Posted on 04/13/2006 3:21:02 PM PDT by ghost of nixon
DURHAM, N.C. -- A woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by members of Duke University's lacrosse team was described as "just passed-out drunk" by one of the first police officers to see her, according to a recording of radio traffic released by Durham police on Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press.
The conversation between the officer and a police dispatcher took place about 1:30 a.m. March 14, about five minutes after a grocery store security guard called 911 to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else's car.
The officer gave the dispatcher the police code for an intoxicated person and said the woman was unconscious. When asked whether she needed medical help, the officer said: "She's breathing and appears to be fine. She's not in distress. She's just passed-out drunk."
The black woman, a 27-year-old dancer and college student, told police she was sexually assaulted and beaten by three white men around midnight at an off-campus party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team. The racially charged allegations have led Duke to cancel the highly ranked team's season and accept the resignation of its coach.
No charges have been filed, but district attorney Mike Nifong has said he believes a crime was committed. Attorneys for the players have said DNA tests failed to connect any players to the alleged attack, and they have urged Nifong to drop his investigation.
The radio recordings, obtained by the AP through a records request, are the first instance in which police or anyone connected with the investigation has said the woman appeared to be intoxicated.
Defense lawyers, however, have said time-stamped photographs taken by the players show that the accuser was drunk and had already suffered some injuries when she arrived at the house for the party.
The recording is consistent with "what I have seen of the photo evidence before," attorney Kerry Sutton said. Those photos, she said, showed that she was "way beyond where you would put somebody behind the wheel of a car."
The description of the woman's medical exam -- which Nifong has said is his basis for believing a rape occurred -- does not mention her being drunk. It states only that the woman's injuries and behavior were consistent with having been raped, sexually assaulted and having suffered a traumatic experience.
The woman has told police she and another dancer hired to dance at the party arrived at 11:30 p.m. March 13. The pair reportedly left the house a short time later, fearing for their safety. The accuser told police the two were coaxed back into the house with an apology, at which point they were separated. That's when she said she was dragged into a bathroom and sexually assaulted, beaten and choked for a half-hour.
At 12:53 a.m., police received a 911 call from a woman complaining that she had been called racial slurs by white men gathered outside the home where the party took place.
The defense has said it believes the second dancer at the party made that call. The 911 call from the grocery store security guard was placed at 1:22 a.m.
In it, the caller says, "Um, the problem is ... it's a lady in somebody else's car and she will not get out of their car. She's like, she's like intoxicated, drunk or something. She's, I mean, she won't get out of the car, period."
A police spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the radio traffic.
The case has focused intense national scrutiny on Duke and the lacrosse players and has sparked protests on the elite private university's campus and elsewhere in Durham. The school last week canceled the highly ranked team's season and coach Mike Pressler resigned after the release of a vulgar and graphic e-mail sent by a team member shortly after the alleged assault.
Several of the defense attorneys say they expect the district attorney to ask a grand jury on Monday to issue charges in connection with allegations.
"Rest up on Sunday," Sutton said.
There has been no official word, however, on whether Nifong intends to present the allegations Monday. His next opportunity would come two weeks later.
How can that be?
For reference here are defense lawyer Joseph Cheshire’s statements describing the DNA results from this News & Observer article:
http://www.newsobserver.com/710/story/427550.html
The results, the lawyers said, show that investigators collected no genetic material of any kind from the woman. "There was no DNA found in or on her that would indicate that she recently had any sex," Cheshire said.
Investigators found no DNA under the woman's remaining fingernails, or on those taken during the search of the rental house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., which Duke recently bought in an attempt to quell student parties.
They also found no DNA on the woman's clothing or belongings, players' attorneys said.
This must mean that the lab analyzed the swabs of material taken from the accuser’s body, fingernails, clothing and belongings and isolated any material consisting of DNA. The lab then must have found that either the only DNA present was the accuser’s own DNA, or there was no DNA at all present.
Therefore, to the extent a DNA swab of the woman’s body would necessarily show that she had sex with someone within a certain period prior thereto, no such sex had taken place.
This apparent finding that she had no recent sex actually may help the prosecution slightly. If the SANE nurse examination convinces the jury that the injuries indicate that the woman must have had sex (rape, maybe rough sex) recently, the jury may simply not give much weight to the DNA tests, since the DNA should have shown something the jury believed happened.
The tests found DNA matches to two players, from a towel outside the bathroom and on another object, Cheshire said.
One sample was from a player's semen and another was a different type of DNA, Cheshire said. He said that was to be expected in a bathroom shared by the three men who lived in the house.
So the next thing the lab must have done was test the bathroom rug, towels, and certain other objects in the house for the presence of DNA. If DNA was present, that was then checked to see if it matched either the accuser or one of the 46 students.
The only DNA present was on a towel and another object, and one of the DNA matches was semen and the other something else. I read elsewhere that the two matches were to two of the guys living in the house.
Kim was driving Mangum around wondering "how do I get this messed up chick out of my car so I can leave this scene?
I am grateful to say that I don't know that much about how that kind of thing works. Let's assume that Mangum is the custodial parent, and that Mangum is living with her father (which legally is not the same as the kids living with their grandfather). Looking at Mangum's record, I HOPE social services was on her case. It could be that the kid's father has been trying to get custody or that social services was telling Mangum that one more arrest and the grandfather would be given custody or the kids put in a foster home.
"Women don't lie about rape" is what you hear from some quarters. I'll bet they do if it's the only way they can avoid losing their kids. And the funny thing is that even a Durham jury would buy the explanation as a reason for a false accusation.
In re the security guard reporting her as "passed out" but not reporting "injuries". Drunks can be quite messy in appearance. Second, she was passed out inside a darkened car in the middle of the night. Unless the Security guard turned on a light or used night-vision goggles, it is not necessary that he would see bruises, etc. He might very much notice dishevelment which tends to accompany a state of intoxication.
I suppose it's possible that potentially losing her kids could be a motivation for a false rape claim; we just don't have enough facts to really speculate on this. My impression is that these days the authorities are really loathe to remove a child from a mother where there is no physical abuse of the child, and even in cases where the mother is actually incarcerated the children are much more likely to end up with a close relative than with a foster family.
As to whether there might be a custody battle with the father or fathers of the kids, who knows. If I had to bet, it would be that it is likely Mangum is chasing him/them down for child support payments rather than the father or fathers trying to get custody of the kids, but again we just don't have much to go on here.
If the accuser was as impaired as she appears to have been, how was she able to provide specific names (Matt, Bret, and Adam) to police as early as Mar. 16?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0329061duke4.html
Team captains named Matt and Bret live at the house.
Howlin, I wouldn't press it if you know what I mean. We can't have Jezebelle making snap judgments or she will lose her credibility.
:)Easy Does It:)
.
Oh good grief
Well I hope if someone dies while getting a busy signal when one of those students is calling in a slur report, that the family/survivors of the person who died sues the school.
Well, she may have been intoxicated but she must have been somewhat functional when she arrived. She must have been told to find "Adam" (which was really Dan), since he was the one who called and ordered the strippers. Perhaps the three of them greeted her, told her what was up and handed over the money (and they either introduced themselves to her by first name or she heard them call each other by their first names).
She was functional enough early on to take the money and start her routine. I'm thinking that maybe something she took when she was in the bathroom was what really knocked her out. Perhaps a combination of having alchohol already in her system and then taking a drug in the bathroom.
It would be interesting to actually see the photos and try to judge her state at the various stated times.
Interesting.
I see her "Punishment Type" is "Community Service." If it's true that she's an escort, she must have misinterpreted her punishment as "servicing the community."
Thank you so much for the details- I have heard people say the SANE nurse determined that their was rape, so someone must have done it- but you cleared that up. Good luck in your studies!
Thank you so much for the details- I have heard people say the SANE nurse determined that their was rape, so someone must have done it- but you cleared that up. Good luck in your studies!
Thanks for your post.
I hope I didn't overstate my thought that SANE nurses were likely to be wrapped up in these type issues. Someone else took me to task already.
I would generally presume that any nurse, SANE or not, was honest and competent and would accurately record what she/he saw.
I was thinking about judgment calls -- whether to test for alcohol or substance abuse, I imagined (I really don't know), might be within the discretion of a specialist nurse.
I am assuming that nurses, being "helping" professionals, are naturally inclined to be sympathetic toward their patients, which is a good thing. And when a person shows up in the ER, it would be natural to assume that they were truthful -- a hurting person who needs sympathetic care. It just seems to me that if you layer onto all of that a special interest/sympathy toward rape and women's issues, the sympathy might become so great that it biased judgment in discretionary matters. A nurse might be feeling angry at what she believes to have been an assault and reject anything that she might see as potentially "blaming the victim." What we need, of course, is cool objectivity that is gathering all possible information with no thought of who will be hurt or helped by the information.
I hope the ERs will be filled with professionals like yourself who love helping people but leave their politics at home. Good luck in your studies.
The imminent arrival of :The Grasft Zeppelin", America's #1 race racketeer..
"Graft"
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