NAACP Urges Fair Probe of Duke Case

Durham, N.C. -- The state chapter of the NAACP on Thursday called on those involved with the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case — from defense attorneys to state bar officials — to stop talking publicly while the state attorney general's office begins its review.

"We sincerely believe that the high level of public scrutiny and controversy involved in this matter is unwarranted and threatens to pervert the truth-finding process," said the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

No parties involved in the case have indicated whether they plan to stop speaking publicly.

Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, under heavy criticism for his handling of the case, asked the attorney general's office this month to take over the prosecution — a decision Barber said his organization applauded.

Until turning the case over to state prosecutors, Nifong led the investigation into allegations that a 28-year-old black student at North Carolina Central University, hired to perform as a stripper, was raped and beaten by three white men at a March 13 party thrown by Duke's highly ranked lacrosse team.

Council comes clean

Michael Biesecker and Eric Ferreri, Staff Writers, N&O, Jan 20, 2007

Before the Durham City Council voted 7-0 Tuesday in favor of a major rezoning for Duke University, members paused to acknowledge their ties to the county's largest employer.

Council member Mike Woodard read a legalistic statement disclosing that he is a Duke employee but that his employment and compensation were not tied to the approval of the rezoning and therefore it was not a conflict of interest to cast a vote that benefited the university.

Council member Diane Catotti then disclosed that her husband works for Duke, but she also said that his compensation and employment were not tied to her vote.

Council member Howard Clement said his daughter is employed by Duke, but he guaranteed that he never saw a dime of that money -- prompting laughter from the assembled crowd.

City Attorney Henry Blinder, who helps council members determine whether their ties conflict with the public's business, then disclosed that his wife works at Duke as well.

Mayor Bill Bell quickly glanced left and right to see if any more hands were raised.

"Anybody else?" Bell asked.

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/534301.html

* Big help they've been. Guess Bell's past retainer at Duke
doesn't count anymore.

Meanwhile Nifong hires lawyer #2 At least this is the first time I have heard the Dudley Witt name
(He must have had a heads up about this weeks meeting)

http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/na.../story/1173885/

Duke Lacrosse Prosecutor Hires Lawyers

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The prosecutor who removed himself from the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case has hired a well-known law firm to defend him against ethics charges before the North Carolina State Bar.

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has retained Winston-Salem lawyers David Freedman and Dudley Witt, law partners known for defending lawyers facing professional misconduct charges.

"Years ago, I just started helping out lawyers who got in trouble for various things," said Freedman, a 1982 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's law school. "I have a firm belief that you look out for your own."

The state bar filed ethics charges against Nifong in December, accusing him of violating rules of professional conduct. The bar said Nifong made misleading and inflammatory remarks to the media about the lacrosse players.

The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.

Nifong filed rape charges against three lacrosse players in March, when a woman hired to perform as a stripper at a team party said she was raped. He has since dropped the rape charges after the accuser changed a key detail in her account.

The three players still face sexual offense and kidnapping charges. All three strongly maintain their innocence.

The bar's complaint cited dozens of remarks Nifong made to the media in the early days of the case that it said amounted to "improper commentary about the character, credibility and reputation of the accused."

In one comment, Nifong referred to the defendants as "a bunch of hooligans."

Nifong's out, but heat's still on

BY JOHN STEVENSON, Herald-Sun, Jan 20, 2007 : 11:50 pm ET

Although battered by mean-spirited mail about their boss, District Attorney Mike Nifong's subordinates continue to stand by him, while professors debate whether Nifong is subject to possible criminal or civil liability over his handling of the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case.

Nifong stepped away from the case earlier this month and handed it off to special prosecutors from the state Attorney General's Office.

But that did nothing to calm the debate, with some calling for Nifong to be sued on grounds that he violated the civil rights of three former lacrosse players by getting them indicted on sex-offense charges without sufficient evidence. Some contend he also should be charged criminally for obstructing justice by allegedly withholding DNA results favorable to the defendants.

One New York attorney even wrote to Nifong's assistants, asking them to urge their boss to step down. They have said they ignored the pleas.

With equal fervor, Nifong's supporters -- along with many neutral observers -- say that he has prosecutorial "immunity" against a civil lawsuit, and that there are no precedents for criminal action against him.

Nifong declined to comment for this article.

The accuser in the lacrosse case, an exotic dancer at the time, claimed she was sexually assaulted by three players during an off-campus party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March 2006.

As a result, former Duke students Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans were indicted on charges of kidnapping the woman, raping her and committing another first-degree sex offense against her.

However, Nifong dropped the rape charges last month after the woman changed her story. The other felony charges remain pending.

One of the main proponents of a civil suit against Nifong is Professor John F. Banzhaf III, who teaches law at George Washington University.

Banzhaf acknowledges that Nifong is immune to being sued for anything he did as a prosecutor.

But he theorizes that Nifong handled some aspects of the lacrosse case as an investigator or administrator rather than as a district attorney.

For example, when Nifong allegedly advised police to use what defense lawyers called an unconstitutional photo lineup, he did so in an investigative capacity and could be civilly liable for it, according to Banzhaf.

Anton Borovina, a Melville, N.Y., attorney following the case, said Friday there was yet another role in which Nifong might be liable: that of political candidate.

The lacrosse matter arose while Nifong was in a hotly contested, three-way Democratic primary last year. It continued to make waves through November's general election. Nifong prevailed both times.

"Prosecutorial functions can be separated from a function designed to get him elected," said Borovina. "If I make public remarks and bring false charges to aid my election campaign, a lawyer has the ability to persuade a jury I am not entitled to prosecutorial immunity."

Others disagree.

"I doubt that would hold water," North Carolina Central University law professor Irving Joyner said of the Banzhaf and Borovina theory on Friday.

"You would expect the prosecutor to consult with the Police Department," said Joyner, referring to the photo lineup. "That is a normal role and function of the district attorney. I haven't seen any facts that would suggest he crossed the line into some other role."

Joyner said he also saw no potential criminal liability for Nifong in connection with the temporary withholding of DNA results favorable to the defendants.

Under the law, any withholding of exculpatory evidence is remedied if the defense learns of it in time to fix the problem, Joyner noted.

Lacrosse attorneys learned about the DNA results long before a trial was scheduled. In fact, a trial date still hasn't been set.

Duke law professor James Coleman said Friday he thought Nifong withheld the DNA information because it discredited the accuser's version of events.

And when the information came to light, the accuser promptly changed her story and the rape charges were dropped, Coleman pointed out.

The professor said he had two questions about that sequence of events: Was the evidence deliberately concealed to keep the rape charges alive until December? And once the evidence was revealed, did Nifong coach the accuser to bring her story into compliance with the revelation?

"I don't know the answers," said Coleman. "I have no idea. But if the answers are yes, it appears there was at least an attempt to obstruct [justice]."

Other lawyers said they saw an obstruction charge against Nifong going nowhere.

Atlanta lawyer B.J. Bernstein, who was a Georgia prosecutor from 1988 until 1995, predicted in a telephone interview that Nifong would not be charged criminally.

"In terms of criminal liability, it would be very difficult," she said. "The standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. I can't think of an instance where a prosecutor has been tried for something like that. It would be a tough sell. If that happened, it would be a new area of law for the entire country. How could you show it was a direct decision [to withhold evidence] as opposed to a mistake?"

If Nifong were charged with a criminal offense, the state Attorney General's Office presumably would prosecute him.

But some believe the state agency lacks clean hands.

"How are they going to prosecute [Nifong] when their own attorneys have done the same thing?" lawyer Mark Edwards asked last week.

Among other things, Edwards referred to a State Bar finding that then-assistant attorneys general David Hoke and Debra Graves withheld evidence favorable to murder suspect Alan Gell during a 1988 trial.

Gell was convicted and spent nine years behind bars, half of them on death row.

But when the withheld evidence subsequently was uncovered, Gell won a new trial and was quickly acquitted.

Hoke and Graves, who said they made an "honest mistake," received only reprimands.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-811279.cfm

N.Y. law firm badgers DA's faithful aides

BY JOHN STEVENSON : The Herald-Sun, Jan 20, 2007 : 11:42 pm ET

District Attorney Mike Nifong conceded long ago that he had become accustomed to receiving nasty mail about his handling of the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case, but now even his assistants have been badgered with invective by a New York law firm that wants Nifong ousted from his job.

Anton J. Borovina of the Melville, N.Y., firm Borovina and Marullo wrote Durham's assistant prosecutors this month, saying that if they had any sense of decency and honor, they would ask their boss to resign.

Attached was a letter to Nifong himself, calling him a "corrupt and morally bankrupt prosecutor" and a "low-life, a racist and a despicable human being." The letter asked Nifong to resign as district attorney for alleged "fraud and deception" and "gross prosecutorial misconduct" in his work on the lacrosse case, which he recently handed off to two special prosecutors appointed by the state attorney general.

Assistant Durham prosecutors contacted by The Herald-Sun on Friday said they ignored Borovina's message.

"I threw it in the trash," said Jim Dornfried.

Assistant District Attorney Tracey Cline said she did the same.

"I just felt like someone from out of state has no idea what's going on here," she added. "What he has to say is irrelevant to me."

Nifong could not be reached for comment.

Under mounting public and professional pressure, Nifong withdrew from the Duke case this month after getting three former lacrosse players indicted on charges of restraining an exotic dancer in a bathroom and sexually assaulting her during an off-campus party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March 2006.

The defendants -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- originally were charged with kidnapping the woman, raping her and committing another first-degree sex offense.

However, Nifong dismissed the rape allegations in December after the accuser changed her story. Felony kidnapping and sex-offense charges remain.

Critics claim that Nifong rushed to judgment in the case, seeking indictments without sufficient evidence and despite DNA results that did not incriminate any lacrosse players.

The case has now been taken over by two prosecutors from the state Attorney General's Office.

"The press has given much attention to the bizarre antics of your district attorney," lawyer Borovina wrote in his letter to Nifong's assistants.

He said Nifong had obtained the sex-offense indictments "based on flawed, contradictory and noncredible statements made by the alleged victim."

"I can only imagine the shame and embarrassment you must be experiencing," he wrote.

Reached by telephone, Borovina said he became too worked up over the lacrosse incident to remain silent.

He said he wanted Nifong's assistants "to get off their butts, stand up and walk to Mr. Nifong and tell him to step down. Do I think that's going to happen? No. But in my view, he [Nifong] won his election by fraud and by playing the race card. I want him disbarred. I want him to spend time in jail. I want him to think about this for the rest of his life."

The accuser in the lacrosse case is black, the defendants white.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-811276.cfm

From comments on Prof. Dines' recent CNN article:

a guest: Strippers as scam artists

In your research Gail Dines, haven’t you seen women with intelligence and savy to know how to get by with guts and bravado? Women who learn how to spin a lie to take advantage of a situation, to ply on the sympathy of strangers yet also bark loudly to get their way. You’ve never seen that? You’ve never interviewed a woman for whom you have had a grudging respect for her intelligence and perception to manipulate despite what they do for a living?

Before painting the picture that all strippers are victims you should know more about how they sometimes scam their clients. Anyone dealing in the skin trade gets street smart about it; if they don’t then they don’t survive. These women had been in this a while, they were surviving. The alleged victim survived so well she was back out working in 2 days after she sobered up. Doesn’t she carry a full load at NCCU and has a grade point over 3.0? Is this really a poor slow witted black person who gets by on the fringes through handouts and government programs so she is forced into being a victim? Be careful of the stereotypes you employ, you are talking about a veteren of our United States Navy (who was kicked out for getting pregnant while shipboard and her hubby was on shore duty).

On the night in question a lame joke about a broomstick was "flipped" into outrage and turned into a cause to leave by the young women thus pocketing $400 each for 5 minutes work. Do you think they never heard such jokes before? My, my ,my... They sought to intimidate a bunch white boys who didn't know how to handle trumped up snarly princess temper tantrums. The women were laughing all the way to the bank and even sought one last dig by phoning in a false claim of being shouted at from across the street. They were luring the police there to get them busted for underage drinking.

You have got to know that women who do this for a while get a bead on how to control their customers either through guile or intimidation. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't - this night it worked and they were getting away with it until Kim Roberts decided she didn’t want to mess with the passed out a**h*** in her car. But the Accused Victim was on a roll. In her fogged brain she must have thought if one scam worked let's try another - I've done this one before - so I'll cry rape to get what I want - these sucka' white boys fall for anything - all you gotta do is shout at these momma's boys and they cave.

And now you are being manipulated. Someday this revelation will come to you in a blinding flash and you will feel victimized.
32

January 20, 2007

a guest: White male marketplace?

To quote you: "Let’s not forget that this woman was bought and sold in the white male marketplace of sexual entertainment."

Actually, Precious performs as an "exotic dancer" at a Hillsborough, NC strip joint called The Platinum Club (where the famous 60 Minutes clip was shot). It's about two miles down the highway from where I live, and I can tell you, any white male that thought about watching Precious perform there had better make sure he has a black male escort.

Clearly, you know nothing of the specifics of this woman's background. Her main audience is black males, not white males. I know that doesn't dovetail nicely with the points you want to make, but it's the truth. Sorry.
34

January 20, 2007

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/736/81/

"Cash tries to sound halfway fair and rational when he puts his name to a piece. Perhaps when he wishes to take cheap shots and tell fantastic lies or make threats he hides behind "editorial"?"

Yes. He also seems not to like being called out regarding his racist and extortionist views and tactics. Check out this exchange b/w Cash and I (nothing bu non-answers and personal attacks):

Round 1

From Cash's letter:
"Our goal is to seek justice and truth while respecting the rights of everyone involved. We accept these cases with our eyes wide open to the evidence but with blinders on to all other distractions."

GbA to Cash:
Without question!
So, do you or do you not realize that he rightly and justifiably should be ignoring you, despite the clearly extortionist tone of your letter?

Cash to GbA:
Should you be cleaning up Army mess or something?

Round 2

From Cash's letter:
"After all, as a Democrat, just like Mike Nifong, you need the Black vote for any future political aspirations."

GbA to Cash:
Ah yes, the Democratic Party: the party of George Wallace. Did you know that Lincoln, "The Emancipator" himself, was a Republican?
When will the "African-American Community" wake up to the fact that it is -- as it has been for 40 years -- the Democratic Party's tool?

Cash to GbA:
Maybe when you wake up to the fact that the truth of this case will be determined in a court of law, not the cesspool of the blogs and message boards. Any other good questions?

Round 3

From Cash's letter:
"You have to be willing to also charge anyone else who may have committed a crime (like who went into the accuser?s bag and took the $400.00 in cash she was just paid? After careful and deliberate research of laws in at least 80 nations, including this one, we believe that that?s generally called a ROBBERY!!!)"

GbA to Cash:
Don't forget the other $1,600 she made earlier that evening taking sperm donations at the NCCU frat party, that make up the entire $2,000 Crystal claimed to have had stolen from her!
BTW, nothing perverted about that, I suppose?

Cash to GbA:
When you stop getting your erroneous information from Archie comics, maybe we'll dignify your missive with a response.

Round 4:
GbA to Cash:
Touched a few raw nerves, did I? I'd love to be able to answer your questions, but my Ebonics is weak, so please bear with me.
I am not familiar with the term "Army mess." What do you mean by it?
So, Archie has weighed-in on this too? Sheesh! Since you seem to be the authority on Crystal's ever-changing recollections, can you please tell me if there's any truth to the rumors that her next version is going to implicate Elvis, Jughead?
Truth is not determined in a Court of Law. Sadly, such outcomes are limited to the determination of guilt or not thereof, which sometimes belies truth (see: The People of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson).
Lastly, we haven't heard much lately from the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton lately on this subject. I suppose they have distanced themselves so as to limit any potential Civil liability arising from their earlier slanderous, race-baiting remarks.
By the way, is the Rainbow Coalition Scholarship/Jackpot still in play?

No response to these points from Cash (The entire exchange took place on Thursday, 4 days ago).

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