Free Republic

Virginia’s lieutenant governor is pushing to have sexual assault allegations against him investigated by district attorneys in the state, a report said Wednesday. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax and his legal counsel sent letters to the Suffolk County and Durham County district attorney offices saying the allegations by Dr. Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson should be “promptly and fully” investigated, according to WWBT-TV. “If an investigation were to determine that the allegation is true, it should be criminally prosecuted. Conversely, if an investigation were to determine that the allegation is false, which Lt. Governor Fairfax is confident would be the conclusion...

A former elections worker in North Carolina was indicted Monday by a Durham County grand jury for mishandling provisional ballot results during the March 2016 primary election. Richard Robert Rawling, 59, of Cary, was charged on the counts of obstruction of justice — a felony — and failure to discharge a duty of his office — a misdemeanor. An investigation of the state’s elections board determined Rawling ran or ordered subordinates to run provisional ballots through tabulators more than once and made manual changes to the ballot count so the results of the provisional canvass would match the number of approved provisional ballots.

Raleigh, N.C. — In a formal complaint to the Durham County Board of Elections, Thomas Stark, the attorney for the North Carolina Republican Party on Saturday demanded a recount of votes cast on and before Election Day, citing a counting error involving 90,000 ballots. Thomas Stark, general counsel for the GOP and a Durham County voter, filed the protest with the Durham County Board of Elections, alleging malfeasance in regard to the accuracy of the count. In the complaint, Stark says the county used data from potentially corrupt tabulation machines from five early voting sites and one general election precinct....

This happened last month, but I just learned of the case because the trial court decision was just posted on Westlaw; Cline is appealing the removal. The decision is here; a newspaper article on the subject is here; the statute authorizing the removal, N.C. Gen. Stats. § 7A-66(6), provides that a D.A. may be removed by a court for “[c]onduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute.” ... partly because it comes on the heels of the ouster of D.A. Nifong — Cline was the first D.A. elected following Nifong’s ouster, and had worked for...

The case against a Durham woman accused of aiding in crimes that authorities say were carried out by a satanic cult was effectively dismissed Thursday when a judge denied a request to delay the case. Dianna Palmer, 44, of Cottage Woods Court, was charged in July with one count of accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon. Police said Palmer knew about assaults alleged to have occurred in a residence on Albany Street in Durham and said she helped Joseph Scott Craig remove evidence from the house. Craig, 25, and his wife, Joy Johnson, 30, were arrested...