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 ...
See, in any other rape case there would be no "UNIDENTIFIED" semen in the alleged victim. It would be IDENTIFIED as either the rapist's OR some consensual partner.
HERE, Nifong has avoided figuring out whose semen this is. He has not figured out, or even tried to figure out, who produced the 5 semen stains in her panties and the semen in her anus. The people who produced these samples could be the rapists. Nifong can not have it both ways. Either he proves that these semen donations were consensual, and to do that he needs to figure out who produced them, or he needs to dismiss the charges.
I thought the Hannity and Colmes show segment on the case was very weak. They showed old tape in which Colmes in the voice over repeats the Nifong's claim of the possibility of a date rape drug? If they were going to use that tape, they should have editted out that falsehood.
As for Gilfoyle, she is like a weather vane. She will probably change her mind again tommorrow. That makes her as useless as Ted Williams.
also.......it is mighty suspicious that the labs could find NO dna or other forensic evidence on a person who has the dna on her person and on her underwear from up to 5 previous "relations"......
its kind of like in the Vince Foster case.....they could find Civil War bullets but no bullets from the gun that killed old Vince.......
I still say he was murdered....
You are right "Newport" raises an excellent point. Nifong really only has two choices:
1. he believes she was raped and must eliminate the donors of the sample from her as being the rapists. He must figure out where these samples came from and eliminate them as possible rapists.
2. he does not believe she was raped and the charges must be dropped.
Nifong can not have it both ways. He either believes her story that she was raped and must eliminate the possibility that she was confused about when or where it happened and must show the five samples were the result of consent or he does not believe her.
Fred Barnes and Mort (The Beltway Boys FOX) just UNLOADED on KneeFong AND DUKE and the Board of Trustees. Duke pilloried its own students -- owes apology at a minimum, according to the Beltway Boys.
http://z9.invisionfree.com/LieStoppers_Board/index.php?showtopic=755&view=findpost&p=6938742
The Chappaquiddick society is conducting a vote for their "Profile in Cowardice" award. One of the nominees is Mike Nifong. You can vote for him or your choice of the other nominees at:
http://www.chappaquiddick.org/index.html
Guilfoyle has been against Liefong for some time.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't perceived Guilfoyle as wishy-washy in the last several months. I think it is honestly hard for her as a former Deputy DA (San Francisco) to fathom that Liefong doesn't even have a crime, let alone a case against the boys. Same for Jim Hammer, although he's even more reluctant to give up the ghost.
Ted's problem is race. He just doesn't want to fully absorb that Mangum is a liar, her family are also a bunch of frauds, and the many black Durhamites are stone, cold racists looking to nail these boys for something that never even happened.
Well, I see them slightly different:
1. Hammer strikes me as an out and out statist who believe the government or at least those government actors who are Dims and hence Mike Nifong can do no wrong. He is sure that Nifong must have something else. For months he had Nifong looking her in the eye and believing Mangum, but that of course blew up in his face via Nifong claiming he had not discussed the case with her. And of course he is of the view that we should all shrug our shoulders and Nifong should not be prosecuted for his criminal actions.
2. The information of who he was sitting with in Court this hearing has brought me to the view that Ted was just bought off in this case. I can not believe a former DC cop did not run into many "stone cold racists" in his police career and unless he was corrupt then, recognized them and still tried to get to the truth. As an attorney, Ted is of course forsale like he could not be as a cop. So he has sold his view point to somebody in this for some reason. I don't know if he does tort law, but maybe he will be Mangum's civil attorney?
3. As for Guilfoyle, wasn't she that one that was beginning to go against Nifong until she spent time with him prior to the last hearing? Maybe I have her confused with someone else, but I remember her walking into the courtroom with Nifong and gushing about him after that last hearing?
I don't know about the gushing, but it sounds vaguely familiar in connection with Guilfoyle.
I don't disagree with your take on any of the personalities we're discussing, but I have a slightly different perspective. None of us know what is in somebody else's mind precisely, but I do know prosecutors well. Most of them are dedicated, ethical people who also will serve their own self-interests when possible for career purposes, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as they don't cross an invisible line (present in many professions). Because of that (the knowledge that most are dedicated and ethical), they tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and that is also common in most professions. So what I am saying is this: what Liefong has done is very unethical and clearly crosses the line into prosecutor misconduct and I would also say there is a case to be made for obstruction of justice. But for other prosecutors and even defense lawyers, it is difficult - flabbergasting - to believe that Liefong would take such transparently unethical steps as he has taken in this case, so they keep hoping something will come out that restores their faith in him.
Certain posters keep saying this happens all the time, everywhere, everyone is getting railroaded (presumably because there are no guilty people)our criminal justice system is in the toilet, yadda, yadda, yadda. But what I think Hammer and others actually show us is that Liefong's activities are well beyond the boundary of acceptable prosecutorial conduct and definitely not the norm, and we see that point illustrated through the bafflement and disbelief of other (former) prosecutors commenting on the case.
Venue change requests are rare
By John Stevenson, jstevenson@heraldsun.com
December 16, 2006 11:42 pm
If defense attorneys in the Duke lacrosse rape case succeed in having the proceedings shifted to another county, it would be the first time in two decades a Durham criminal action has been moved.
The last time was in the mid-1980s, when Barbara Stager of Durham was tried in Lee County for the fatal shooting of her husband, a high school baseball coach.
Stager was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. But after the state Supreme Court awarded her a new trial, the penalty was downgraded to life in prison with parole eligibility in 20 years.
North Carolina's current system of life without parole for convicted killers wasn't adopted until the mid-1990s.
So-called change-of-venue requests normally are based on massive pretrial publicity that might make it difficult to find impartial jurors in the county where a crime occurred.
In Durham, the most highly publicized criminal case before the Duke lacrosse incident involved novelist Michael Peterson. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2003 and sentenced to life without parole for fatally beating his spouse, Nortel Networks executive Kathleen Peterson.
But attorneys didn't even ask that the Peterson case be moved out of county.
Such requests are rare in the Bull City, and they are granted even less frequently.
Four years ago, defense lawyers cited extensive publicity in seeking a venue change when Timothy Earl Blackwell went on trial a second time for the drunken-driving traffic death of 4-year-old Megan Dail on Guess Road.
But a judge decided the proceedings must remain in Durham, where Blackwell was convicted of second-degree murder.
In the Duke lacrosse incident, a written change-of-venue motion was filed Friday, with a team of defense lawyers saying Durham had become too polarized to provide an impartial trial of the controversial case.
Three young men -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- are accused of raping an exotic dancer during an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March.
The suspects have maintained their innocence and are free under $100,000 bonds as they await a trial that is expected to occur next year.
In seeking a change of venue, defense attorneys said a media "feeding frenzy" has attended the case -- with The Herald-Sun publishing more than 295 articles about it, CNN making some 577,000 references to it and the ABC, CBS and NBC television networks collectively reporting on it almost 650,000 times.
Attorneys said the publicity "has served to create a mix of racial, class, gender and institutional conflict that has torn Durham apart. It has left in its wake a community that is highly polarized, one in which a large majority of residents has already formed opinions about the guilt or innocence of the defendants."
According to the attorneys, Finnerty, Seligmann and Evans "do not seek to change venue in these cases merely because there has been publicity, nor do they seek trial in a location in which no publicity has occurred. Rather, 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. Regrettably, Durham is not that community."
Attorneys acknowledged that the rape suspects "are not entitled to a jury that will acquit them, nor is the state entitled to a jury that will convict."
But the defense lawyers added that the defendants must have "a jury whose members have not formed preconceived opinions about these cases. They are further entitled to a jury that can deliberate in a community in which significant outside forces will not have an impact on the deliberations or its verdict. In short, the defendants are entitled not only to an impartial jury, but also to a process in which that jury may deliberate freely without undue pressure from outside influence. That jury, and that process, no longer exists in this county."
Much of the blame rests with District Attorney Mike Nifong, according to the change-of-venue motion.
Defense lawyers quoted Nifong as estimating he had granted 70 media interviews and talked to reporters for more than 40 hours by the time the rape case was only three weeks old.
"In these interviews, the district attorney expressed his opinion that a rape had occurred, that the rape was motivated by race and that those who committed the rape were 'hooligans,' " the defense team said.
But Nifong soon clammed up, admitting he had made a mistake and saying he would avoid the national media if he could begin the case over again.
Defense lawyers contend The Herald-Sun also is to blame for the purported polarization.
They wrote that the newspaper, in its editorial positions, "has relentlessly condemned the Duke lacrosse team and encouraged a prosecution of the defendants in these cases."
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-800245.cfm
One thing about Ted - now that he's a lawyer, he can give full voice to whatever racist propensities he harbored but had to stifle while he was still a homicide dick.
If he's planning on handling anything for the Mangum family, I honestly feel sorry for him in the bruising he will take. So far, not one of them who has spoken about this case is capable of telling anything remotely resembling the truth, and their lies are some of the dumbest ones I've ever heard, that being a number well into six figures.
Lotsa luck, Ted! :>
Nothing immediately jumps out at me. Was there something specific?
Paternity testing is becoming more and more common in rape cases wherein there is a pregnancy closely following the date of the alleged rape. A criminal court can order it as an evidentiary matter.
The reason the test is important to the defense is this: If a paternity test shows a high probablity that the accused cannot be ruled out as the father, it is much easier for the alleged victim to avoid testifying in stranger-rape cases. Thus, a test result ruling all of them out closes that escape hatch for Mangum.
Liefong will want to play down the pregnancy because it is a reminder of all the serious deficiencies in his case - no DNA, Mangum was engaging in sex shortly after the alleged rape (uncommon for true rape victims), and of the newest DNA results showing multiple donors which evidences Liefong's bad faith in disclosing the new results as well as Mangum's promiscuity and the nature of her "profession." The pregnancy is bad news for Liefong. It's no surprise he wanted to stipulate that the boys are not the dad. He'd much rather let the suspicion hang that out there that one of them is rather than close the door on that possibility and point to all the above which are decidedly NOT helpful to his case.
I heard him. He may well be right, especially in this case where Liefong seems to be trying to build a wall of plausible deniability between himself and the prosecutorial steps taken in the case.
It is indeed disgraceful.
What is wrong with the people of NC?
Go to Liestoppers RIGHT NOW and look at the Saturday Night Live satire of Nancy Grace's coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Case. Do it right now.
http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/
Bwahahahahahaha!!!!
I went. I can't get it to play. It loads, and that's all she wrote! :<
I just read that Liefong would not stipulate but would agree that the boys are not the dad of the baby.
One would think he'd rather get it out of the public's mind by stipulating, but I guess he'd rather it hang over the boys' heads.
Ping!! SNL does Nancy Grace on DukeLax. Absolutely, positively, must see TV!!!
http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/
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