Posted on 12/13/2006 1:36:38 PM PST by Howlin
A private laboratory hired by the prosecution in the Duke lacrosse case failed to report that it found DNA from multiple males in the accuser's body and underwear, according to a defense motion filed today. The lab, DNA Security of Burlington, found that the DNA did not match the three defendants, their lacrosse teammates or anyone else who submitted their DNA to police, including the accuser's boyfriend.
The new evidence emerged in thousands of documents handed over to the defense in October.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
Bingo. Nifong has tried to intimdate every person in this melodrama, from the team to Duke to Elmo to Gottlieb to Kim to . . well, anyone else. There is no reason to believe he has not done the same thing to the FA. Nifong has kept her in seclusion for months and the family all but said that Nifong has barred them from seeing her. THe FA may have a good story to tell in February, but it won't be about a rape -- it will be about Nifong's actions in keeping her in line.
Let me second abb's comments. That was an excellent report that gave us a real feel of the hearing.
Steven A. Smith on Quite Frankly led with the case and while I am not a great fan of his, he did himself proud. He and Rodge Cossick were thorough and fair. Really more than fair to Nifong, but still fair.
Had Mangum not lied and claimed that she had not had consensual sex for over a week before the Lacrosse party, the evidence of the other DNA might be excluded. But it now is evidence that she was lying that night. I think it pretty clearly comes in.
The problem with Nifong's position is that the disclosure requirements are different from the admissibility requirements.
The disclosure rules require the prosecutor to turn over any evidence which is exculpatory or has impeachment value. The fact that a judge might exclude its admission at trial is not an exception to the disclosure rules. It is simply not Nifong's call to make.
Good analysis, what I can not figure out is why the Judge, some powers behind the scene through the judge etc did not decide they were better off dropping this case before the next term starts. Heck even a quick January hearing on the IDs could have been a good move. But why let this get into another term, if your analysis is right as it sounds.
Maybe Nifong thinks he is better off dragging this out, including having as long a trial as possible and just get older and older himself? But then he might need to resign to save his pension.
Nah, she just screws a lot. Prostitutes do that...it's a money thing.
It's now time for the government workers in Durham to decide whether they want to swim or go down with the ship.
Because if they stick with him, they are ALL going down. IMO, of course.
I wouldn't be surprised if he "steps down." Perhaps his illness will return and he'll have to have yet another couple of years of time off.
...but I guess there are still people out there who believe babies can come at any time 5 mos., 9 mos. or 11 mos. gestation.
The FA should be very worried. Nifong is setting this up to throw her under the bus in February, and lay the hoax solely at her feet. He has locked her from her family, used her children as weapons, and Lord only knows what else. Nifong's only avenue to save his sorry skin now is to say that he completely relied upon the FA who he believed told a compelling story backed up by Sgt. Gottlieb.
I bet Gottlie is concerned. He too is a prime candidate for patsy in this. The problem with Nifong saying he relied on Mangum is that he also claimed he has not discussed the case with him.
I think it is much more likely that Nifong will claim he relied on Gottlie who turned out to be a bad actor, lied about Mangum's condition and her descriptions. Also Gottlie conducted the photo IDs. So Nifong will likely claim that Gottlie told him Mangum was believeable, lied to him about her descriptions and conducted the photo array without fillers on his own. Nifong will paint Gottlie as a drunk cop who was out with the guys who assaulted the cook in Raleigh.
Placemarker.
DNA expert testifies evidence witheld in lacrosse case
BY JOHN STEVENSON : The Herald-Sun, Dec 16, 2006 : 12:10 am ET
The director of a private DNA laboratory testified Friday that he violated his own policies by agreeing with Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong to initially withhold information favorable to three Duke lacrosse players charged with raping an exotic dancer.
But Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security in Burlington, said the information was withheld to protect the privacy of more than 40 other lacrosse players who gave bodily samples for scientific testing.
He denied a deliberate cover-up was involved.
"We were concerned about a report that could become explosive if it had all those [DNA] profiles of all those players in it," Meehan testified, adding he didn't want to "drag anybody else through the mud."
"I don't have another explanation for it," he said. "I don't have a legal excuse or reason. ... It was just the simple me, trying to do the right thing and not put that information out there for the public. It was a failed attempt to provide a minimal amount of information."
Also during a Friday court hearing, Judge Osmond Smith ordered paternity tests to determine if any of the rape suspects was responsible for the accuser's newly disclosed pregnancy.
Nifong said the woman is expected to give birth in early February. He conceded the rape defendants almost certainly did not impregnate her, but he concurred with defense attorneys that paternity tests should be done anyway.
In addition, defense lawyers requested Friday that the rape case be tried in another county, saying the alleged March incident had so polarized Durham that an impartial jury could not be found here.
"What the defendants seek, and what they are entitled to under the Constitution, is a trial in a community which has not been polarized by pretrial publicity or torn apart by the circumstances of these cases," Friday's written motion said. "Regrettably, Durham is not that community."
Defense lawyers said The Herald-Sun was partially responsible.
"In its editorial positions, The Herald-Sun has relentlessly condemned the Duke lacrosse team and encouraged a prosecution of the defendants in these cases," attorneys wrote. "In its first significant editorial on these cases, The Herald-Sun stated that not only had a crime occurred, but that those present during the crime were guilty of an additional 'outrage' by not confessing to the crime."
A judge will rule later -- probably in February -- on the change-of-venue request.
Those were the key developments in a preliminary hearing that brought all three suspects together in a Durham courtroom for the first time since they were accused of raping the dancer during an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. on the night of March 13-14.
The three -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- listened to the proceedings attentively and occasionally whispered to their attorneys. They had no comment afterward.
A handful of university students, one wearing a Duke lacrosse shirt, sat near them in support.
Most of Friday's all-morning hearing was taken up with Meehan's testimony.
His Burlington lab analyzed evidence from the rape case during the spring, as did the State Bureau of Investigation in Raleigh.
Neither laboratory found DNA from the rape suspects -- or from any other Duke lacrosse player -- in the accuser's body or on her clothing.
Lawyer Brad Bannon, representing Evans along with attorney Joe Cheshire, hammered Meehan for more than an hour about why his initial report lacked information favorable to the rape suspects.
Citing a Burlington test report that came later, Bannon noted that DNA from other men -- but not from the defendants -- was found in the alleged rape victim's body and underwear, as well as on a pubic hair retrieved from her person.
So why wasn't that information included in Meehan's initial report, Bannon demanded.
"I don't think [Nifong] told me to write the report that way," said Meehan. "But I think we were in agreement that the alternative would have been to provide profiles of everybody involved in the case. He [Nifong] didn't ask me specifically to exclude this. Mr. Nifong did not request that I exclude data."
But neither did Nifong ask for a complete report, Meehan added.
"We would be glad to provide a more thorough report upon the request of our client," he testified. "Mr. Nifong is our client. If he had said, 'We want a report on everything,' that's what we would produce."
Didn't information withheld from the initial DNA report "tend to negate the guilt" of the rape suspects, Bannon wanted to know.
"No," said Meehan. "It is possible for a person to be raped and no semen is left there. If the DNA is not there, it doesn't mean they [the suspects] were not there. A person can rob a bank and never leave a fingerprint. It doesn't mean they didn't rob the bank."
Then it was Nifong's turn.
"Did you intend to put in less than the full truth?" Nifong asked Meehan about his initial report.
Meehan: "No"
Nifong: "Did anyone ever tell you to conceal or hide any of your results?"
Meehan: "No."
Nifong noted that he eventually surrendered 1,822 pages of testing information to defense attorneys, accounting for the entire case file maintained by DNA Security.
But Cheshire said after Friday's hearing that he and other defense attorneys "had to fight" for the additional information.
"Even after we sought it, it was not told to us what it meant," he said. "We had to discover what it meant."
Cheshire also said the latest information further damaged the alleged rape victim's credibility, which already was under heavy attack, because it showed she was "loaded with the DNA of other males even though she said she had sex with only one other person. We are extremely troubled by that."
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-799963.cfm
Ammons one of 3 finalists for A&M president
BY JAMIE SCHUMAN : The Herald-Sun, Dec 16, 2006 : 12:10 am ET
N.C. Central University Chancellor James Ammons is one of three finalists to become president at Florida A&M University.
Ammons, who graduated from Florida A&M and was provost there before coming to NCCU, interviewed at the Tallahassee, Fla., school late this week along with five other candidates. Three of those candidates have been eliminated. -cut-
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-799962.cfm
* Thought this guy was hired to stick around to the Centennial, 2010. Oh well, can't blame him for wanting to leave.
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/12/nifong-and-naf.html
Defense on offense
Attorneys for the three men accused in the Duke lacrosse rape scandal
rip the prosecution's witnesses for having withheld evidence.
BY SYLVIA ADCOCK, Special to Newsday, December 15, 2006, 11:02 PM EST
DURHAM, N.C. -- Defense attorneys continued to hammer away at the Duke lacrosse rape prosecution case Friday, questioning a private lab director who acknowledged his report on DNA testing had omitted information that none of the Duke players were a match for genetic material recovered from the accuser.
The lab report, by DNA Security Inc., did not specifically note that all three accused players had been excluded as possible matches. "We were concerned about a report that would be explosive," lab director Dr. Brian Meehan testified. He said he and District Attorney Mike Nifong "agreed that it be limited in its scope." Under later questioning he said, "It was not an attempt to withhold information. ... Maybe it could have been done better."
Joseph B. Cheshire V, a lawyer for David Evans, one of the three accused players, said he was disturbed by the testimony.
"It raises some troublesome questions about ... [Nifong], who has an obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence and turn it over to the defense."
The hearing capped a week of developments that many say have raised serious questions about the case. The courtroom in Durham Superior Court was packed with supporters of the three Duke lacrosse players charged in the case. Spectators included other players and their parents, many wearing blue plastic wrist bracelets that bore the accused players' numbers and read: "Duke Lacrosse 2006 Innocent! #6, #13, #45."
Long Islander Collin Finnerty, of Garden City, along with Reade Seligmann of Essex Fells, N.J., and David Evans of Bethesda, Md., are charged with rape, kidnapping and sexual assault. The accuser said she was assaulted in the bathroom of a house where the team was having a party for which she had been hired to dance.
The case has deeply divided some residents of Durham, and defense lawyers asked that it be moved. "This case has torn this community apart. There have been marches, protests. The community has been polarized," defense lawyer Jim Cooney said at a press conference. The accuser, a student at North Carolina Central University, is black. The defendants are white.
Moving the case would be up to Superior Court Judge Osmond Smith, and the trial is not expected before the spring. But first, Smith will hear a defense request in February to suppress the evidence in which the accuser identified the defendants. That process has been under steady attack by the defense. "She was, in effect, given a multiple-choice test in which there were no wrong answers," lawyers for Finnerty, Seligmann and Evans said in a motion filed this week. Police used a PowerPoint presentation that contained only photos of the Duke Lacrosse team when the accuser was asked to identify her attackers, and there were no "filler" photos -- men who had nothing to do with the case of the Duke lacrosse team -- used to help validate her choices.
The lineup process was videotaped, and Nifong said the tape could be played in court at the next hearing, scheduled for Feb. 5. He also said the accuser would likely need to be present then.
But much of the attention Friday was on the DNA testing. Meehan testified that his lab's testing found "multiple male DNA characteristics" on several of the samples submitted. But none of the males were matches with the three defendants, nor with any of the Duke lacrosse players. "There are multiple males, we don't know who they are, but we know who they aren't," Meehan said.
Meehan said he and Nifong had decided to limit the report to any matches made by the testing.
Later, under questioning from Nifong, Meehan said no one ever told him to hide the results of the testing.
Kevin Finnerty, Collin's father, called it outrageous that the prosecutor had tests in hand showing none of the players' DNA was found on the dancer but still went on to seek an indictment in April.
"There was clearly prosecutorial misconduct," Finnerty said. "They conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence."
Nifong has not commented.
Also Friday, the defense asked the judge to bar prosecutors from using the photo lineup in which the accuser identified the three players, with one lawyer calling it "an incoherent mass of contradiction and error."
Also at their request, the judge ordered a paternity test on the soon-to-be-born child of the accuser.
The accuser in the case, an exotic dancer who said she was raped by three lacrosse players at a party on March 13, is due to give birth in early February. Defense attorneys had sought the test, saying that it is impossible that any of the defendants is the father, but that the test was needed to put any rumors to rest.
A motion filed by the defense said the accuser had been given a pregnancy test at the time of the alleged attack, then given a morning-after pill.
Nifong had no objection to the test, and said in court that he didn't believe the defendants fathered the child.
Staff writer Bart Jones contributed to this story.
http://www.newsday.com/sports/lacrosse/ny-lidukeac1216,0,3965571.story?coll=ny-hsfencing-headlines
Duke Case Accuser Is Pregnant, and Test of Paternity Is Next
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; New York Times version, Published: December 16, 2006
DURHAM, N.C. , Dec. 15 (AP) — After it was revealed in court that the woman who has accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape is pregnant, a judge on Friday ordered a paternity test on the fetus. But the district attorney and the defense rejected any possibility that one of the three men was the father.
News of the accuser’s pregnancy comes roughly nine months after the lacrosse team party at which she says she was raped.
The district attorney, Michael B. Nifong, said he believed that the accuser had become pregnant at least two weeks after the party.
The defense asked for the paternity test. A defense lawyer, Joseph B. Cheshire, said it was an “absolute impossibility” that the woman became pregnant in the alleged attack.
Mr. Cheshire said that the woman was given a pregnancy test just after reporting she had been raped, that the test was negative and that she took an emergency contraceptive.
Also on Friday, a laboratory director admitted in court that in the wake of an agreement with Mr. Nifong, he had violated his own procedures and withheld results showing that none of the lacrosse players’ DNA had been found on or in the accuser’s body.
The director, Dr. Brian Meehan, who works for DNA Security Inc., said he and Mr. Nifong had agreed to include only DNA matches in the report on his testing results. The report released in May omitted information about people the DNA tests excluded, including the fact that no genetic material from any member of the lacrosse team was among that from several men found in the accuser’s underwear and body.
“We are extremely troubled by that,” Mr. Cheshire said. The full testing results were disclosed through a defense request.
The defense also asked that the trial, which will probably not begin until spring, be moved out of Durham County because of publicity. The judge set a Feb. 5 hearing on that request.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/us/16duke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Judge orders paternity test in Duke rape case; DNA report questioned
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS -excerpt-- Winston-Salem version.
Defense attorney Brad Bannon, who represents Evans, suggested that since Meehan knew that this was a rape case involving multiple assailants, and that negative tests could be considered exculpatory, he should have reported that.
"Wouldn't it tend to negate the guilt of someone accused of raping someone?" Bannon asked.
"No," Meehan replied. "It's a CSI effect.... If their DNA's not there, it doesn't mean they were not there."
Meehan acknowledged that the report "diverges from the letter of that standard," but he said he wasn't attempting to withhold information. He said he was concerned about sensitive, private information leaking out. "He (Nifong) didn't ask me explicitly to exclude that," Meehan said. "I was just trying to do the right thing."
The judge scheduled a Feb. 5 hearing on the defense requests to move the trial and to throw out the accuser's identifications.
The February hearing might also be the first time that the players and their accuser will come face to face since the party. Nifong said that she will have to be there to testify about the identification process, and Cheshire said that the thought of questioning her in person made him feel "maybe like a 5-year-old at Christmas."
Lab director says he withheld evidence in Duke case
By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer
5:53 PM PST, December 15, 2006 -excerpt---
The prosecution's case was further challenged by Meehan's testimony that his discussions with Nifong -- whom he called "my client" -- resulted in the withholding of exculpatory DNA results. Nifong was not questioned in court about his role, but prosecutors are generally required by law to provide the defense with all evidence collected in a case.
Asked whether Nifong and other prosecutors knew the tests ruled out the defendants as the source of male DNA found on the accuser, Meehan, the director of DNA Security in Burlington, N.C., replied: "I assume so"
And asked whether he would have provided all test results if asked to do so by the prosecution, Meehan replied, "Certainly." He added later: "Maybe it could have been done better."
Nifong questioned Meehan briefly, asking whether anyone had told him to "conceal or hide any results."
"No," Meehan replied.
Under persistent defense prodding, Meehan conceded that his lab's DNA tests cleared the three defendants -- as well as 43 other lacrosse players -- "with 100 percent scientific certainty," as one lawyer put it during questioning.
Meehan also said the samples were contaminated by a minute sample of his own DNA -- perhaps dander -- that he said was probably introduced during testing. Asked whether that undermined the credibility of his testing, he replied: "Absolutely.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 5.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-
duke16dec16,1,7339197.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Prof. Johnson's article is quite to the point as expected.
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