Posted on 11/08/2006 2:41:16 PM PST by CondorFlight
http://www.durhamrepublicans.org/
"We are very ashamed of the current "official" Durham GOP for thwarting the will of the voters of Durham. Please be aware that these people by no means represent the majority of Republicans in Durham. We are VERY ASHAMED of them and the disgrace they have brought to the Republican Party!!! SHAME ON YOU Durham County GOP!!!"
Scratches and bruises on the body of the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case might have occurred when she was dragged out of a nightclub onto a gravel parking lot not long before the alleged sexual assault, a former club manager told The Herald-Sun.
Yolanda Haynes, who stopped working for Hillsborough's adults-only Platinum Club in July, said the woman had to be dragged and carried from the nightspot because she passed out inside.
Haynes also said it wasn't unusual for the exotic dancer to pass out during her stint at the club from January until March.
"It was just constant, every night," she said. "I don't know how many times she fell out on stage."
Precious told Himan that she drank beer before and had no problems. Now we find out that her alcohol and flexeril trips are common....
Precious deliberately lied to Himan.
Oh, please. Victims of propaganda? They are complicit. They voted for him in the first place because he promised them indictments. Then the case fell apart, and they still voted for him because he hasn't dropped this abysmal case even though it's obvious even to a blind man that there was no crime.
Ping
Dancer: Bruises could have come from club
By John Stevenson, The Herald-Sun
November 11, 2006 12:01 am
Scratches and bruises on the body of the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case might have occurred when she was dragged out of a nightclub onto a gravel parking lot not long before the alleged sexual assault, a former club manager told The Herald-Sun.
Yolanda Haynes, who stopped working for Hillsborough's adults-only Platinum Club in July, said the woman had to be dragged and carried from the nightspot because she passed out inside.
Haynes also said it wasn't unusual for the exotic dancer to pass out during her stint at the club from January until March.
"It was just constant, every night," she said. "I don't know how many times she fell out on stage."
Haynes said she was telling her story because she felt sorry for three young men who may have been falsely accused in the rape case: Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans.
"I hate to see those boys get railroaded for something they possibly didn't do," she said.
Haynes' account echoes the accuser's reported conduct on the night of March 13-14, when she claimed she was gang-raped and beaten during an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.
One of the first police officers to see the woman after the alleged rape described her as "passed-out drunk."
Fellow dancer Kim Roberts Pittman agreed in remarks to police that the accuser was "basically out of it."
In addition, a photograph apparently made that night showed the woman, minus a shoe, sprawled on a back porch at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., apparently unconscious.
That and other photos are in the hands of defense lawyers and have been viewed by The Herald-Sun.
Haynes said it was on the night of March 10-11 or 11-12 that the accuser was removed unconscious from the Platinum Club after she slumped naked to the dance floor.
"We had to drag her out on the gravel," she said. "She was heavy. It took four or five of us to carry her outside. She was dead weight. That's how passed out she was. She never woke up. We could have put the scratches on her. That could be how she got them."
The Herald-Sun tried unsuccessfully Friday to get comments from the Durham District Attorney's Office, which has suggested that scratches on the dancer's body came from the alleged rape and beating.
The accuser's one-time driver, Jarriel Johnson, corroborated Haynes' assertion that the woman was at the Platinum Club on the night of March 10-11.
"We got to Platinum around 11 or 12, where she went in and I remained in the car," Johnson said in a written statement to police. "Around 2 a.m. I go inside to find her. She asks me if we can stay for about another hour. She then asks me if we can stay just one more hour. We leave at 4:30 when the club closes."
Johnson didn't say anything about the woman being passed out, but said he drove her to "a job" at the Millennium Hotel at 5:15 a.m.
"She goes in and I remain in the car," said Johnson. "At about 6:15 she returns and I drive her back to her parents' house.
Johnson's statement is dated April 6 and is included in public court files.
Johnson has declined to answer questions for The Herald-Sun.
Platinum Club owner Victor Olatoye could not be reached for comment Friday.
Olatoye has given District Attorney Mike Nifong a sworn affidavit saying the accuser never performed at his club after February. But he changed his story last week in an interview with The New York Times, saying the woman danced on March 23, 24 and 25 -- when she was telling doctors she was in excruciating pain from the alleged rape and beating.
A videotape purportedly made on the night of March 25-26 showed a woman, said to be the accuser, dancing at the Platinum Club. The video recently aired on the CBS television program "60 Minutes."
Haynes said detailed records were kept about which dancers performed on any given night, and she agreed the accuser was present on March 23, 24 and 25.
During her performances on those nights, the woman never said anything about being raped 10 days earlier, Haynes said.
"After that, we [have] never seen her no more," she added.
Haynes said she never saw the accuser drink an alcoholic beverage or take drugs, and she was unable to explain why the woman frequently passed out.
The dancer reportedly tested negative for controlled substances not long after the alleged rape.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-787380.html
It wasn't the sheriff's office who handled the lax case - it was Durham PD.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Durham deserves Nifong
According to Annette Montgomery [Herald-Sun, Nov. 8], she "did not need to watch '60 Minutes' to know that wealth, power and influence were at work." So basically, she's formed an opinion about the segment without even watching it. She also neglected to add the word "alleged" in front of "victim," although I suspect that wasn't an accident.
Is it any wonder the lacrosse players don't think they'll get a fair trial in Durham, with Montgomery as a potential jury member? There's certainly some truth to the old adage, "one gets the defense one pays for." But in this situation, the old political adage "people get the government they deserve" seems more appropriate. And based on that analogy, I guess the people of Durham deserve an unethical, incompetent DA.
MARIE BLANKE
Durham
November 11, 2006
Outrageous comment
After the district attorney results came in Tuesday night, Durham Democratic Party bigwig Harris Johnson boldly proclaimed that "This goes to show that justice can't be bought by a bunch of rich white boys from New York." Am I the only one who is outraged by this comment? When did an effort to effect change via the political process become "buying justice?"
I am afraid when the rest of the country looks at Durham, all it will see is a city that would rather simmer in a racial divide than actually accomplish anything. By using such ignorant speech, we are only hurting ourselves in the eyes of a nation that is already looking at us (and our choice of DA) skeptically.
GREGORY CZAJA
Durham
November 11, 2006
http://www.newsobserver.com/134/story/509035.html
He's here to stay, so get used to it
Barry Saunders, Staff Writer
Near the end of his life, Richard Nixon, perhaps the biggest political loser in America's history, said all he ever wanted was a life with one more victory than defeat.
That quote from the disgraced U.S. president and Duke University Law School graduate came to mind right after the election results in the Durham District Attorney's race were announced at the Durham County Government building Tuesday night.
Standing in the aisle watching the results being beamed from an overhead projector, I told a colleague, "Looks like Nifong won, after all."
At that moment a woman walking past me snippily replied, "Yeah, but he didn't get a majority of the votes."
Her clothes, tone and frown made it clear that she was not one of the Nifong Cuties cheering the results loudly in their loud yellow T-shirts.
Her comment, though, brought Tricky Dick to mind: Nifong, at this point in his life, probably doesn't relish comparison with anybody associated with Duke, but to paraphrase Tricky Dick, all Nifong needed was one vote more than his opponent. He got it.
Both of Nifong's opponents maintained -- unconvincingly, if you ask me -- that they weren't one-trick ponies sallying forth to dethrone the man bedeviling their beloved Blue Devils. Both, however, expressed dissatisfaction with his handling of the case and tapped into the fountain of resentment over it.
Attorney Lewis Cheek, despite vowing not to serve if elected, received 39 percent of the votes cast. Write-in candidates, led by attorney Steve Monks, received 12 percent. Nifong got 49 percent.
You know what means, right? Yep, Monks should be on Nifong's Christmas-gift list this year. He'll be on another list from those folks to whom Nifong inexplicably personifies evil.
Just as liberal parents used to frighten their misbehaving children by threatening "Dick Nixon is going to get you", it's conceivable that Duke parents send their kids off to college down here with: "I say, Chatsworth. Have a jolly good time at college, conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station in life -- and beware of that mean old DA."
Votes against Nifong seem to have been cast based on how one feels about the Duke lacrosse rape case and his handling of it. That's like picking a girlfriend because you like the way she giggles: She won't be doing a lot of it, so you'd better find something else about her to appreciate.
That's what those spearheading the Anybody But Nifong movement had better do, too.
You can tell Barry what you think at 836-2811 or e-mail him at barrys@nando.com.
http://www.thedurhamnews.com/109/story/11073.html
Pursuit of justice deserves 100 percent of the vote
Frank Hyman, Correspondent
Here are a few statistics and findings that I think pertain to the recent District Attorney's race:
* In North Carolina in 2002 about 46 percent of rape victims contacted law enforcement, while the other 54 percent remained silent. (Among college students, the rate of reporting was lower: 12 percent.)
* Two of the reasons women gave for not reporting the crime: they felt that not enough evidence could be found; they feared no one would believe them.
* The likelihood that an accusation of rape is false runs about 2 percent -- similar to the rate of false accusations for other violent crimes and slightly lower than the rate of North Carolina convictions -- 275 per 10,000 reported incidents, or 2.75 percent. Nationally, the rate is 6 percent.
* Number of my female friends or acquaintances who have been raped or sexually assaulted (that I know of): four. All four are white, middle class, educated, self-confident. Only two of the four went to the police.
Oh, wait. I bet you were thinking that I was going to share some statistics and findings on what all the vote tallies from Election Day mean. OK, I've got that too.
If you look at the precinct tallies, Tuesday's race looks a lot like a replay of the May primary with Nifong losing again in suburban/conservative precincts like Northern High, Cole Mill and Carrington and winning again in urban/liberal/black precincts like Brogden, Durham School of the Arts and White Rock Baptist Church.
As reported, incumbent District Attorney Mike Nifong won with 49.1 percent of the vote, Commissioner Lewis Cheek came in second with 39.3 percent (5,241 fewer votes than Nifong) and there were about 5,900 write-in votes -- 11 percent -- for third- place finisher Republican Steve Monks.
About 300 write-in votes went to the usual assortment of celebrities and self-promoters. No doubt the prepackaged conventional wisdom will be that a single opponent would have garnered enough votes to beat Nifong.
But if Steve Monks had dropped out, would all of his voters have switched to Cheek? The answer is no, if you ask Hope Valley resident Ann Bowling, an 83-year-old Durham native. She tells me that, "If Steve had dropped out of the race, I would have voted for Nifong." Bowling feels that voters should support a candidate and not leave Durham's choice for district attorney up in the air.
According to Monks, a vast number of his supporters "felt betrayed" by Cheek for getting their hopes up and dashing them when he declined to serve if elected. Many of those supporters told Monks that they would vote for Nifong before Cheek.
A second group of his supporters, Ann Bowling among them, weren't happy with Nifong's actions in the Duke lacrosse rape case. They weren't feeling betrayed by Cheek, like the first group, but it didn't make sense to them to vote for someone who wouldn't serve if elected.
Monks identified a third group of supporters who may not have voted at all, if he had not run.
It is, of course, hard to know how many voters would have done what, but Monks thinks that enough of his supporters were angry or indifferent toward Cheek that only a little more than half would have switched to Cheek if Monks had dropped out.
The rest would have stayed home or stuck with Nifong. So, if even as few as one out of nine Monks voters stayed home, or even one out of 12 had defected to Nifong, Cheek would still lose. As Monks told me: "They simply didn't want to vote for Lewis Cheek."
Ah ha, you say. "But what if Cheek had bailed out instead, and his anti-Nifong votes went to Monks. Wouldn't that leave Nifong out in the cold?"
That's even easier to parse out. Yes, the hardcore anti-Nifong voters -- such as the Duke students who refused to shake Nifong's hand at a polling place -- would happily switch to Anyone-But-Nifong. But a lot of those 20,000 Cheek voters are Yellow Dog Democrats who wouldn't cotton to putting a Republican in office. In fact, I have a suspicion that fear of a Republican district attorney drove the Cheek campaign's unwillingness to drop out. Even if Cheek had withdrawn, as few as 5 percent of his supporters abstaining in frustration or switching back to Nifong -- the Democrat -- would have kept Nifong on top.
So, still not convinced that Nifong would have won anyway? That's fine. Some things can be debated all day in the media.
But debating something as serious as an alleged rape in the papers? Perhaps the election shows that the bulk of Durham voters, and perhaps even the majority, would rather see that settled in court.
Frank Hyman is a former member of the Durham City Council.
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/509175.html
Nifong revels in victory
Michael Biesecker, Josh Shaffer and T. Keung Hui, Staff Writers
As the votes were counted Tuesday night in Durham's hotly contested district attorney's race, Mike Nifong appeared to make an effort to sound measured and somewhat humble when speaking to reporters. But while receiving props from friends and supporters, the victorious D.A. allowed himself to crow just a little.
When the returns showed a clear margin in Nifong's advantage, a local lawyer went up to shake Nifong's hand and pat him on the shoulder.
"I just wanted to be the first to congratulate you," the man said.
"You aren't," Nifong said. "Most people went ahead and congratulated me yesterday."
AN EYE ON HIS ENEMIES: As for the hard-fought campaign, Durham's district attorney told an interviewer he had learned some things.
"I don't know if I've learned who my friends are, but I have learned who my friends aren't," Nifong said. "Which in some ways is more valuable."
Remember that Nifong is the same guy who said he would quit Durham County's Animal Control advisory committee after spotting the names of some fellow board members among the more than 10,000 signatures on the petition to put lawyer Lewis Cheek on the ballot. Supporters of Cheek and write-in hopeful Steve Monks might want to drive the speed limit for the next four years.
It's just possible, but hard to tell, that perhaps a competent investigator, or maybe even an honest, ethical DA might have found out this information long before this case was filed. But then, what does competency or ethics have to do with anything anymore?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson150.html
Why the Duke Hoax Continues
Part III: Courts of the State – and the State of Justice
by William L. Anderson
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/11/requiem-for-spoiler.html
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/11/change-of-tune-from-herald-sun.html
WOO HOO!! Thanks to one Yolanda Haynes!
Unbelievable. I can't stop laughing!
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