Posted on 07/08/2009 9:47:25 AM PDT by GSWarrior
It's a brilliant day in Santa Barbara. But for Eric Frimpong, it feels like hell. He's in Superior Court, encircled by sheriff's deputies. This is his last stop on the outside for a while, a painful reminder of how far he has fallen. He left his native Ghana in 2005 to play soccer for UC Santa Barbara; a year later he became a campus hero while leading the Gauchos to their first-ever national championship. But in 2007, weeks after being selected by the Kansas City Wizards in the MLS draft, he was accused of raping another student on the beach near his house. Now he's a convicted felon.
A victim's advocate reads a statement on behalf of the accuser, referred to in this story and in news coverage throughout the trial as Jane Doe. "I don't care that he's a soccer star…and I'm a nobody," the statement says. "Eric Frimpong ruined my life."
If his supporters could chime in now, they'd say that the kid in the prison garb has never spoken an unkind word or acted aggressively toward anyone. They would remind the court of the points made at trial: that his accuser was a woman with little memory of what happened that night because of a near-toxic blood alcohol level; that Frimpong's DNA wasn't found on the victim; that semen found on her underwear belonged to a jealous boyfriend, a white student who was never a suspect. They would argue that overzealous law enforcement was determined to nail a high-profile athlete, facts be damned, and that this was the Duke lacrosse case all over again -- except that the defendants in the Duke case were white men from affluent families with the means to navigate America's justice system, unlike Frimpong, who is poor and an immigrant.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
This doesn't strike anyone in the justice system as odd?
This story is weird. It seems any defense attorney worth his salt could get this guy acquitted.
this kind of s*** is why I left the United States. I simply do not feel safe there so long as the police/justice system is so overbearing, and so eager to imprison all they can
It's amazing what one can do with spin.
Maybe more reading would help. The jury put the scum away!!
While the story was written in a sympathetic tone, the case has so much reasonable doubt it’s amazing that this kid was convicted. The judge looks to have prejudged him and made rulings that did him no favors and the attorney who represented him sucked.
I hope this kid gets another chance....
Nowhere near the railroading and universal condemenation of a whole team of white guys for the accusations of a black, drug-addicted, whore. The only guy on the LaCrosse team who was not DNA’d was the only black player.
It turned out that the black whore had the DNA of three guys and none of them were Duke LaCrosse players, at least it was not the white one’s.
And maybe if you had bothered to read it carefully you would have seen plenty of holes in the prosecution’s case. Maybe you are just one of those people who believes that DAs are always right?
If the story is accurate, I agree. If it is a typical newspaper story, then I do not agree.
“He left his native Ghana in 2005 to play soccer for UC Santa Barbara...”
Is anyone else just a little curious why American Universities are recruiting foreigners to play sports (and on scholarships maybe) ?
No I’m one of those people that supports the jury system in the united states. If they get it wrong appeal. But spin is spin, the DNA evidence was there.
And Spain is so much better.
There's one statement in the story that I think sums it up:
"[Defense attorney Sanger] told me, 'The best defense was no defense, because it would demonstrate there's nothing to defend,'" she says. "We made a mistake."
The defense attorney was incompetent: apparently all he did was try to poke holes in the prosecution's case, and did little or nothing to defend his client.
Faced with no alternatives, the jury must have accepted the prosecution's thin evidence at face value. Was it enough to exclude "reasonable doubt"? Not for me, but I wasn't on the jury.
White woman who admits being hammered accuses black male athlete of rape. Woman doesn’t remember much. Semen matches ex-boyfriend who was present. Bite marks on victim could have been made by ex-boyfriend, but not by accused black male. No signs of struggle on accused black male.
Yup, something stinks to high heaven. Sure smells like the Duke case only with races reversed and a (dubious? appealable?) conviction.
But why would a bastion of liberalism have something that could be a case of blatant racism? Anyone who has to ask that doesn’t understand liberalism...
It does ... which is why I suspect there's more to the story than this opinion piece lets on.
From this link:
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/mar/07/no-retrial-frimpong/
This comment:
“I was a juror on this trial. I think it’s important to remember that unless you sat through this trial for 3 1/2 weeks, you really don’t have all the facts. We saw and heard a lot more than what you are stating you’ve heard through the media.
Please trust in our justice system-all 12 jurors found him guilty for a reason.”
Believable?
More grist for the mill...
The case is utter bs. The Jane Doe can’t remember many details as soon as she was on the beach. She tested a .20 later. She was probably even higher when the “incident” she claimed with Eric took place.
.29 is near lethal. To put it mildly this female was obliterated and out on the beach. She didn’t remember anything. She just knows she met this guy earlier in the evening.
She was so wasted she went to her “boyfriend” and then came back to play a video game with this guy. The story says she put her hands down his pants.
The “boyfriend” says he was jealous and there was a can collector “drifter” out there too. The female was raped but she can’t even provide any consistent details. She was so drunk she blacked out and can’t remember time on the beach when the incident happened.
This guy is being railroaded. They physical evidence like the Duke case says he’s not even involved.
Our career prosecutors are too eager to destroy innocent people to make their careers. It’s despicable.
"When the test results came back in March, Frimpong's DNA hadn't been found on Jane Doe's clothing or body, but Doe's DNA had been found on Frimpong: in two nucleated epithelial cells, found on his scrotum and penis, and in an unspecified trace under his fingernail. (Epithelial cells are found inside the body and in body fluids like mucus, saliva and sweat. These tested negative as vaginal cells, but such tests can be inconclusive. When the case went to trial that November, the defense argued that the findings were consistent with Frimpong's claim that Doe had grabbed his genitals.)"
"Frimpong was the only suspect, even though there was no apparent sign of sexual activity -- no blood, semen, vaginal secretions -- or any scratches or other telltale marks of rape on his body or clothes."
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