Posted on 07/01/2007 8:12:35 AM PDT by freespirited
When the Durham City Council's commission meets to review how police handled the Duke lacrosse case, the commission will have a lot to chew on -- particularly if members read the N.C. State Bar's files.
Durham's Duke Lacrosse Investigative Committee, led by Willis Whichard, a former justice on the N.C. Supreme Court, will investigate how the police department and the district attorney's office handled the Duke lacrosse case. Careers at the police department are at stake. Lawyers for the three exonerated players will no doubt follow the investigation closely; the players are contemplating whether to sue Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, individual officers and the police department. Such a lawsuit could be expensive for the city to defend, and it has the possibility of a judgment in the millions of dollars.
An examination of Nifong's files and evidence generated by the State Bar as it disbarred Nifong indicates several areas of potential police misconduct: improper photo lineups, the veracity of key police reports, and the accuracy of police affidavits filed to obtain search warrants.
But one of the most intriguing questions is whether the police department was punishing or ostracizing the one officer who, from the beginning, concluded that Crystal Gail Mangum was lying when she accused the three players of gang rape.
Alex Charns, a Durham lawyer who has successfully sued the Durham police several times, said the police have a history of using internal affairs investigations to silence internal critics or naysayers.
"In the past, internal affairs has been used to punish officers who displease those up the chain of command," Charns said.
Durham Police Chief Steve Chalmers declined to be interviewed, as did every other police official contacted.
On March 14, 2006, Sgt. John Shelton was the first officer to come into contact with Mangum, an escort service dancer and student.
Shelton was skeptical of Mangum's behavior when he first encountered her passed out in the passenger seat of a car at the Kroger supermarket on Hillsborough Road, records show.
Shelton got no response when he talked loudly to her; when he put ammonia smelling salts under her nose, she began breathing through her mouth, which Shelton deemed a sign that she was conscious. As Shelton put pressure on her wrist to goad her out of the car, Mangum grabbed the parking brake, struggling to stay inside. Once out, she collapsed on the parking lot.
Later, at the Duke Hospital emergency room, Mangum gave differing accounts of whether she was raped. After talking with her in the Duke Hospital emergency room, Shelton loudly announced, "I think she is lying."
Shelton apparently has held on to that opinion, which made him unpopular with his fellow officers and Nifong.
In testimony to the State Bar, Investigator Benjamin Himan testified that he spoke with Shelton about the case several times: "Basically, he just characterized it as that she was lying. In my opinion, I didn't think that he had handled it professionally."
In his deposition to the bar, Nifong derided Shelton's handling of the case, though the prosecutor said he had never read Shelton's report of the incident: "Officer Shelton did not seem to appreciate that this was a very serious situation at the time that he responded to the Kroger parking lot."
According to Linwood Wilson, Nifong's investigator, the police department thought Shelton's comments were inappropriate. Wilson said Capt. Jeff Lamb asked him to investigate the remarks.
"The police asked that I do that and keep Himan out of it because he had to work with those guys," Wilson said. "Obviously, it led to an internal investigation at the police department, and Himan would probably be, you know, a witness in that. So ... [Lamb] felt like it would be better for me to interview those people, so I did."
It would be highly irregular for a police captain to turn to someone outside the department to assist in an internal affairs investigation.
Lamb did not return calls. City Manager Patrick Baker said he did not know whether an internal investigation took place.
Wilson declined to be interviewed. His lawyer, Fred Battaglia, said he does not know the status of the internal investigation.
Bill Thomas, a Durham lawyer who represented a lacrosse captain not charged in the case, said he didn't believe Lamb would ask an outsider to investigate his officers, and certainly not for concluding that a witness was lying.
"Throughout history, police officers have called witnesses liars when they don't believe them," Thomas said. "Rather, it appears to be a transparent attempt to discredit this officer first on the scene and in the best position to evaluate her credibility."
Suspect descriptions
The commission is expected to scrutinize Sgt. Mark Gottlieb's account of how Mangum described her alleged attackers when interviewed by police in March.
Gottlieb, the senior police investigator on the case, testified to the State Bar that he typed his interview in July, in the week before the prosecution gave his notes to defense lawyers. Gottlieb said he didn't take notes of the interview and relied on those by his partner, Investigator Benjamin Himan.
"I did a lot of typing in that last week," he said. "I did look at ... [Himan's] typed notes, but it was primarily from his handwritten notes. And also from my memory." Gottlieb also said he kept notes on a dry-erase board in his office; Himan was supposed to photograph the notes before erasing them, but didn't.
Gottlieb wrote that on March 16 the woman gave these descriptions of her alleged assailants: "1) W/M, young, blonde hair, baby faced, tall and lean, 2) W/M, medium height (5' 8"+ with Himan's build) dark hair medium build and had red (rose colored) cheeks, and the third suspect as being a W/M, 6+ feet, large build with dark hair."
These descriptions, typed in July, accurately describe the three men charged months before: Collin Finnerty, Dave Evans and Reade Seligmann.
But Himan's handwritten notes from the same interview clash with Gottlieb's account. According to Himan, the accuser described the three as "white male, short, red cheeks fluffy hair chubby face, brn"; "Heavy set short haircut 260-270" and "Chubby." In particular, none of Himan's notes comes close to matching Finnerty, who is tall, baby-faced and lanky.
Himan, in his deposition, agreed that his descriptions differed from those of his boss, Gottlieb: "Yes, a little bit."
Patrick Baker, the city manager, said he was interested in hearing Gottlieb's explanation for his: "He's going to have to answer."
Gottlieb also testified that his boss told him Nifong was in charge of the police investigation: Capt. Lamb "basically said that all of the efforts were going to be coordinated through the district attorney's office for the investigation and to make sure that anything done was approved by the district attorney's office and to basically follow their leads."
Photo lineup
On March 23, 2006, Durham police labeled all 46 white lacrosse players as criminal suspects and persuaded a judge to order the players to give up their DNA and sit for photos. Twelve days later, at Nifong's direction, Gottlieb showed the photos of all 46 players to Mangum. She picked out four as her assailants, and three were indicted.
The procedure violated police policy on photo identification procedures, which requires pictures of five nonsuspects, or fillers, for every suspect, and calls for lineups to be run by someone not connected with the investigation.
The Durham police and Nifong have defended themselves by saying the lineup was not a photo identification procedure; they were not looking to identify suspects, but to find witnesses at the party.
Gottlieb undercut this explanation in his report of the April 4 lineup, when he noted that the lineup was videotaped so that jurors at trial could see the process.
Gottlieb also proffered an additional explanation to the State Bar: The lineup was an attempt to see whether Mangum was on ecstasy, a drug that induces euphoria and energy but does not cause impairment of the type described by Shelton or other witnesses.
How would the photographic procedure help one find out what drugs she may or may not have taken? Gottlieb was asked.
"Let's say you took a date rape drug that causes amnesia, you wouldn't be able to identify anybody as 'Oh, I remember him, he was standing outside smoking, I remember him, he was watching television, I remember him, he was urinating the backyard,' " Gottlieb said. "If you are drugged with ecstasy, you would have recall, and that would explain the physical signs and symptoms of an intoxicant yet still having her memory."
And a good time to clean house.
Sgt. John Shelton is an outstanding police officer who should be Chief of the Durhan Police Department. As it stands now, he is as much a victim of an utterly corrupt police dpartment as the innocent Duke lads.
It is sorry. Most of the Durham government is totally corrupt. Thank God for this one honest police officer! He should be promoted and honored for proving that as corrupt as the police and city government of Durham are, there is at least one honest man still there.
I want to know when charges are going to be filed against HER.
I tickles me to no end, that the very voters that Nifong courted and won over to gain his re-election, will now have to foot the bill for their racism
This is a lot more typical than you think.
Did they ever locate Nifong and his guitar?
Not surprising since he declined to be present throughout this case.
LOL! Is he still missing?
IIRC I read that he called his lawyer from wherever he is and said he’d be returning this weekend. He is planning to resign tomorrow, effective immediately. So this little resignation dance allowed him to get another 5K from the taxpayers without doing any work.
There must be some provision in his retirement that boosts his retirement pay if he stays so many days after he qualified for it!
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