Indicators of False Accusations (DukeLAX

"Since the state AG is handling this Chalmers might
end up serving more time than the guys that shot
the drug dealer in the head did."

More likely getting a precious deal.

The court does seem to be disposing of
some serious business- now that the election
is past. The community is taking care of its
own. Credibility of participants in many of these
cases does seem to make prosecutions difficult.

Hate to disagree. This is cute until the lowlifes just shoot the whole family including the "Power Ranger".

That they might know each other (have been or are friends?) would certainly explain some things.....

Multiple murder case has hearing

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Nov 30, 2006

DURHAM -- Quadruple murder charges against an admitted drug trafficker began their journey through the court system Wednesday, with District Attorney Mike Nifong giving defense attorneys 1,563 pages of documents about the case.

Nifong, who announced earlier he would seek the death penalty against defendant Rodrick Vernard Duncan, said the defense team would receive a total of 3,000 to 4,000 pages by Friday.*

He also promised lawyers Barry Winston and Thomas Maher that they would receive "numerous video files" soon.

Defendants facing possible capital punishment are entitled by law to two court-appointed attorneys if they cannot afford counsel of their own.

The 27-year-old Duncan did not attend Wednesday's brief court hearing. He is in custody for federal drug crimes, to which he has admitted guilt.

The quadruple murder charges arose from a Nov. 19, 2005, incident at a townhouse in the Breckenridge subdivision off Hope Valley Road.

Killed that day were Lennis Harris Jr., 24; LaJuan Coleman, 27; Jamal Holloway, also 27; and Jonathan Skinner, 26. All were from Durham except Skinner, who lived in Raleigh.

Harris and Skinner were cousins.

The four were found on the floor of a second-story bedroom, each with a bullet wound to the head.

In addition, 22-year-old Allen Shuler was wounded by gunfire.

A sixth man, Nacoree Upchurch, 27, reportedly escaped the bullets by leaping from a window onto a patio.

In a news conference last month, Police Chief Steve Chalmers said he believed the crimes were "drug-motivated."

"Multiple individuals were involved in this," Chalmers added, hinting that more arrests might follow.

Chalmers would not say whether he believed Duncan was the triggerman.

"In the 28 years that I have been in Durham County, this is by far the most egregious single act of violence that has occurred in this county," Nifong said during the same news conference. "And I don't recall having heard or read about anything prior to my arriving here that in any way approaches this in terms of overall violence, destruction of human life."

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-793981.html

* The DA ain't wasting time handing over discovery on this one. Maybe it is because he has some real evidence.

I need help to translate this bullsh*t editorial from the Herald Sun...

Murder to probation

The Herald-Sun
November 29, 2006 6:02 pm
At first blush, an article in Wednesday's Herald-Sun about reduced charges in a murder case might seem like a simple case of a Durham court letting a killer off easy.

It's true that the facts in the case seem cut and dried. Three guys in a car at Southpoint Mall during the holiday season two years ago were up to no good -- engaged in a drug deal. Things went south, and one of them wound up dead with a bullet in his head. The other two were charged with murder.

Case closed? Not so fast. As often happens, the facts in this case might get in the way of a simplistic story line.

Julius Gray and Barry Ford Evans were initially charged with murder in the death of Harvey Dennard Wiggins. That charge carries penalties including life in prison or death by execution. But as it turned out, Gray pleaded guilty to a minor drug charge and was sentenced to two years of probation and was fined $200. Evans was charged with involuntary manslaughter and also received probation.

What happened? Well, for one thing the victim's mother encouraged Assistant District Attorney Mitchell Garrell to reach the plea arrangement, Garrell reported. He said that if she had asked him to prosecute the case fully, he would have done so.

It makes one wonder about prosecutorial discretion and the power of a victim's family. If a DA believed that a light sentence was called for in a case, would he seek a heavier sentence based only on the wishes of a victim's family?

Well, it's something to think about. As we said, it was a complicated case. Wiggins apparently went to the mall intending to buy marijuana from Gray and Evans. But according to defense lawyer Bill Thomas, Wiggins pulled a gun and wound up being shot himself, apparently by Evans.

Gray was only the driver, Thomas said. He was an NCCU student with a once-bright future whose life has been shattered by the incident. The case may be complicated, but it holds one sure lesson for young people. Don't put yourself in a situation like this -- things could go south for you too, and you might not get off as easily.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsedits/56-793788.html

Sounds like the mama of the deceased druggie has some skeletons she doesn't want the defense to bring out in court so she did what she could to back the DA off.

This is the case in which the father of one of the victims, Lennis Harris, is a retired fireman and was really upset about the DNA test sample taken months earlier languishing while the Duke DNA was rushed through. He complained that there was little happening investigatively. Liefong may have let this case cool while he pursued the Duke case to get elected. I don't know what the cops were doing on this case, if anything, but it doesn't sound like a very good job has been done at all. For instance, just letting DNA sit at a lab that long is going ton open up a big opportunity for the defense.

Frankly, I think the only people in Durham who give a damn about such terrible crimes are the victims and their families and a handful of resident conservatives who actually have a social conscious. Since Durham is run by rats, I wouldn't expect to see serious crime prevention or moral outrage over these events. It will just go on as it has.

It will be interesting how the case management
system controlled by the DA plays out on this one.
You are correct, the Quad families had a long wait
while police may have tried their best to catch the perps.
That pesky evidence and credibility thing seems to
hold the authorities back, except in the Duke case.
Other Quad perps are still on the loose. There is plenty
of outrage and it comes from the AA communities themselves.
They have been complaining for years to their special
sample ballot leaders. Guess poor blacks do not have
much leverage over Howard and Bill.

Yes, better editorials can be writtten, but I doubt many
people have read them in years. Same for the N&O.
The HS is getting thinner and thinner, as the N&O gets
thicker with the ads. I see a complete buyout/merger
in the future. Then there will be only one lousy rag to
keep up with.

"Gray was only the driver, Thomas said. He was an NCCU
student with a once-bright future."

The promising Central student defense seems to
work well in this town. Now what are the chances
everyone in the Duke case comes to their collective
senses on Dec. 15th and gets rid of the farce?
One would think the mayor and his cronies at the
NAACP have exacted enough flesh by now. It would
be their last chance, before the big boys come
crashing down on them. Durham and Duke really
need to get on with fixing their problems, instead
of creating new ones.

"Frankly, I think the only people in Durham who give a damn about such terrible crimes are the victims and their families and a handful of resident conservatives who actually have a social conscious."

Then what was all that talk about supporting Nifong because overall he was such a good DA, and you couldn't judge him by just one case?

If he was such a good DA, would things like this be happening? Would the whole Durham justice system run
like it is traffic court, only with bigger payoffs?

If the community thought he was such a good DA, so that they elected him TWICE, even after all the facts of the Duke hoax were in, then they are getting what they deserve.

I think the "special" designation has take this out of the "case management" system.

Condor, that was I, not xoxox, you quoted. I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying that except for Durhamites who, by the nature of being law-and-order conservatives or have been violent crime victims, such as Lennis Harris's father (losing his son), the people of Durham seem to think the Liefongery approach to law enforcement is just fine.

If you look back to what xoxox and I were talking about, you'd understand what I meant.

No big deal. :>

Treasury Undersecretary's Dual Roles Raise Questions

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006; A27

Robert K. Steel is a Washington oddity. He holds two high-powered jobs, one inside and the other outside government.

As the new undersecretary of the Treasury in charge of domestic finance, Steel supervises thousands of federal employees and helps oversee the nation's multi-trillion-dollar financial markets. At the same time, he moonlights as the unpaid chairman of the Board of Trustees of Duke University, a major recipient of federal funds and one of the country's most richly endowed colleges.

Experts say it is rare for a senior executive branch official -- in this case a Treasury official ranked just below the department's No. 2 -- to hold a significant position outside government. Top federal executives customarily drop their nongovernmental posts to devote themselves to their time-consuming federal tasks and to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with their public responsibilities.

"This situation is unusual," said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on federal bureaucracy.

Steel insisted that he keep his chairmanship at Duke -- his alma mater and that of his parents -- as a condition of taking the Treasury job. Government and university ethics officials approved the combination as long as Steel did nothing that had a "direct and predictable effect" on Duke's finances, a stipulation that he accepted.

The Senate Finance Committee was also informed about the pact, a Steel spokeswoman said.

Still, watchdog groups and others have expressed concern about Steel's situation. They worry that he will inevitably have to choose between his fiduciary duty to Duke, which has an endowment of $4.5 billion and about $3 billion in other investments, and his role at Treasury. His position there makes him privy to often-sensitive price-moving information about U.S. markets, especially those involving management of the government's $8.6 trillion in debt.

They also doubt that a senior Treasury official, whose hours are grueling, would have enough spare time to also chair a major research university. In addition, they question the propriety of allowing a top federal official to head an organization that in fiscal 2006 alone, according to Duke, received $1.1 billion in federal funds, including $45,543 from Treasury for a clinic for low-income taxpayers.

"It's a conflict of interest," said Thomas J. Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group. "In his role as the chairman of the Board of Trustees, there will be decisions he will make that will be in conflict with his role as a high-level government official."

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, agreed. "The concept of having a government job is that you work only on behalf of the American people, and being a trustee creates a divided loyalty," she said.

Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, added: "He's creating the very real possibility that he will face situations where he has not just the appearance of a conflict but the reality of a conflict and then will have to decide how to behave. There will always be questions about whether he handled that kind of situation appropriately."

The Senate is keeping a close watch on the Steel-Duke arrangement. "I intend to monitor this situation," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Treasury. "I also want to make sure that serving as Duke's board chairman doesn't take time away from Treasury duties. I've learned from my review of nonprofit organizations that serving on a board can be very time-consuming if the board takes its responsibilities seriously."

Steel, a former vice chairman of the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, does not foresee trouble. His spokeswoman, Jennifer Zuccarelli, said Steel's deal was blessed at Treasury and the Office of Government Ethics and was disclosed to the Senate, which confirmed him in October. Steel has agreed not to raise funds for Duke and is no longer directly involved in its endowment or investments. Any effort he puts into Duke, she said, comes out of his private time.

Duke's trustees were consulted about Steel's new job and decided to retain him as chairman. According to minutes of the board's executive committee meeting in August, Steel explained what his role in Washington would be and said he would have to step away from direct dealings with Duke's funding. After a discussion without Steel in the room, the executive committee "agreed that Mr. Steel's service in Washington would not have a negative impact on his service to Duke."

Still, the board requires plenty of his attention. It meets four times a year for two days each time, usually Friday and Saturday. In addition, the board's executive committee, which Steel also chairs, meets seven times a year between board meetings.

The board is responsible for the school's well-being, financial and otherwise. "In essence, the Board of Trustees owns Duke University," said John F. Burness, a Duke senior vice president. "The trustees have ultimate responsibility for the university in all of its aspects, including financial."

As undersecretary, Steel has one of the largest portfolios at Treasury. He supervises the assistant secretary for financial markets, the assistant secretary for financial institutions, the fiscal assistant secretary, the deputy assistant secretary for community development policy and the director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. He also oversees the Bureau of the Public Debt and, through the fiscal assistant secretary, the Financial Management Service.

The Bureau of the Public Debt borrows the money needed to operate the federal government and services the debt by issuing trillions of dollars in Treasury securities. The Financial Management Service receives and disburses all public monies, maintains government accounts and oversees a daily cash flow of $50 billion. The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund was created to expand credit in distressed communities.

Steel is not the first Duke chairman to hold federal office. In the 1990s, John Koskinen kept his Duke post when he became deputy director for management of the White House budget office. He removed himself from all higher-education issues and did not raise money for Duke. But even with those restrictions, he said, the double duty was unusual. "Generally, you have to give up everything if you get into a high position," he said.

Light, the NYU professor, said that there is good reason for the rule and that Steel should resign from Duke's board. "The potential conflicts are significant," he said. "His positions violate the spirit of the law that separates public and private service."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113001242_pf.html

[For the record]

KC weighs in on Steel:

http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/12/steel-trap.html

60 Minutes Followup? From Gaynor- Nov. 30, 2006 -excerpt-

Kirk Osborn, an attorney representing Reade Seligmann, boldly moved long ago to have Mr. Nifong removed from the Duke case, for good cause, but Judge Stephens, for whom Mr. Nifong had worked, and then Judge Titus, who on July 17 issued on his own initiative an unconstitutional gag order that the North Carolina NAACP wanted but lacked standing to seek, set aside that (and other well-founded) motions and let Mr. Nifong proceed with the discovery phase of the Duke case.

Fortunately, Judge Osborn Smith finally took over the Duke case and lifted that gag order, thereby facilitating the "60 Minutes" expose on the Duke case. But, given the failure of his two predecessors on the case to act on that removal motion, it may be too much to hope that he will dust it off and grant it.

So, "60 Minutes" will do a follow up (in part to defend the late Ed Bradley against the ludicrous charge that he was manipulated in his final illness for the sake of the Duke Three) and the defense lawyers will see the wisdom of making a well-founded motion to dismiss. (The North Carolina Criminal Procedure Act mandates that, on motion at any time, the court "must dismiss the charges stated in a criminal pleading if it determines that...[t]he defendant's constitutional rights have been flagrantly violated and there is such irreparable prejudice to the defendant's preparation of his case that there is no remedy but to dismiss the prosecution.")

http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=gaynorm&date=061130

Duke president gets panel findings

BY RAY GRONBERG : The Herald-Sun, Dec 1, 2006 -excerpt-

DURHAM -- A group assigned after the lacrosse scandal to examine Duke University's campus culture relayed its initial findings to school President Richard Brodhead just before Thanksgiving, but won't issue a public report until spring, Duke officials said Thursday.

Members of the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee gave their preliminary report to Brodhead orally, telling him and the members of a presidential advisory council also established in response to the lacrosse case, that they'd finished gathering data and comment from an assortment of interests at the school.

They intend to spend the winter interpreting those findings and drafting what Duke officials said Thursday would be "a limited number of recommendations." -jump-

No one's forgotten the impetus for the study: the lacrosse case, a debate Wells said the group has tried to avoid. -cut-

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-794505.html

Interviews under way for district judgeship

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Dec 1, 2006

DURHAM -- The governor's office interviewed several candidates this week for a new District Court judgeship in Durham -- perhaps bringing the day closer when wall-to-wall, standing-room-only crowding will end in some courtrooms here.

Gov. Mike Easley apparently didn't personally interview the people interested in the newly created position. A member of his legal staff reportedly did the quizzing.

Just when the governor might make an appointment remained unclear Thursday. But the decision presumably must come before Jan. 15 when the new judge is supposed to don his or her robe.

The judgeship was created by the Legislature in response to Durham's long-standing problems with backlogged dockets and courtroom overcrowding -- a situation that brought out the county fire marshal many times in the past year.

Those known to have interviewed for the judgeship this week are lawyers Kerry Sutton and Brian Wilkes, along with Assistant Public Defender Shannon Tucker.

Attorney Drew Marsh reportedly was questioned also. But he could not be reached for comment Thursday, and the governor's office would not discuss the situation.

Others who have expressed interest in the new bench job include former Durham Assistant District Attorney Tab Hunter and lawyer Scott Holmes.

Meanwhile, Chief District Judge Elaine Bushfan said Thursday she was eagerly awaiting the governor's appointee, who will bring to seven the number of District Court judges in Durham.

"We will finally have our noses slightly above water," she said. "We will be able to breathe again. Before long, you might even see some dramatic changes. It will be less of a controlled-chaos situation."

But, Bushfan added, the Durham courts aren't out of the woods yet. In fact, a need already exists for an eighth judge, she said.

Among other things, the seventh judge will allow Durham to hold one extra session of criminal court each week, plus an extra week of child-support court, according to Bushfan.

At least for those weeks, daily criminal caseloads that sometimes reach or exceed 500 might be spread between two courtrooms, eliminating the need to call out the fire marshal, Bushfan said.

In addition, she said, the new position will allow district judges to have an "office day" at least once a month to handle administrative duties. Local District Court judges don't enjoy that luxury now.

Bushfan said the new judge will undergo training at the School of Government in Chapel Hill, and possibly attend a judicial "college" in Reno, Nev.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-794508.html

* Controlled-chaos -- 500 criminal cases a day-- the Courthouse is always the busiest place downtown.

Duke president gets panel findings

BY RAY GRONBERG, The Herald-Sun
December 1, 2006 12:04 am

DURHAM -- A group assigned after the lacrosse scandal to examine Duke University's campus culture relayed its initial findings to school President Richard Brodhead just before Thanksgiving, but won't issue a public report until spring, Duke officials said Thursday.

Members of the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee gave their preliminary report to Brodhead orally, telling him and the members of a presidential advisory council also established in response to the lacrosse case, that they'd finished gathering data and comment from an assortment of interests at the school.

They intend to spend the winter interpreting those findings and drafting what Duke officials said Thursday would be "a limited number of recommendations."

The 25-member committee was supposed to submit an interim report to the president by today. But officials "had not intended ... from the beginning" to release their findings to the public yet, said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Bob Thompson, the steering committee's co-chairman.

Three other committees assigned to address different aspects of Duke's involvement in the lacrosse case submitted their final reports to Brodhead in the spring. Duke made all of them public, although as a private university, nothing required it to do so.

Brodhead asked the campus-culture group to "evaluate and suggest improvements in the ways Duke educates students in the values of personal responsibility, consideration for others, and mutual respect in the face of difference and disagreement."

He also said it would offer advice on how to promote "a more responsible approach to the culture of campus drinking, a major factor in Duke's recent crisis and the source of much bad college conduct nationally.

Committee members interviewed Thursday said the initial phase of the effort has led to a thorough airing of the issues surrounding alcohol use, race, gender, athletics and residential life.

In the process, "we have found in a lot of ways, our students are pretty similar to those at other places, and some of the issues we have here are issues that people have at lots of American universities, said Jeff Forbes, a computer-science professor who's one of the 10 faculty members on the panel.

Other issues remain for the group to grapple with as its drafts its recommendations, among them the question of how student culture affects Duke's "stated vision of itself," said Sam Wells, the dean of Duke Chapel.

"Putting it bluntly, is what a student does on a Friday or Saturday night entirely their own business, or is it part of the conversation about what a university is trying to be?" Wells added.

"We've identified a lot of complications and linked issues," said Noah Pickus, associate director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics. "And we're both trying to dig into them and ensure that the [final] report ties many things together, that it doesn't isolate one issue or two issues, but that it indicates the way in which many different issues at a university interrelate."

The panel's reconnaissance work included a series of forums earlier in the semester that gave students, faculty and staff members a chance to sound off on the issues Brodhead wanted addressed. It encountered a significant amount of skepticism along the way from people who believe there's nothing wrong with the campus culture that needs fixing, Wells said.

The new coach of the men's lacrosse team, John Danowski, apparently spoke for many when he said last month in one of the forums that there's been too much criticism of the university.

"The language of 'solution' only appeals to those who feel there's a fundamental problem," Wells said. "In Duke's case there's a lot to be proud of, and there are a number of people who feel we haven't heard enough about that in the last year -- and others who feel this isn't the time for it."

No one's forgotten the impetus for the study: the lacrosse case, a debate Wells said the group has tried to avoid.

But "the most difficult thing about this process is that it's assumed in some quarters that to say this is a good time for Duke to think about its own culture is inherently to be making some kind of statement about the guilt or innocence of the three students arrested," he said. "It's felt in some quarters that the best way to stand by the three students arrested and the team in general is to say there's nothing to talk about. That's difficult."

Thompson and other committee members have previously said their work had identified a "culture of divides" at the university, and that on the alcohol front they're likely to suggest that administrators draw distinctions between the problems of underage drinking, drunkenness and dangerous behavior.

Wells said committee members know they "can't duck" the alcohol issue, and are likely to suggest some combination of enforcement and what he termed "alternatives and imagination" to deal with it. He hinted the group might rank underage drinking a lesser priority than other alcohol-related issues.

"As an English person, I find the legal drinking age is more a part of the problem than part of the solution," he said. "It makes it difficult for treating people as adults if the law says they aren't. I don't think the law is helping universities in that particular way."
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-794505.html

Lacrosse retraction

On Nov. 13, The Herald-Sun published an "Other Voices" piece by me concerning the Duke lacrosse case. I have subsequently been informed of errors in that letter. In particular my blanket statement about behavior of the lacrosse team was neither fair in general nor applicable to the particular case now in dispute. I apologize for this and any other errors.

The response to my letter has made me more aware of the intense emotions that are associated with this case. These tensions can only be bad for campus-community relations, and I strongly support any efforts to reduce them. Finally, I sincerely hope that lessons learned from the lacrosse case will be applied to future cases in order to lift the standards of justice for all in Durham County.

The writer is a professor at Duke University.

THOMAS J. CROWLEY
Durham
December 1, 2006

http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/

And the hits just keep on coming...

Probation ends mall killing case
A second plea deal is accepted in a 2004 shooting at Southpoint mall in Durham

Benjamin Niolet, Staff Writer
DURHAM - Investigators think that the 2004 shooting death of a man in a parking lot at The Streets at Southpoint mall was a case of cold-blooded murder. But they can't prove it.

The case came to an end Tuesday when Julius E. Gray, the second of two suspects, pleaded guilty to a drug charge. The other suspect, Barry Ford Evans, pleaded guilty in October to involuntary manslaughter. Both men are on probation for their roles in the death of Harvey Dennard Wiggins, 23.

"I told Harvey Dennard Wiggins' mother, and I don't do this in many cases, if she wanted to prosecute these two defendants for murder, we will put 12 in the box," Assistant District Attorney Mitchell Garrell said in a plea hearing Tuesday.

Garrell said Wiggins mother agreed to the plea deals.

The problem with taking the case to a jury was that Gray, who cooperated with authorities from the beginning, has always maintained that Wiggins pulled a gun first, Garrell told Superior Court Judge Kenneth Titus.

The shooting happened Nov. 29, 2004.

Gray, 26, was a student at N.C. Central University who needed a little extra cash, said Bill Thomas, his attorney. Evans offered to pay Gray to drive to the busy mall for a marijuana deal.

Wiggins was looking to buy a large amount of the drug, and he got into the front seat of the car driven by Gray, Garrell said.

What happened next is in dispute.

Gray says that in the middle of a drug deal, Wiggins pulled a gun on him, and Evans fired his own weapon.

Investigators think Evans, who was sitting in the back seat, pulled a gun and shot Wiggins to death. Later someone threw a gun down to make it seem that Wiggins drew first, Garrell said.

The only other witness, who was across the parking lot, had credibility issues, Garrell said.

The difference in stories was the difference between a murder trial and a manslaughter plea for Evans, who was placed on three years' probation and given credit for the 75 days he spent in jail.

On Tuesday, Gray pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell marijuana. He was placed on two years' probation and ordered to pay more than $1,000 in costs, fines and fees, according to court records. Gray had never been in trouble before and was a strong student before the incident.

http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/515751.html

Mr. Crowley's mea culpa statement lacks at least one critically important element: An acknowledgement of the fact that his demonstrated judgemental deficiencies disqualify him as professor at an institution of higher learning. The public firestorm is a direct resulte of his and others' inflammatory words and actions.

Coach Pressler had to go...why should Professor Crowley and his ilk be allowed to stay?