Posted on 12/18/2006 4:44:22 PM PST by abb
his is not the way the system is supposed to operate. Prosecutors are supposed to be out for justice, not blood; committed to the truth, at all costs, not winning, without more.
Prosecutors aren’t just morally obliged but legally required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense.
Prosecutors aren’t just one side in a battle.
You can’t come across the smoking gun covered with fingerprints on it – come across it because you have the power of the state to collect all the evidence – and then decide to ignore it because they don’t match the fingerprints of the guy you’re prosecuting for the crime. You certainly can’t file the report from the lab for your eyes only.
You have to tell the defendant that the smoking gun has someone else’s prints on it. He has a right to know that, and the prosecutor has a duty to tell him.
There is a reason that the rules are such. The prosecutor represents the people. The people’s goal is winning, which doesn’t have to mean a perfect conviction rate.
The goal is supposed to be to convict the guy who did it, not frame the guy you’ve got.
Somebody should tell that to Mike Nifong. Or to the judge who is in a position to do something about who prosecutes the Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.
What is going on in the prosecutors’ office in Durham North Carolina is disturbing in ways that go beyond the ugly allegations that started this case.
The District Attorney has clearly lost sight of his mission, and with it the last remnants of any ethical compass. The case has been characterized, since the outset, by a clear failure to follow the office’s own procedures and practices.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Good see this lab is back pedalling. I wonder if that idiot still very interesting in working on this case?
What that her voice makes scratches across a black board bearable?
Estrich is not a liberal ... but not a jerk.
There is a difference.
I wonder whether the unknown DNA profiles were ever run against the FBI Lab's CODIS database. CODIS is very large and contains profiles of persons who have been the subject of criminal investigations (including now I suppose the three who stand falsely accused). DNASI's own database would not likely include so many profiles of people who have been accused of a crime because things like paternity testing accounted for (already using the past tense) much of its business.
Why wouldn't this be done as part of the investigation? What if some of those unknowns could have been identified? (I highly doubt all could be.) Might Mr. Murchison and the two "drivers" (whose names escape me at the moment, but we're talking pimps here) already be in CODIS? What could be the reason for Nifong directing DNASI to look for matches only between the accuser's samples and those of the lacrosse players and the three other men? Afraid of what he might find? Is the failure to try to match against a large database evidence of directing the investigation for the purpose of framing three individuals?
http://z9.invisionfree.com/LieStoppers_Board/index.php?showtopic=848&view=findpost&p=7003564
[snipped here and there for brevity]
In early 2000, two rapes occurred in the Trinity Park neighborhood, off Duke's east campus. Acting under strong pressure from the Trinity Park "community", police charged a black homeless man, Leroy Summers, based solely on an identification from the second woman who was raped.
After Summers was charged, the police sent a rape kit to the State Bureau of Investigation lab. When the results came in, no match existed for Summers' DNA. But a male DNA specimen was found. Technicians ran the result through a national crime database, revealing the DNA of Jeffrey Lamont McNeill, who subsequently was charged with the crime.
According to the July 12, 2000 N&O, the prosecutor issued a definitive written statement: "Results of DNA testing exclude the defendant as the perpetrator of this crime."
The prosecutor's name: Mike Nifong.
That's right. Tory, not Cory, was how the locals referred to her. Thanks.
She's a real piece of work. She jumps on whatever is big at the time to get into the spotlight for her own advancement.
Parasite.
Thanks for the article.
Ex-candidate faces more trouble [Durham humour]
A former Durham mayoral hopeful is sought by police again
Matt Dees, Staff Writer, N&O, Dec 21, 2006
DURHAM - Vincent Cortez Brown, who left the 2005 mayoral race amid revelations that he tried to cover his past as a convicted felon, is wanted by police again.
Durham police started looking for Brown on Sept. 28, when a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges he defrauded a man of nearly $30,000. They have yet to find him and issued a news release Wednesday seeking the public's help.
Brown, 46, who claimed in his campaign to be a lay Baptist minister and a former Navy SEAL, allegedly was paid for architectural work he never performed.
He signed a $29,800 contract to survey a lot, demolish a building and clear the site at 2911 Guess Road, police said.
Brown never did, police said.
He faces one count of obtaining property by false pretense.
Anyone with information on Brown's whereabouts is asked to call Investigator A.H. Holland at 560-4440, ext. 254, or CrimeStoppers at 683-1200.
He dropped out of the mayor's race after The News & Observer disclosed his extensive criminal history and his use of multiple birth dates and Social Security numbers.
The N&O confirmed that Brown had been charged with more than 100 crimes over a 15-year span, pleading guilty on 46 counts in courtrooms across North Carolina. Records indicated that Brown had been found guilty of felony forgery in Pender County, getting him time in state prison. Brown also had four felony convictions for larceny in Virginia.
Brown also was arrested in early May and charged with assault and battery and communicating threats.
He was acquitted of those charges in July, court records show.
But he was convicted of communicating threats that same month, following a charge by Phillip Barnett Jr. on May 18, court records show. Brown appealed that verdict, and the case remains unresolved, records show.
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/523777.html
* Gotta just love this town.
If you really want to stop paying attention to me, stop following me from thread to thread and writing posts to me.
Murder suspect faces new charges
From Staff Reports, N&O, Dec 21, 2006
DURHAM - Michael Wayne Goldston, who is awaiting trial on a murder charge and has a lengthy rap sheet, was arrested again Wednesday.
Goldston, 25, was arrested on charges of possession of cocaine with intent to sell or deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia. His new bail was set at $25,000.
He is expected to go on trial next year for his role in the 2004 shooting death of Nathan Alston.
Roy Oswald Bodden, 21, Goldston's alleged accomplice, was recently convicted of second-degree murder in the crime.
Since he was charged in Alston's death, Goldston has been arrested numerous times on charges including assault, armed robbery, probation violations and crack sales.
http://www.newsobserver.com/145/story/523775.html
* Another one. Mighty friendly courthouse. The DA aims to please.
The first paragraph, and parts of those following, are quite condescending.
The rest of it is basically one big non sequitur.
OMG.
I just wonder if that victim was unable to identify anybody from a photo line-up.
I'm thinkin' NC needs a three-strikes law similar to what we have.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Paper got it wrong
So, the truth is finally coming out? District Attorney Mike Nifong essentially "wrote" the DNA report so that exculpatory evidence would remain hidden.
The more I read about this case and this paper's coverage of it, the more it becomes apparent that, at end, your editors and Nifong will be the only ones caught with their pants down.
You guys lost your poise and your journalistic credibility when you joined the wrongheaded hew and cry and became cheerleaders for Nifong's idiotic handling of this case. Nifong used this sorry situation for his political advantage and you are complicit.
Nifong should be ashamed to show his face in public.
Your paper's punishment will be the fact you'll have to print a continuing series of stories on just how your editors, and your friend, Nifong, got it wrong, wrong, wrong.
Mike McNew
Marina, Calif.
December 21, 2006
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18531
Where's the ACLU to Defend the Duke Lacrosse Players?
by Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted Dec 21, 2006
If ever there was a case screaming for the assistance of the ACLU on behalf of defendants suffering denial of their civil rights and the need to go after a prosecutor abusing his power, the Duke lacrosse case is it. Yet the ACLU remains silent.
By now and for months, the prosecutor’s flouting of the most basic legal and civil rights procedures has become transparent and beyond question to all those following this case. The defendants have been accused by a plaintiff who misidentified them when given her chance during the police photo line-up. Worse, the DNA results of the semen taken from the accuser do not match those of the boys she is accusing of rape. There are contradictions in the timeline first provided by the plaintiff, and her partner at the scene presents a story at odds with what the accuser is positing. We now hear that the accuser has even gotten herself pregnant, somewhere else.
The ACLU is not moved. Instead, it is out there every day bringing lawsuits on behalf of known terrorists planning or already guilty of committing acts of terrorism against innocent U.S. civilians. Unlike the Duke case, where the deprivations to the boys involve civil rights matters firm and already settled in decades of case law, the claims by the ACLU on behalf of the jihadists are mostly spurious and flimsy.
While hardened terrorists who have announced their vile intentions against Americans, and boast of it, pull the heart strings of the ACLUniks, the ongoing plight of the accused American boys who deny guilt and are, in principle, against such crimes, does not stir the conscience of the ACLU. They don’t care that these boys are not getting a fair shake. Rules of procedure, duration, evidence, authority, and secretion apply only to non-U.S. Muslim terrorists, according to the ACLU, not white, Christian, mainstream, middle class Americans.
This case has been going on for months, with even more procedural and evidentiary aberrations and yet the “civil rights industry” remains silent as these young men are left hanging , with their reputations tarnished, their schooling interrupted and their families held in suspension while the Durham district attorney continues his crusade.
How well I remember the Central Park jogger rape and assault case here in New York City during the early 1990s when the civil rights industry and leftists, now silent, were demanding that the mob of black men accused of the vicious and cruel crime leading to a white girl being millimeters from death be spared anymore investigation so that “the boys could continue with their young lives and proceed on with their future.” This, despite the incontrovertible evidence of their guilt or accessory.
The Durham district attorney has consistently ignored the most basic procedural rules by hiding evidence from the lawyers of the defendants that would help the case of the young athletes. Not once, but twice. Be it by secreting the evidence of the private lab results or what happened the day of the photo lineup. There are other abuses of procedural conventions. Many believe this is a political case, with the Durham district attorney’s offering the scalps of some “privileged white kids” in return for the black vote so necessary if the D.A. is to be re-elected in this heavily black precinct.
And yet, while the ACLU is bringing a law suit against our President, authorized by the Constitution during time of war to spy on and investigate enemy combatants, as well as the U.S. attorney general, working in the executive branch on behalf of the President, they are taking no action against the Durham district attorney, who is clearly overriding the limited powers granted him and abusing and exploiting his government position at the expense of regular citizens, indeed it appears, harassing these young men and their families for his own personal reasons.
To be sure, for many liberals the boys are assumed guilty anyways since liberals believe—this is one of their mantras—that young, very white men do these things to poor black girls. They are presumed guilty until proven innocent, since even if they didn’t do it this time, they wanted to do it and would have done it if given the chance and if they wouldn’t get caught. We heard the same sentiment echoed by many liberals during the Tawana Brawley case, another fabricated case against white men involving a black girl. In other words, we need to show our outrage and teach a general lesson, though at the expense of a few innocent white individuals.
For decades already, most in the left/liberal community have viewed civil rights as an imperative for minorities only and not of import when involving mainstream America. Indeed, mainstream Americans are, in their view, not entitled to these basic rights when counter-facing minorities—witness affirmative action, bussing, and choosing Islamist sensitivities over our own safety.
On the other hand, Muslim terrorists are presumed innocent since, in the mind of many liberals, it is our white racism against Arabs and Moslems that impels us to deny them their civil rights. Of course, that is not true. The truth is that the terrorists are not citizens and thus un-entitled to constitutional rights and, furthermore, have announced their desire to kill us. In both situations, it is a prejudicial mindset by liberals against mainstream America that brings them to their warped conclusions and endeavors.
As to the ACLU specifically, it has long been obvious that they do not look at civil rights as an absolute and neutral edifice to be applied across-the-board but a selective tool to be used in behalf of their agenda to topple mainstream and historic America. The last people the ACLU wishes to defend are white, middle class, young Christian men from Garden City, N.Y., an enclave of mostly Catholic Republicans. That is the very American template they have sought over the last fifty years to destroy.
The ACLU takes up the cases of those viewed as anti-establishment, those who they see as part of the struggle to topple the WASP hegemony, Americana, and American traditions and values: namely, terrorists, abortionists, Islamic “multiculturalists,” atheists and secularists, minorities with grievances against “the system,” illegal aliens, and the anti-family provocateurs. Once in a while, they will represent a traditional American as a way to declare their “neutrality.”
Anybody can file a lawsuit. The ACLU is successful, however, because our courts are presided by judges who themselves believe in the de-construction of America and are already members of it or would be providing pro bono advocacy for ACLU clients if not busy meddling from the bench.
Most members of the ACLU despise serious and influential Christianity since, as non-Christians, they feel outside it and wish to destroy that which they can not control. Others are lapsed Christians, getting back. A preponderance of its acolytes can’t stomach our wholesome, traditional ways. They remain, however, immune from the effects of the sleazy gutterism their rulings create due to their ability to live in high-rise, door-manned luxury dwellings, or in lily white suburbs, or in privileged gated communities. This insulation provides them safety from the rulings they impose on others, the plebeians in fly-over-country.
Though wealthy, many are, at heart, command-and-control Communists who do not see their wealth as a consequence of the American capitalism they detest. They, self-righteously, view the legal profession as outside “crass capitalism”, indistinguishable from the universal professions like medicine, art, etc. They are not “business men.” In other words, their money is OK, and virtuous. Though raised to believe in economic equality, they, instead, now champion across-the-board cultural and sexual parity.
Mostly, the ACLUnik has been raised to believe that the greatest calling and mission is not patriotism, tradition, religion, reverence or love of country, rather “dissent.” Dissent shows you are doing something! You care! Dissent proves you are endowed with a greater social conscience, are better than others, yes, more enlightened.
But it must be a dissent against that which the ACLUnik was taught early on is the source of most of the world’s problems, specifically, the society of “privileged and racist” white, male, Christian, America. This privileged society is bad, they feel, and the root of all “minority” inequities. By trying to bring this society down, the ACLU’s own abundant money and access (its privilege) becomes sanitized, indeed something necessary to finance “the struggle.”
The ACLU is anti-American and hateful of what we cherish. The only thing American about it is that it operates in America and uses the American system to destroy historic America. The Islamists and their cohorts are doing the same thing. Birds of a feather.
Based on this, we can reasonably infer that Nifong knew precisely what he was doing when he "directed" the lab not to fully report their DNA findings.
He is one scary dude, even to be in charge of traffic court.
http://www.newsobserver.com/559/story/523244.html
Columns
Rick Martinez:
Published: Dec 20, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Dec 20, 2006 07:46 AM
Officers who abuse their badges
Rick Martinez, Correspondent
North Carolina has a cop problem. This is how bad it is. Up until this year, when flashing blue lights showed up in my rear-view mirror or rolled down my street, I went through a mental checklist of what I might have done wrong. No more. In light of recent history, if a siren is meant for me, I fear for my safety.
I take no joy in writing these words. I admire cops. A nephew is a Phoenix, Ariz., beat cop. When people claim a law enforcement officer has roughed them up, my gut reaction is to think the perps probably deserved it. The guff that patrol officers endure from citizens of every economic class is way beyond what you and I would put up with.
But even a police supporter like me would be a fool to ignore growing evidence that something is wrong inside North Carolina's law enforcement community. A disturbing pattern of violence and corruption has emerged.
The latest episode involves the Dec. 1 shooting death in Wilmington of college student and robbery suspect Peyton Strickland by a New Hanover Emergency Response Team member. It was a botched attempt to arrest Strickland and others for an alleged assault and theft of a PlayStation3.
But there have been other tragic outcomes. In January, Davidson County jailers Brandon Gray Huie and Lt. Ronald Parker beat inmate Carlos Claros Castro to death. An autopsy determined Claros Castro died from multiple injuries, including blunt trauma to the head and asphyxiation. Huie pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in July. Later that month a Davidson County jury convicted Parker of the same charge.
In August 2005, Nyles Arrington was shot and killed by off-duty Raleigh police officer Michelle Peele as he tried to steal her car. A Wake County grand jury refused to indict her, but Raleigh Police Chief Jane Perlov canned Peele for violating regulations on the use of deadly force. Peele still wants her job back. Although remorseful, she maintains she did nothing wrong and testified she would do the same thing if faced with the same circumstances.
Last week, three former Wake County deputies were indicted on charges of simple assault after allegedly roughing up Robert Wise in front of his wife and daughter. What did Wise do to provoke the August incident? His SUV took up two parking spaces outside a Garner restaurant.
Wake County cops aren't the only ones suspected of administering beatings to civilians. In September, Durham Police Chief Steve Chalmers fired officers Gary Lee and Scott Tanner after they were charged with misdemeanor assault for a sports bar fight with a cook. Judge Debra Sasser dismissed the charges over a venue dispute.
Outside the Triangle, old-school crime and corruption seem to hold sway among some law enforcers. Over the past four years, for example, 12 former Robeson County deputies have been charged with drug-related crimes that include kidnapping, arson and theft.
In Polk County, newly elected Sheriff Chris Abril faces charges of statutory rape and first-degree sexual offense. The incidents allegedly occurred in the 1980s when Abril was in his late 20s and the girls were 10 and 11 years old. Abril strongly denies the charges, which he claims are political attacks.
In the Rowan County town of Landis, police chief Charles Childers was arrested in August on child pornography charges that included allegations of trying to seduce a female juvenile.
That is just a sample. This year, other North Carolina law officers have been investigated on charges ranging from drug trafficking to murder-for-hire to larceny to taking indecent liberties with a minor.
For sure, officers rightly fear for their safety from armed and deadly lawbreakers, but their job description requires them to use force only when necessary. And it never calls for corruption. Law enforcement leaders would be foolish to dismiss all these alleged acts and the resulting investigations as the work of a few rogue cops. There are just too many incidents at nearly every level to ignore. Yet I know of no North Carolina law enforcement leader who has publicly acknowledged growing lawlessness among those who carry a badge.
Self-examination would be a good start in rebuilding law enforcement's ethical foundation -- although most cops I know think that introspection is a waste of time. In this situation, however, it's a matter of self-preservation.
Contributing columnist Rick Martinez can be reached at rickjmartinez2@verizon.net.
I think Nifong was Traffic Court Czar in 2000. Jim Hardin, whose appointment to a Superior Court vacancy allowed Gov. Easley to name Nifong interim-DA, was the Durham DA in 2000.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061221/EDITORIAL/612210310
Article published Dec 21, 2006
Add another DA to the sorry list
It's hard to keep track of the North Carolina district attorneys who cheat, break the law and trample the truth in a rush to get convictions - not to mention publicity for their next political campaign.
Now Durham DA Mike Nifong is accused of getting the head of a private laboratory to withhold DNA evidence that might weaken his rape case against those three Duke lacrosse players. The lab director testified under oath last week that Nifong talked him into it.
The DA didn't even dispute it. He just said the players' high-priced defense attorneys hadn't asked for the evidence that might have gotten their clients off the hook.
But state law requires prosecutors to give evidence to defense attorneys whether they ask for it or not. Nifong had to know that - particularly after the uproar over the failure of two other prosecutors to turn over evidence that might have made it harder for them to railroad an innocent man to death row. The State Bar says they also altered documents and lied to the judge.
Of course, Nifong also knew that those two prosecutors have not been prosecuted by their fellow prosecutors. One prosecutor has even become a judge. So you know he's honest.
Nor has Attorney General Roy Cooper asked the General Assembly to give him (and not just local DAs) the authority to go after prosecutors who violate the laws they swore to uphold.
Heaven forbid. The public might lose faith in the integrity of its "criminal justice system" and the honesty of the politicians it elects to prosecute criminals.
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