Posted on 04/16/2006 9:05:32 PM PDT by Michael2001
With a grand jury now expected to convene Monday to weigh indictments of two or three of the Duke lacrosse players tied to allegations of raping an exotic dancer, defense lawyers say they fear their clients are being targeted in a setup or sting operation possibly perpetrated by law enforcement. The lawyers have advised the players not to trust or respond to any e-mails sent to each other, one attorney tells Time.
The explosive allegations stem from an e-mail message sent in the last few days to several players from the e-mail address of another player, stating he was going to tell the police a crime occurred and implicate key players. The player denies he sent it. This comes after the recent revelations of the now infamous email sent by a Duke player hours after the alleged crime, in which he joked he was going to have more strippers over and "kill the bitches'; defense lawyers do not dispute that message's authenticity, though they insist it has no bearing on their clients' culpability. "The police said (the new e-mail) came from a confidential informant, but we have reason to believe it came from the police, hoping it would make all the players nervous," says one defense lawyer. "That didn't work." A spokesperson at the Durham Police Department would not comment on the allegations of a set-up, and said she would not forward Time's inquiries to any of her superiors over the holiday weekend. No one at the Durham County District Attorney's Office could be reached for comment Friday.
The lawyers' unsubstantiated accusations came on a busy Good Friday in Durham, when it became known that Durham police investigators had attempted the night before to interview some players on campus about the case. Meanwhile, defense lawyers tell Time they spent part of Friday trying unsuccessfully to talk the Durham County district attorney Michael Nifong out of taking the rape case before a grand jury after the Easter weekend. "What I wished and hoped he would do is conclude there is not enough evidence to proceed," says one defense attorney.
Despite the highly publicized lack of initial DNA evidence linking any player to a crime, grand jurors will be presented with the accuser's statement, her visual identification of the players from photos and a police report from a hospital examination stating "injuries consistent with being sexually assaulted vaginally and anally." Nifong is also still awaiting results of DNA analysis from a private lab in North Carolina to compare with those already received from the state's own crime lab. Blood was taken from the three captains of the team. Saliva cheek swabs were used to gather DNA from 43 players; the lone black player on the team was not tested, as the African-American accuser has said her attackers were white. So far none of the Duke players have been subpoened to appear before the grand jury as witnesses, nor has a second woman also hired as an exotic dancer at the team's Spring Break party at an off-campus house on the night of March 13.
On Thursday, Durham police released the audio tape of a dispatch call made by a responding officer from a Kroger parking lot about four miles from the house where the team party took place. The officer, responding to a 911 call, noted that the accuser was in a drunken state. "She's just passed out drunk," the officer says. D efense lawyers also point to the officer's statement that he has a "24- hour hold" situation — meaning possibly a night in jail on a drunk and disorderly charge. Defense lawyers tell Time they will argue that it was expressly to avoid that possibility that the accuser fabricated the rape charge. "I know which I'd choose," says one defense attorney.
Harder to explain away is the hospital examination report. Defense lawyers will try to poke holes at it by searching for a lag time between the 911 call and the accuser's arrival at the hospital. The district attorney's office has not made public the police report stating time of arrival, and neither has the hospital.
Lawyers say a photo taken of the accuser at 12:40 a.m. shows her being helped into the car by some of the Duke players. The 911 call was made at 1:30 a.m., and she reportedly left the hospital at approximately 11 a.m. later that morning after spending five or six hours there.
Defense lawyers tell Time they also have pictures, not yet turned over to the DA's office, of the main room at the party showing the players sitting in a semi-circle "watching the show." "They are bored, they're practically yawning. This is not a group of rowdy, dangerous people," says one of the attorneys.
No one should be surprised that District Attorney Nifong is proceeding with the case despite the lack of initial DNA evidence. Nifong made his intentions clear on April 11, the day after the initial DNA results went public, at a forum at North Carolina Central University, where the accuser is a student. "Anytime you have a victim who can identify her assailant, then what you have is a case a judge must let go to the jury," he said.
Ah, sorry about that. I guess it is time for me to get back to work anyway.
All right I'll go to bed. But you know exactly what I mean. It was not unusual in any way.
I agree with you!
Yes, they can; they can move to have her identification strikened for that very reason.
And nobody knows where she was before she was dropped off.
Rush, are you keeping up with this story?
Doesn't matter that he was in class at the time of the email transmission... Lots of email programs have automatic settings where you can set it to send/receive all email at a certain (pre-set) time.
I don't think you understood my question.
My suspicion is that she was a walking sperm bank.
I want to know if they found DNA from anyone in her and how many anyones.
My guess is 3 to 6, maybe more.
I have no idea whether this is true, but I think the search warrants not only compelled the suspect lacrosse players to give DNA evidence, but also allowed the police to seize the suspects' (and as best I could tell, their roommates') computers and hard drives. If the Durham police have the players' hard drives, they could have compromised their passwords.
There were also reports (in the articles about the "kill a stripper" e-mail sent by one of the players) that Duke was cooperating with the Durham police in turning over information, including e-mails to and from the players that were on Duke's servers. It's possible that Duke is further cooperating with the D.A. by allowing them to spoof players' addresses to run a sting operation.
All they'd have to do is look at the email headers. From those, they could tell instantly whether the email actually was sent from the computer/dorm room of the student or from somewhere else (such as from the DA's office).
Faking the "FROM:" line, though, is pathetically simple. Anyone with an Internet connection can do it in seconds if they know how. The risk you take is that the headers will give you away, if the recipient is knowledgeable enough to take a look at them.
Uhm.. maybe a stripper might lie????
Apparently she wasn't raped "after" She had the bruises on her legs before she got to the party. And lack of any semen is nothing, someone could have worn a condom. So if she doesn't have any semen evidence, that's still not proving anything about the person who did it. It just wasn't the "rich white boys" she's trying to shake down, that's all.
The missing forty-five minutes is key ..............
This girl mistreated herself, her "pimp" and another may have done some things to her also.
There is NO CASE against the Duke players. This DA is one sick, needy character.
And Jesse Jackasson is just another pimp on the prowl. Bring on the satellite trucks.
"The lawyers have advised the players not to trust or respond to any e-mails sent to each other, one attorney tells Time."
The players (and anybody else smart enough to go to Duke) should understand that conventional email is insecure to start with, particularly if you are under investigation for a felony.
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