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.
That's what I read.
And I'd says it's just that kind of thinking that keeps Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in business. Thanks alot.
I think in his first interview, which imo was the last time he spoke truthfully, he said her boyfriend brought her to his house around 11:00 am from the hospital.
Oh, a good thought. A little shot across the bow by Cheshire.
Maybe it was from the previous performance where she actually got drunk and injured. Or she could have made a drug drop for her boss. Anyway, the $2,000 claim was later reduced to $400. Just another one of her lies.
This is great! The defense attorneys waited to leak this until after the arrest? You cannot argue with ATM and cabbie receipts!!!
Okay, who will they nail next for the "crime"?
Yes. I think the father also said he learned about the rape from the media. And then in the next interview he said she told him. He's been caught in a number of lies but I couldn't document them; other freepers can.
Lot's of bad things can happen with a person does behave "appropriately" as well. Sometimes a person is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
How were these guys representing Duke at all? It was a private party at a private residence with no ties whatsoever to the school.
Wendy Murphy is a bitch.
Did Rita as "Kim" what she was doing for those 20 minutes?
The phone records can now be subpoenaed, and I'm sure they will obtain them.
You keep mentioning orgies and I don't think you know what that means because there is absolutely zero evidence that this party was an orgie.
LOL - I didn't know that. How has that been explained away?
There was NO DNA on or in the accuser, so your question is null and void.
"You are never to be taken seriously again - at least where law-and-order issues are concerned."
GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!
You are ALSO making assumptions - assumptions about the woman's prior behavior and translating it over to this incident.
Plus others about the presumed innocence of these guys before all the facts are in.
They have been arrested. They were accused. Let the case
proceed and the facts will, hopefully, fall into the open as the evidence is examined.
If they WERE innocent, and they had never gotten involved in something as stupid as having an Animal House Party, complete with strippers, this never would have happened.
"Black opportunism" is a racist statement?
Was Tawana Brawley black opportunism?
When this turns out to be a phony charge, how would you characterize a black woman falsely accusing two white men of rape, allowing the black community of Durham to turn out in her favor, and Jesse Jackson to make a big show of coming to town and awarding her a scholarship?
Schooter, that's a low schott.
True, but there is conveniently a 20 minute window in the photos. Suddenly, Kim remembers she didn't see Crystal for 20 minutes.
These young men are getting railroaded into a conviction. I really hope for their sake that the commerical transaction story stands.
So if the bf brought her home from the hospital around 11:00 (I remember that vaguely), then how did she go to the police department that morning to ID those 2 boys?
By the time she talked with her dad, which they all say she did, and then drove to the PD, opened books of Duke University students, etc., it couldn't have happened the way Rita described this morning.
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