Posted on 04/18/2006 3:26:57 AM PDT by Mad-Margaret
DURHAM -- A day after a grand jury indicted two Duke University lacrosse players in connection with a reported rape, two men emerged from a sheriff's deputy vehicle and were led, handcuffed, into the magistrates office at the Durham County Jail at 4:54 a.m. today.
The arrests stem from a party that began March 13. The accuser, who is a mother of two, an N.C. Central University student and an escort service dancer, told police March 14 that she was sexually assaulted by three men in a bathroom at an off-campus house shared by three lacrosse team captains. The accuser is black; she said her rapists were white.
Defense lawyers said players maintained that there was no sex at all. They said the accuser concocted the story, that she was drunk and injured late March 13 when she arrived at the three-bedroom house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.
"... Two young men have been charged with crimes they did not commit. This is a tragedy," Bob Ekstrand, who represents team players, said Monday in a prepared statement. "For the two young men, an ordeal lies ahead. They do not face it alone; they face it with the love of family and friends and strengthened by the truth. They are both innocent."
Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens sealed a manila envelope containing the indictments shortly after the grand jury finished its business Monday. The judge cited a state law that requires everyone involved in a case, including witnesses, to keep the indictment secret until a suspect is arrested.
Last month, a judge ordered DNA tests on the team's 46 white players; he excluded the only black team member. The players' attorneys say the tests showed none of the players' genetic material on or in the woman.
Nifong, bolstered by a medical exam that found injuries on the woman consistent with sexual assault, says he is confident that she was assaulted in the university-owned house. Nifong said last week at a forum at NCCU that the accuser identified at least one of her attackers.
Until Sunday night, the only other witness, the second woman hired to dance at the party, had remained silent. In television interviews, she told her story.
The woman's attorney, Mark Simeon of Durham, declined Monday to make her available for an interview. She spoke on the MSNBC cable news network, which did not identify her and showed her in silhouette. Simeon confirmed that it was his client on MSNBC.
The woman told MSNBC that she did not witness a rape and does not know whether one occurred.
The woman said she arrived thinking that she would be dancing at a bachelor party of 15 people. She was not expecting a party of lacrosse players, many of whom she said were in a drunken stupor. The woman said she was infuriated to learn that some players photographed her dancing.
The accuser did not appear to be on drugs or to have been drinking when she arrived, the second dancer said. She was "absolutely fine and in control of herself."
When the accuser left, less than an hour after she arrived, she was incoherent and stumbling, the second dancer said.
"She couldn't really walk on her own," the woman said. "She really couldn't get her thoughts together enough to answer any questions. ... She was a different person than I met at the beginning."
The second woman said she was the person who called 911 as the party was breaking up, to complain that some lacrosse players had used racial slurs. "The boys hollered the 'N' word," she said. "I was upset and called 911."
She said she pretended to be a passer-by because she didn't want people in her life to know about her job as an escort service dancer.
It is unclear how that woman's story would affect the case. Players' attorneys have said she would only help them. By day's end Monday, Nifong left without talking to reporters; it remains unclear what evidence he has.
Throughout Monday, there were many more reporters on the sixth floor of the courthouse than the 18 members of the grand jury panel. Reporters tracked the district attorney's movements in minute detail. Just after noon, Nifong emerged from his office and walked across the hallway to the bathroom.
Reporters surrounded the bathroom door in a crowd that included five television cameras, three still photographers, sound men with boom microphones and at least a dozen print reporters. At the sound of flushing, the group tensed, raised cameras and prepared. Nifong did not emerge with news.
"I no longer get to go anywhere in my community without people knowing who I am," said Nifong, who faces two challengers in a primary election May 2. Staff writer Anne Blythe can be reached at 932-8741 or ablythe@newsobserver.com.
Wendy Murphy is a b-i-t-c-*. I agree.
The photographs show all of them wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts. The pictures also so that she was missing fingernails while she was dancing. All the team memmber stripped for photos, but nothing has been reported about any scratch marks....presumably because there were none.
Arresting people at 4 am is another of the Gestapo tactics used by police. I am sure that had they notified these boys to show up at 10 am they would have turned themselves in.
The police come in the night dressed in their Ninja suits and armed to the teeth , they catch you in a dazed and half awake situation and anything you do or say in this condition will be used against you.
This is America??
Having not followed this as closely as others, this may be redundant information. Steve Doocey on F&F this morning mentioned comments made by Kroger's female security guard at the time the 911 call was placed. The guard stated (and I believe ABC has tape of this) that there was no way this lady had been raped.
From the pictures and the bruises shown prior to her dance it appears she had rough sex, probably with ther boyfriend before going to the party.
Maria, it's possible, but the evidence we've seen thus far doesn't support the theory, much less a conviction. If the DA shows his hand and reveals that "roofies" were involved, that changes things. But in a "CSI" world, the lack of any DNA matching any of the boys on her person is devastating to the prosecution's case.
Yet, given the climate of "the community", I feel convictions might happen anyway, evidence be damned. That's why I said that this was eerily like "To Kill a Mockingbird", in reverse.
The evidence that has been leaked to date would indicate that there is not enough evidence to convict for rape. Absent additional evidence or that the leaks are false, a rape conviction is virtually impossible.
This then raises the question, why? Many think its politics, some reverse discrimination and some think its fear of riots.
I also assume that their is a few who despise women who sell themselves sexually who cannot see them as broken women who need help. These see this event as an opportunity to bash them some more.
The DA set out on a course to destroy the lives of several DOZEN young men because one woman alleged that three men raped her.
There has been no physical evidence presented (that we know of) that a crime even occurred. However, there has been all sorts of photographic evidence provided that establishes that it was almost impossible for a rape to have occurred.
The woman was in police custody for drunkeness for nearly two hours before she even mentioned a rape.
Some members of the Durham community have exploited this to the level of a near lynch mob without any consideration of the guilt or innocense or even proof of a crime.
In the end the DA could only get indictments against TWO players, what about the supposed third? And please keep in mind taht the legal threshold to get a grand jury indictment is quite minimal -- evidence that could never be used at trial is admissable, no defense evidence is presented, and the DA basically gets to pick the grand jury.
Please explain how any of this is racist, unless you mean racism against white men.
BARF ALERT!
ZAHN: Reverend Jackson joins me now.
Always good to see you. You see the issue of race involved in this case. The -- the idea that white men hire black women to strip for them is -- quote -- "That fantasy is as old as slave masters impregnating young slave girls."
Are you saying this alleged victim was raped because she was black?
REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, FOUNDER, RAINBOW/PUSH COALITION: There's a race/sex/class intrigue in the situation.
And the idea of white males fantasizing about black women is -- is quite old, quite -- and quite ugly, and now quite illegal. And that's why we really want the truth to be told. We want justice served. And we want the law to serve as a -- as a deterrent.
ZAHN: But, Reverend Jackson, one of the attorneys representing the captain of the lacrosse team says that, in saying what you're saying tonight, you're pandering to race. You're race-baiting, because there's no evidence that any of these players specifically asked for a black stripper.
JACKSON: Well, that's what they got and that's what they paid for.
You know, it's -- it's -- it's alarming to me, astonishing, really, after 254 years of legal slavery, 100 years of legal Jim Crow. I grew up in that system. I knew what that system -- what it means. They -- they knew what they got.
And we know that they were watching this naked woman, who is a -- an exotic cancer, a former person in the Navy, a mother of two, who exposed her body to make money, to take care of her children and go to college. So, she's not just a stripper, but, really, a person, who they are now about to diminish into a non-person. That's why she's afraid. She's in hiding now.
And these guys were out of control. Of the 47, 15 in this past year have been arrested for everything from disorderly conduct to public urination.
ZAHN: But the alleged victim has a criminal history as well. Do you believe everything this alleged victim has said.
JACKSON: No, I do -- I -- I...
ZAHN: Do you think she's telling the truth?
JACKSON: I do not know her.
But what I -- at these parties, you -- there are these sexual arousal dimensions there, the drinking dimensions. And, so, I don't know what all happened.
Suffice it to say, she left there with injury and went to the hospital. And the nurses and doctors said, at the hospital, that they suspected she had been assaulted in some way. And that has been the strongest evidence so far, were the marks on -- on her body.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/17/pzn.01.html
"Ejaculate?" Is this the PC way of describing semen? Where did you hear this?
Right, I agree. But we all form opinions on what we have read and heard. That's natural. At no time have I ever attacked the allege victim. I have been to private strip shows at people's houses and I can differentiate between strippers and hookers.
Don't hit me, Nancy Grace. Wendy Murphy said this on Bill O'reilly.
They say there were 5 of her fingernails in the bathroom, and therefore that proves there was a struggle. I don't believe that, she was so wasted she could have broken her nails just falling all over the place. As I said before, you scratch someone so hard that your fingernails fall off you're gonna leave a mark.
As if no one would be in a drunken stupor at a bachelor party? As if, in the age of camera cell phones, being photographed is a surprise?
I've read reports that the accuser/ 'dancer' was 30-45 minutes late for her performance. Safe assumption that, at a 'party' where the main attraction is an 'exotic dancer', the audience is going to be drunk when you perform at 11 pm or so...and is going to be drunker if you show up late. WHAT I am curious about is the evening timeline of the accuser...specifically, WHAT caused her to be late, WHO dropped her off at the house, WHY she didn't drive her own car and WHY she relied on someone she supposedly didn't know--the second dancer--for transportation leaving the party.
...she (the other dancer/ 911 caller) didn't want people in her life to know about her job as an escort service dancer.
Escort service...what would be the name of this establishment? And exactly what 'services' does this business offer?
Nifong and the obvioiusly false accuser are the real criminals in this case.
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