against the city claiming he was discriminated against because of his national origin. Eze is from Nigeria.
** Eze depicted himself as an intrepid whistle-blower who has been the victim of retribution after uncovering more than $15 million in city money and federal grants he claims were misspent and mishandled.
"It's just like the Enron situation," Eze said. "They're cooking the books. They have to be held accountable. So why are they trying to fire me?" --- June 15, 2006 N&O interview. http://www.freerepublic.com/~xoxoxox/
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/476363.html
Maybe this guy should get together with Elmo's lawyer.
See posts 10:12 PM and 11:06 PM, August 21 (near the bottom of the page)-- http://friendsofdukeuniversity.blogspot.com/2006/05/general-topics-open_31.html
Thanks. I'll check it out.
How can those people at the Duke (professors and administrators) even begin to defend their actions in the rush to villify the entire team - and to project the attributes they assigned to the team to a larger segment of society - wealthy white males.
There isn't even a precedent for this type of class attack in regard to criminal behavior - in the last 50 years in this country.
_
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