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.
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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/