Duke's Rush To Judgment (Durham, The Massachusetts Of North Carolina Rape Injustice Case Alert)

Frontpage Interview's guest today is KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. With a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, he specializes in 20th century U.S. political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. He writes a blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, which offers comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case.

FP: Kindly summarize briefly for our readers what this case involving the three Lacrosse students is about.

Johnson: This is the story of how a case virtually devoid of evidence, constructed upon a tissue of procedural irregularities, nonetheless has lurched forward. At a March team party at an off-campus house rented by three lacrosse captains, one captain hired two exotic dancers to perform. After leaving the party, which ended sourly, an African-American dancer with a criminal record and a history of false allegations (including an unpursued claim that three men raped her a decade ago) claimed to have been raped to prevent being involuntarily committed at Durham Access Center. After going through multiple stories, the accuser eventually settled on a claim of a violent gang rape by three players (with three others, who were never charged or in any way identified, serving as accomplices). The rape, she alleged, lasted a half hour; and at least two of her attackers, who she said didn't wear condoms, ejaculated.

Although the second dancer contradicted her account in virtually every way; the team captains gave statements to police, without their lawyers present, denying the allegations and voluntarily turned over to police DNA samples and their e-mail account passwords; and although the team captains offered to take lie detector tests (an offer the police spurned); and no DNA matches of any sort between any player and the accuser's DNA appeared; and although an original photo line-up of the players found the accuser unable to identify her alleged attackers, D.A. Mike Nifong eventually indicted three players, including one, Reade Seligmann, whose attorney produced a videotape of him more than a mile away, at an ATM machine, at the time of the alleged crime.

FP: Let's talk about District Attorney Mike Nifong's conduct. What is your angle on it and why has the legal community and most of the media been so quiet about it?

Johnson: Nifong's conduct in this case is the most unethical of any district attorney I have ever seen; I cannot recall a case in the last 15-20 years in which this many procedural violations were known at this stage of the process.

This is a man who violated multiple provisions of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct simply to get a case. His most damaging violation was ordering the Durham Police not to follow their own procedures in the line-up that resulted in the identification of the three players charged. The procedures required five filler photos per every suspect; Nifong told police to confine the line-up to suspects—members of the lacrosse team.

The media, of course, were not initially quiet: led by the New York Times, early coverage all but had the players tried and convicted. The case fit into a comfortable narrative for a liberal media elite of out-of-control wealthy white athletes violating a poor African-American woman. As the case has collapsed, most media—with the crucial exception of the Raleigh News & Observer and CBS's 60 Minutes—abandoned interest in the affair, rather than revisiting their early flawed reporting. The New York Times, meanwhile, published a widely ridiculed August article that read more like a public relations piece for Nifong than a piece of journalism. The article contained four out-and-out errors of fact, all of which tilted the story in favor of the prosecution, and all of which the Times refused to correct.

FP: What has been the overall reaction of the Duke faculty and administration? What is your take on it?

Johnson: In the first week of the investigation (March 16-23), Duke administrators actively assisted the state. Without informing President Richard Brodhead, administrators demanded from the captains a candid account of the evening's events, allegedly citing a non-existent "student-faculty" privilege to encourage the captains to disclose any criminal activity. Multiple sources told me that Coach Mike Pressler, apparently acting on orders from above, instructed the other players not to tell their parents about the police inquiry. Meanwhile, Dean Sue Wasiolek arranged for a local lawyer, Wes Covington, to act as a "facilitator" in arranging for a group meeting with police.

After Nifong began his publicity barrage on March 27, faculty leftists became involved. Houston Baker, a professor of English and Afro-American Studies, issued a public letter denouncing the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us" and demanding the "immediate dismissals" of "the team itself and its players." Then, on April 6, 88 members of Duke's arts and sciences faculty signed a public statement saying "thank you" to campus demonstrators who had distributed a "wanted" poster of the lacrosse players and publicly branded the players "rapists." To date, not a single member of what has become known as the "Group of 88" has retracted his or her signature or publicly criticized Nifong's procedural violations.

(I started my blog as a response to the Group of 88's statement, which I considered a betrayal of the signatories' duties as faculty members, and only expanded to the case itself as the magnitude of Nifong's procedural misconduct became clear.)

As Brodhead failed to resist his faculty's assault on due process, his actions, whether intended or not, fortified a public image of guilt. On March 25, in an unprecedented move, the president cancelled (at the last minute) the lacrosse team's game against Georgetown, citing underage drinking at the party. Then, on April 5, Brodhead demanded Pressler's resignation, cancelled the lacrosse season, and issued a statement anchored by a lament on the evils of rape—at a time when the players were firmly denying any sexual contact, much less rape. These moves enjoyed enthusiastic support from Board of Trustees chairman Robert Steel. The president later issued a statement urging a trial, on the grounds that it would give the accused players an opportunity to be "proved innocent," in effect turning on its head 220 years of American constitutional history.

Based on the actions and statements of both the faculty and administration, a fair-minded neutral observer could only conclude that Duke's administrators and most outspoken professors believed that a rape occurred.

Johnson: In Nifong's case, the political motivation was straightforward. An appointed district attorney, he was running in the May Democratic primary against two challengers: a well-known white woman, Freda Black, whom he had fired as an assistant district attorney in one of his first acts in office; and a weak black candidate, Keith Bishop. The party's electorate was about evenly divided between white and black voters.

Black was much better known than Nifong (she had helped prosecute a high-profile murder case in 2003), and in mid-February, she seemed on the verge of putting the race away. Nifong started having trouble raising money—he attracted only $1150 in contributions for all March—and, to keep his candidacy alive, he loaned his campaign nearly $30,000. (A lifetime bureaucrat whose wife is a "victims' rights" advocate, Nifong isn't personally wealthy.)

Then came the lacrosse allegation. Nifong took control of the police investigation, gave over 50 interviews that highlighted (in misleading fashion) an alleged racial motive for the alleged crime, and soared in polls. He captured the primary by 881 votes, thanks to robust showings in black precincts.

In the fall campaign, two unaffiliated candidates ran against him: with minimal support from the white community, Nifong again squeaked through, with less than 50%, thanks to overwhelming backing in black precincts. By the fall, he had abandoned all pretences that his motives were anything other than political, stating at one point that his trying the case would address Durham's "underlying divisions," and wildly claiming that his critics considered his prosecution "a threat to their sense of entitlement and that they do not trust a jury of Durham citizens to decide" the case.

FP: How do you think the Duke/Nifong case will turn out? Crystallize for us the main lessons we must all draw from it.

Johnson: Legally, the outcome of the case very much depends on the judge, Osmond Smith. Any judge with integrity would have to suppress the procedurally improper line-up ordered by Nifong and then used to indict the three players; without the results from that line-up, Nifong has no case. There are two other key decisions the judge could make: (1) He could grant a defense motion to force Nifong's refusal from the case, which in effect would dismiss the charges, since it's inconceivable any other prosecutor would try this case; or (2) he could grant a motion for a change of venue, which would effectively ensure an acquittal, since Nifong has constructed his whole case around appealing to biases with Durham's community.

There are myriad lessons we should draw from events of this case, including the following:

Rape law needs modification. Until the 1970s, rape law was far too friendly to the defendant; now it is the reverse. Nifong has done many unethical things in this case, but he has been correct in one assertion: under North Carolina law, a jury can convict solely on the testimony of the accuser and her identifying her alleged assailants. That means that, as a matter of law, Reade Seligmann could be convicted—even Seligmann has electronic and physical evidence that can definitely prove his innocence (he's on videotape a mile away at the time of the alleged crime).

Duke, as an institution, has revealed a hollow moral core. Seven months into a case of what might be the highest-profile example of prosecutorial misconduct in the last decade, two Duke law professors and two Duke arts and sciences professors have publicly criticized Nifong. Meanwhile, Group of 88 members continues to defend their actions, even to the point of making demonstrably false public assertions about the players. Meanwhile, Brodhead has shown himself unwilling or unable to lead the institution, allowing what amounts to a "separate-but-equal" system to be established in Durham, under which Duke students are second-class citizens.

The silence of North Carolina's political and legal establishment regarding Nifong's misconduct is stunning.

The media needs to reconsider how it covers rape cases. To a greater extent than any crime other than child abuse, a presumption of guilt exists.

The next time the NAACP speaks up on behalf of standard procedure in a criminal justice case, the media should ask why the organization betrayed 70 years of its principles on criminal justice issues to give Nifong a pass in this case.

In Durham, North Carolina, a robust constituency exists for the politics of revenge and prosecutorial misconduct.

There was nothing wrong with that interview with Nancy Grace. She might have been wrong on several occasions, but not here. It is one thing to criticize someone who is wrong (such as Nancy in the Duke case), but to attack them when they are right just because you don't like her is dishonest.

I have followed the story of little Trenton and if anybody should be sued, is his late mother. She had him in a porn flick, she framed her ex-husband, she lied and refused to help find him. And I saw not a sign of these relatives during searches.

If Nancy can be sued when she is right, so can anyone of us. And that is just wrong.

Do we know for a fact that Trenton was put in a porn flick? If so, wasn't it the husband who made that information public? What a sweetheart. He's real worried about his kid, isn't he? In ten years (assuming Trenton is found alive and well), when he's old enough to understand such things, won't it be nice that his daddy outed his mother so the whole world knows and has seen clips from her porno work?

Neither one of them is a saint, that is for sure. It's probably very likely that the mother spirited Trenton away to keep dad from getting him. But Nancy went down the road that the mother had harmed Trenton, and that doesn't appear to be the case if the newer information and the police theory is right, so Grace was not correct in the theory behind her badgering of the mother. As usual, Nancy shot her mouth off based on very lean pickings of evidence, just like she did in the Duke case.

As I said before, anyone can be sued anytime for anything. Frivolous and malicious cases get filed all the time and even though they are almost always dismissed, the defendant still has to get a lawyer and go through the steps. But this isn't a frivolous or malicious filing.

There are some cities that are more corrupt than others. Clearly Durham is head & shoulders in that category. NC has been RAT run for a long time which likely contributes to it.

It's probably more common than we think. Just over the hill in Virginia we have most of the sheriff's department arrested & charged with corruption.

As long as the DA is given the power he's given in NC & the laws are twisted to favor the prosecutor such as the "speedy" trial issue, nothing is going to change anytime soon. It makes him practically invincible which just feeds the ego of people like Fong. There are plenty more out there I'm sure. This is just one of the first times people have been willing to speak out about it. NC needs to clean house from the local level to the governor's mansion.

The relatives most likely know where Trenton is. They most likely hold the father partly responsible for the mother's death so, if they have Trenton, they're not going to hand him over because they know the dad will get custody. They will view the mother as giving her life to prevent that, illogical and stupid as it is.

It's been reported several times that CPS got the porn stuff from the dad.

I agree with you about lawsuits, and I don't think the family will win the suit unless Grace settles. Nevertheless, with the way she treats people, including the mother in this case, and going along with airing the show after the woman killed herself, and her general disregard for truth and fairness, she deserves whatever she gets. Piss on her.

Holdups beset Durham in week
Eleven robberies reported recently,

Matt Dees, Staff Writer, N&O, Nov 30, 2006

DURHAM - Durham police are investigating 11 armed robberies that happened in the past week.

Four robberies were reported Monday and Tuesday after seven occurred in the days around Thanksgiving.

One man was shot, and two people were pistol-whipped in two of the recent incidents.

Some of the Thanksgiving-time incidents ended with robbers firing shots at their victims, but no one was hurt, police said.

Police aren't sure whether some or all of the crimes are related. They are seeking any information about the following cases:

* At 12:47 a.m. Tuesday, in the 1900 block of Taylor Street, a man was driving with a woman when she told him to stop. A man approached with a gun, and the woman told the armed man to take the driver's money.

* At 9:35 p.m. Monday, at 1611 Duke University Road, three men entered an unlocked apartment and pistol-whipped another man before shooting him in the arm when he said he had no money.

* Just nine minutes earlier, at 2112 Broad St., a man was pistol-whipped and robbed of his wallet and cell phone as he sat on stairs near his apartment. The three men fled in a white sedan.

* At 7:17 p.m. Monday, also in the 1900 block of Taylor Street, two men in a car were stopped by three men standing in the road. Two of the three men pulled guns and stole a wallet and a necklace before firing seven shots in the car. No one was hurt.

* At 9:05 p.m. Friday at 901 Chalk Level Road, two men approached another man outside his apartment and asked whether he had any marijuana.

When the man said he did not, the two robbers pulled out two handguns and demanded his money.

One suspect forced his way into an apartment, which was occupied by several people, including four children. During the robbery, a 4-year-old boy sneaked into his bedroom, dressed himself in a Power Ranger costume and got a plastic sword.

He approached the armed suspect in an attempt to protect his family.

The robbers fled with money, credit cards and phones.

* At 6:49 p.m. Friday, at 1315 Morreene Road, a man armed with a rifle robbed two men sitting in a car. The robber fled in a white car driven by another person.

* At 10:15 p.m. Thursday, at 5906 Tattersall Drive, four men wearing masks told three victims to get on the ground and robbed them at gunpoint. They fled toward Fayetteville Road.

* At 9:28 the same night, at 5011 S. Alston Ave., four men demanded money from a man and a woman carrying a baby. One man pointed a gun at the woman and demanded her purse. When she refused, police said, another man tried to grab the baby. The four men fled in a dark four-door Mitsubishi. One shot was fired.

* At 10:25 p.m. Nov. 22, at 4230 Garrett Road, five men were robbed at gunpoint by five other men. One robber fired a shot. Two assailants fled in a black Nissan Altima; the other three fled on foot.

* At 9:22 p.m. Nov. 22, at 2816 Ross Road, three men with bandannas over their faces robbed two men at gunpoint and fired shots as the victims fled.

* At 9:05 p.m. Nov. 22, three masked men demanded money from a man at 1719 Cornwallis Road. The victim ran back in the apartment. Two shots were fired.

http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/516061.html

More at new thread here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1745102/posts?page=30#30

Press group: Police violated photographer's rights

BY BRIANNE DOPART : The Herald-Sun, Nov 30, 2006

DURHAM -- Lawyers for the North Carolina Press Association say Durham police officers violated Durham-based photographer Julian Harrison's rights to work as a journalist when they confiscated his equipment and took him into custody at the scene of a Nov. 3 officer-involved shooting.

Amanda Martin, general counsel for the NCPA, said the fact the incident was not the only time officers had attempted to bar Harrison from working was "offensive to the First Amendment." The incident occurred when Harrison was videotaping the scene of the Nov. 3 shooting. City Councilman Eugene Brown has asked for a report on the incident to be presented to the City Council at its next meeting, Monday.

Brown, contacted Thursday, said he is withholding comment on the incident for now, since the investigation has not been completed.

Harrison, a freelance photographer whose work occasionally appears in The Herald-Sun, was standing outside a police crime scene tape when an officer identified as Capt. Dowdy -- who police spokeswoman Kammie Michael later said was not present at the department's "media training" session days earlier -- pushed Harrison onto the hood of a civilian's car and arrested him for "disorderly conduct."

Magistrate Eric Van Vleet refused to charge Harrison and released him in less than an hour, saying he had done nothing wrong.

While the police department does have a right to take control of a crime scene when the integrity of an investigation or the safety of individuals becomes an issue, NCPA counsel Martin said officers do not have a right to intimidate members of the media or to prevent them from "trying to do their jobs."

"Journalists have no more or less rights than the public at large," Martin said, "And the public at large has the right to be on public property."

Last week, Harrison said he and his attorney, Fred Battaglia, would be seeking both internal and external investigations into the arrest, which Harrison described as a physical attack.

Police Chief Steve Chalmers said Thursday the department is conducting its own independent internal investigation and working on a report about the incident for the City Council. He added his department would comply with whatever investigations are mandated, but said Harrison and his lawyer have failed to file an official complaint.

Martin said an external investigation conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation may be in the cards for the Durham Police Department, which has had several issues with Harrison in the past. The NCPA represented Harrison in the aftermath of one of those episodes, Martin said.

Chalmers, who declined to discuss the case because the internal investigation has not been completed, said he could not recall the previous incidents involving Harrison and asked that he be alerted to any prior clashes between Harrison and his officers.

Members of the media have no reason to fear arrest when working in their capacity as journalists, said Chalmers. He added that the department does not need to reassess its relationship with the media because the incident involving Harrison was an isolated one.

In the month since The Herald-Sun broke the news of Harrison's arrest, the incident has been posted and discussed on numerous national Web sites, including the conservative site Townhall.com and another site -- morebadcopnews.com

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-794474.html

_______
The Bob Steel-led Board of Trustees has just concluded its regularly scheduled meeting. The Board offered no comment on the serious conflict of interest allegations leveled against Steel by a left-to-right coalition of good-government groups in yesterday’s Washington Post. But the Board did make two moves—one by action, one by inaction—that made perfectly clear where the Board stands on Duke’s future.

Inaction

In its final meeting before the deadline to apply to Duke’s Class of 2011, the Board remained silent about Mike Nifong’s “separate-but-equal” system of justice for Duke students.

Parents considering spending the more than $40,000 annual tuition to send their son or daughter to Duke should, therefore, have no doubt that the institution will remain silent in face of a prosecutor who employs a different set of procedures for Duke students than those used for all other Durham residents. Prospective parents also now can be assured that the BOT has no complaints with the Durham PD’s official policy of meting out greater punishment to Duke students than to all other Durham residents for the same misdemeanor-level offenses.

Many might argue that with this silence, Duke’s trustees have failed in their fiduciary duty to the institution. But Steel, obviously, has a different vision of his proper role. . . . With its actions and non-actions today, the Board responded to those who have been urging Duke to take a clearer stand on the case. Not only is the Board unwilling to challenge Nifong’s “separate-but-equal” system for Duke students, but it went out of its way to reward the faculty who have acted as Nifong’s campus cheerleaders.

There's much, much more._____-http://instapundit.com/archives2/2006/12/post_744.php

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