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.
That statement isn't in the search warrant, fwiw.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0329061duke1.html
This doesn't make sense. Of course she can identify some of the young men. They all agree that they were together as she stripped.
If you read the search warrant over at the Smoking Gun, you'll see they scarfed a number of computers, at least 4.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0329061duke5.html
With the information that would likely be in the email headers on those computers, it would trivial to send out spoofed emails to the team.
Take a look at my previous; it is not inconceivable that someone from the DA's office could have been on someone's account, so that the entire email could have been "authentic".
They should have taken DNA samples from the black player, the team manager and that coach who resigned. Heck, take samples from the entire university. The town of Durham, too.
There's also something that bothers me about the comments that she can do anything naked she wants in front of these guys, but if she doesn't want to be touched, then she shouldn't have one little fingerprint on her....that it would be assault or rape.
Sorry, but there's a huge difference between the "I was dancing naked in front of a stag party" rape and the type where someone is overpowered by in a brutal assault.
It's like selling "I hate Mohammed" lapel pins in downtown Baghdad and complaining that someone tried to kill you. Sure they did, but you weren't being the brightest crayon in the box, either.
She probably had sex, maybe rough sex before arriving at the house. When she passed out and the cops arrived, she could have feared being charged with drug possession or who knows what...loss of her children if jailed, kicked out of college, any number of things. She could have thought, well, I'll claim I was drugged and raped by these white guys. Shift the blame. In the meantime the story grew to be huge, and you can bet some lawyer's said, I'll get you a boatload of money, honey. Just sit tight. (Even if they're are found not guilty, we can sue for damages in civil court. Sue Duke, too. They've got more money than you can shake a stick at! Whoo Hoow!)
I've screwed up the time line, but the premise could be true. That she had sex before arriving and then later. Perhaps was raped after leaving the party. If she has a pimp, he could have raped and beaten her for not getting enough money. No DNA from the players, so she definitely had sex with someone else. Whatever, there's no case against the players except name calling and even that's problematical. Now that Jesse's involved, it's too late for her to admit the truth.
I agree. The cops should have swabbed everyone who was there.
Thank you. Good to see so many people FReepers have an abundance of common sense. ;-)
The IP number of the sending Email server is in the header of the Email. They can find out were the Email came from.
How about because her credibility is at stake considering the DNA doesn't match any of the people she "identified".
And second, she was very drunk, she may not know what happened. It could simply be that the last thing she remembered before passing out was the "white" guys. And that is being charitable...
I hope that player is appealing the suspesion from school. This was an absolutely outrageous step fot the administration to take.
Can they tell?
Can they sort it???
She could have also passed out and have no idea whatsoever of who did her (if it did in fact happen against her will). The last thing she may remember was being at the party with "white" guys. Who knows...
Yes, the defense will have a field day with the bogus identification. It is on that fine thread that he's taking this case to the GJ because he has to have a specific target. Once he lost the DNA, an identification was his only chance, but that identification is highly tainted. First, she couldn't identify any of them.. Then, when the DNA was negative, she suddenly could identify one of them, but only after their pictures with their names attached were plastered everywhere.
Yep.. "echoes" of MD4Bush.
Why would he warn the others? It's an obvious ruse by the cops. Why would he time-delay the delivery of the message? What would be the point?
Both that player and his lawyer deny he said it.
The cops were trying to shake somebody loose, that's all. When that failed, they strong-armed their way into the dorms and cornered at least one of the players, but none of them talked.
I think the answer is that they dound no DNA (except her own, of course). So, the question becomes, why didn't Nifong wait until he had her DNA results back? The answer is because he wanted the circus to come to town and he wanted the case for an opportunity to score points with black voters.
I heard that this new DNA test will be able to tell the race of the semen donor. If that semen came from a black person it's all over.
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