Posted on 05/06/2007 2:46:31 PM PDT by John Jorsett
hen Durham Police Chief Steve Chalmers breaks his year-long silence on the Duke lacrosse case this week, he'll have a lot of talking to do.
The allegations of misconduct against District Attorney Mike Nifong have taken center stage, but an examination of police and prosecutorial records raises questions about whether the police ceded control of the investigation, violated their own policies, created false records and failed to pursue basic investigative leads.
Chalmers, who has declined all interview requests on the case from The News & Observer since March 2006, will issue a report on his department's handling of the case later this week, Durham city manager Patrick Baker said.
"We want the truth in this report," City Council member Eugene Brown said. "We've had more than enough deception already."
Three former lacrosse players -- Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty -- were charged with raping and sexually assaulting an escort service dancer, Crystal Gail Mangum, at a team party in March 2006. Last month, state Attorney General Roy Cooper ended the case and declared the three players innocent.
The three players have not yet decided whether they will file civil lawsuits against Nifong, the investigators or the city of Durham. If they do, the lawsuits would likely focus on whether the players were identified through a flawed procedure and whether an investigator created false evidence.
The police department's problems can all be traced to one fundamental error -- letting Nifong take over the case -- according to Jim Cooney, defense lawyer for Seligmann. Cooney has represented the Charlotte Police Department on several occasions, including on charges of malicious prosecution brought by a doctor accused of murdering his wife.
"The police let Nifong usurp the chain of command, and this is unforgivable," Cooney said. "The police work for the chief, who works for the city manager, who works for the City Council. The police do not work for the DA."
It is unusual for a prosecutor to take command of an investigation; gathering evidence and investigating crimes is the province of police.
Nifong took over the case on March 24, 2006, the day news broke that the lacrosse team had been ordered to the police station to give DNA samples. Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the senior investigator on the case, wrote that he was told by his boss, Capt. Jeff Lamb, that Nifong would be running the case. Lamb instructed Gottlieb to "go through Mr. Nifong for any directions how to conduct matters in this case." Lamb also instructed Gottlieb to keep him up to date on the case.
Police records show Nifong running the case, with no indication that Gottlieb's superiors were giving orders. For example, Gottlieb wrote a lengthy e-mail message to Nifong on May 3, one day after Nifong won the Democratic primary. "Congratulations on the primary election. There are several things I need clarification on this week while I am off, so I know how you want to proceed."
Gottlieb asked for specific instructions on a variety of tasks: testing of Mangum's hair for drugs, arresting the third suspect, approaching two non-lacrosse players who attended the party, obtaining photographs of the party, and showing photographs of the players to a second escort service dancer hired to perform at the party.
The photo ID
One of the most criticized areas of police conduct was Gottlieb's handling of the photo identification procedure that led to the indictment of the three players.
On March 31, Nifong directed Gottlieb and Investigator Benjamin Himan to show Mangum pictures of all 46 white lacrosse players (Mangum had said her attackers were white, so the team's lone black player was not named as a suspect). Mangum had earlier looked at photographs of 36 lacrosse players and failed to identify an assailant.
Nifong's directive violated Durham Police guidelines, which says that identification procedures should include five fillers -- photographs of people unrelated to the case -- for every photograph of a suspect. Gottlieb did not include any fillers when he showed the photos to Mangum, who picked out four players as her assailants, three of whom were charged.
Baker, the city manager, said the police guidelines didn't apply to this procedure because police were looking for witnesses as well as suspects.
Psychology professor Gary Wells, who helped write the identification policy adopted by the Durham police, said Baker's explanation doesn't make sense because police had already identified all 46 players as criminal suspects.
"If your suspects are in there, then it's a photo identification procedure," said Wells, a professor at Iowa State University. Baker's explanation is "a song and dance, and an early attempt to fish for some defense in a civil suit down the line."
Gottlieb did brief his supervisors, Lamb and Lt. Mike Ripberger, on Nifong's directions for the lineup. Both officers apparently acquiesced to Nifong's directions. Ripberger had special knowledge of how identification procedures should be handled: He attended a June 2004 session at the N.C. Bar Association led by Wells.
Nifong's photographic procedure and the lack of fillers soon came under fire. With no fillers, there was no way to test Mangum's reliability as a witness
In July, Gottlieb produced his written report that seemed to shore up Nifong's identification procedure. Gottlieb reported that on March 16, Magnum had precisely described the three men who were later indicted, including this description of Finnerty: "W/M, young, blonde hair, baby faced, tall and lean." This description, however, contradicted handwritten notes taken by Himan during the interview, which described the three men as heavyset, dark, chubby or short.
In March 2006, police distributed posters announcing "a horrific crime" in which a woman had been sodomized, raped, assaulted and robbed. The poster circulated for two weeks before police toned the language down and clarified that a crime was alleged to have occurred. City manager Baker said he did not know who created the poster.
A history repeated
Alex Charns, a Durham lawyer who has successfully sued the city for police misconduct, said Durham officials are repeating their history of not admitting mistakes by claiming the photo identification procedure did not violate policy.
"The city has still not apologized for its role in the fraudulent prosecution of these three innocent men," Charns said. "They are trying to rewrite history in a way that exonerates themselves."
The police department's conduct involves not just what investigators did, but what they didn't do. The rape charges rested on the uncorroborated words of Mangum, who gave multiple, conflicting versions of the alleged assault. Police never pressed her to resolve the contradictions. They waited seven months to interview her colleagues and boss at the Platinum Club, a strip club in Hillsborough where Mangum danced.
According to Nifong's files, police waited six months to pull the report on Mangum's 2002 arrest on charges of stealing a taxicab from a Durham strip club. Mangum's behavior that night echoed her behavior after the lacrosse party and could have raised cautions about her reliability.
And although police spent scores of hours investigating the 46 lacrosse players -- combing local and national criminal databases, sex offender lists, handgun permits and college records -- they did not pursue basic evidentiary trails to learn what happened at the lacrosse party.
For example, when police first searched the party house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. on March 16, two lacrosse team captains told police that Kevin Coleman, a lacrosse player, had taken photographs of the party. Police never subpoenaed Coleman's camera or the time-stamped photographs, even after some of the images appeared on national television and the Internet. Police never obtained cell phones belonging to Seligmann or Finnerty, or their computers, or instant messages or e-mail.
Wells, the identification expert, said an honest and full report from the Durham Police is in the best interest of Durham's citizens, given that the three exonerated lacrosse players may sue the city and police.
"I've seen other police departments resist and resist and resist; they don't want to admit mistakes, and they make stuff up and they posture," Wells said. "Ultimately they lose the case after spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money to fight it, and they end up spending more on damages. The taxpayers are the next people to be burnt."
Well, Neff is only about 55 weeks too late to the dance. Maybe if he will follow up on the dozens of tips that several of us have personally provided to the News & Observer, they will uncover the corruption in Durham County and City governments, the Police Department and the DAs office. Maybe they should go back and read the hundreds of threads, especially the one featuring C. Destine Couch.
Let’s hope they can snag a few other rotten apples on federal charges for civil rights violations.
Yep, there was a lot of misconduct in this case. Hopefully it won’t be swept under the rug.
Cases of Official Oppression like this are why we have a 2nd Amendment. Let’s all put it FIRST.
Sorry, that only applies to minorities. The lacrosse players are white. S/
Ya think?
Wow. The police department belongs in the docket right beside Nifong.
bump
And you know what, while I think Nifong's hands are dirty up to his armpits on this, we'd better check the cops elbows too, if not their shoulders.
Don’t forget Knife-fong’s assistannts and other members of his office.
Didn't they shut down whole counties when blacks were being railroaded and wrongly convicted by corrupt judges and prosecutors?
It was known within a month of these persecutions that at least one of these players wasn't even in the place when the incident supposedly happened and there was ATM video to verify it.
It was known that this was a felonious prosecution from the git go. Where was DOJ?
I think most of the feds at DOJ were assigned all 2006 to help out on the Scooter Libby travesty. That was the most important thing going on in the whole country.
Yeah, I think you are on to something. Gottlieb is being set up as the fall guy, but with all the scrutiny that is going to be directed at just how this investigation was handled they will have a tough time making it stick.
Unfortunately this all looks like a caricature of a corrupt backwoods Southern town.....about 1948.....the good people of Durham have a lot of manure shoveling to do there...including at the local university.
The people of Durham are not “good people”; they voted to return the Fong to office last November when the basic realities of this case were well known. They’re a bunch of racist clymers and they richly deserve what’s about to happen to them and their sorry excuse for a town. Wish any luck, aside from being sued into tomorrow-morrow land, they’ll get to see how much fun running the place’s economy will be without Duke University in it, after Duke moves.
So he’s going to finally crawl out from under his rock? I’m sure he has a logical explanation.
“COME GET SOME!”
Possible? I’d say probable would be more a accurate description.
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