Duke Lacrosse Case [Continued]

[R. Richard]

We have three Duke lacrosse players now indicted on sexual assault and kidnapping charges [the rape charges were dropped after the accuser changed her story.] The current story now seems to clear at least one of the Duke lacrosse players and the defense has filed a motion for his dismissal from the case. Once again, the chages in the story also seem to clear another attacker. Also the latest changes in the story fly in the face of known facts.

How would you like to be one of the Duke lacrosse players in what is becoming clear is a sequence of false charges by a mentally unstable woman? [She has recently been in a mental institution.] For that martter, how would you like to be the DA, who arrested and charged three men in circumstances that may well lead to his disbarment and possibly arrest? Comments?

Motions Call for Dismissal in Duke Lacrosse Case
Accuser changes story again about who, where and what happened.

(01/11/07 -- DURHAM) - Once again, motions have been filed in the Duke Lacrosse case to dismiss the charges against the three players accused of assaulting a stripper.

Reade Seilgmann, Colin Finnerty and David Evans face sexual assault and kidnapping charges for holding the accuser against her will in a bathroom at a March 13 Duke lacrosse team party where she was hired to perform as a stripper.
The accuser originally said she was raped that evening, but has since changed her story forcing Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong to drop forcible rape charges against the men.

Based on today's motions, Reade Seligmann could be off the hook -- The Duke Lacrosse accuser's December 21 statements to District Attorney Mike Nifong have just been made public in a 76-page defense motion.

It was because of her statement in that interview that Nifong subsequently dropped rape charges against the indicted players.

According to the filing, in that interview the accuser now claims the attack took place between 11:35 and midnight, which contradicts the accuser's own cell phone records and the cell phone records for Reade Seligmann and his girlfriend.

She recants her April statement that Reade Seligmann was the man who stood in front of her and made her commit a sex act. Now she says Evans was that person and further admits that Reade Seligmann did not commit any sex act on her.

The motion goes on to point out how she recants her April statement that the attacker who looked like Dave Evans had mustache.

The motion also states that the accuser recants her March and April statements that "Matt" Kadam" and "Brett" were three separate people, and now says that they were only two people

In her December statement, the accuser recanted her statement that she was certain that two of her attackers used their penises to penetrate both her vagina and her rectum, and now claims that she cannot be sure about penile penetration at all.

The next scheduled hearing for this case is on February 5th.

Accuser changes story in lacrosse case

In her latest statement to investigators, the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case changed her account again about when the alleged gang rape occurred, who attacked her and how.

Defense attorneys filed the statement in court today, arguing that it was more evidence that the woman is an unreliable witness.

The woman adjusted the timing of the assault to earlier in the evening, a time point preceding the well-documented alibi of one accused player, Reade Seligmann. The defense, however, introduced yet more alibi evidence for Seligmann: he was on the cell phone with his girlfriend during the height of the attack as the accuser now times it.

The new version of the events comes from a Dec. 21 interview by Linwood Wilson, chief investigator for Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. The statement marked the first time anyone from the District Attorney's office discussed the case with the woman since charges were filed in April. The interview came less than a week after a private laboratory director testified that he and Nifong agreed not to report DNA evidence favorable to the three accused players.

It was the Dec. 21 interview that prompted Nifong to drop rape charges the following day against the three players after the woman said she was no longer certain that the men had vaginally assaulted her with their penises.

The three players, Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, have called the accusations lies and said they are innocent.

The statement layers new and contradictory accounts over the woman's previous statements:

* In her latest statement she said the attack ended at midnight.

In previous accounts, the woman said the gang-rape ended shortly before she left in the car driven by Kim Roberts, the second dancer. Roberts called 911 as she was driving away at 12:53 a.m., according to police records. This new account leaves 50 minutes unaccounted between the end of the rape and the departure from the party.

The new statement runs contrary to time stamped photos of the party, which show the two women dancing between 12:00 and 12:04 a.m. in the living room of the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.

* In the latest statement, the woman says she arrived at the party at 11:10 p.m. on March 13 and that the rape began at 11:40 p.m. Her cell phone records show that she was on phone with her father and others up to one minute before the rape allegedly started.

* The woman now said her alleged assailants used multiple names.

In previous accounts, she said she was assaulted by three men named "Adam", "Brett" and "Matt." She has given conflicting descriptions of the three men and contradictory accounts of how they assaulted her.

In the Dec. 21 interview, she said for the first time that the players used multiple names. "Dan, Adam and Brett was used by Dave Evans," Wilson wrote. "Adam and Matt was also used by Reade Seligmann. She does not remember a name being used for Collin Finnerty or if he was called by a name."

* The accuser has changed her description of Evans. On April 4, she viewed a photograph of Evans and said it looked like one of her assailants, except that the assailant had a moustache. In the Dec. 21 statement, the woman said the assailant had a five o'clock shadow, not a moustache. Evans has a visible five o'clock shadow in the photograph.

* In her recent statement, the woman said that Evans stood in front of her and made her perform sex on him. In past statements, she said that Seligmann did this.

Nifong could not be reached immediately for comment today.

 

[R. Richard]

Lets look at the facts.
1) The only ecvidence against the three Duke lacrosse players is charges made by the alleged victim and some corroborating testimony from the other dancer.
2) There is no DNA evidence to show that any of the three Duke lacrosse players was involved with the alleged victim.
3) There are numerous cell phone, ATM records, etc. that indicate that at least one of the three Duke lacrosse players could not have been invovled in the alleged sexual assault.
4) There is no victim DNA in the bathroom where the alleged sexual assault took place.
5) Each of the victim and the other dancer have changed their stories several times.
6) Nifong conducted an illegal photo lineup.
7) Nifong the DA illegally withheld evidence favorable to the defense.

If the case were not white boys and a black girl, it would have been thrown out of court long ago.

Now, what is left is a 'victim' who has changed her story several times. The victim also has a history of mental illness. The other dancer has also changed her story more than once and is on probation for major theft of money. The witnesses are not believable. All of the hard evidence is on the side of the three Duke lacrosse players. What is staring the City of Durham, the county and the State of NC in the face is several big money lawsuits by the three Duke lacrosse players.

There is really only one realistic defense by the governments. That defense is to make sure that the investigation of Nifong wraps up about a week before the February 5 hearing. They then fire Nifong and the 'replacement DA' goes into court and says, "Judge, I don't know why the defendants are here. Only Mr. Nifong knows that and he is gone. I need more time to prepare a case." The Judge will refuse the time extension and dismiss the case. Then, when the three Duke lacrosse players file a lawsuit, the governments say, "It wasn't us, it was that no-account Mr. Nifong who did all of the bad things. Sue him."

Just a prediction.

 

[Huckleman2000]

...If the case were not white boys and a black girl, it would have been thrown out of court long ago...

You mean if it was black boys and a white girl, things would have gone better?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Lets look at the facts.
1) The only ecvidence against the three Duke lacrosse players is charges made by the alleged victim and some corroborating testimony from the other dancer.
2) There is no DNA evidence to show that any of the three Duke lacrosse players was involved with the alleged victim.
3) There are numerous cell phone, ATM records, etc. that indicate that at least one of the three Duke lacrosse players could not have been invovled in the alleged sexual assault.
4) There is no victim DNA in the bathroom where the alleged sexual assault took place.
5) Each of the victim and the other dancer have changed their stories several times.
6) Nifong conducted an illegal photo lineup.
7) Nifong the DA illegally withheld evidence favorable to the defense.

If the case were not white boys and a black girl, it would have been thrown out of court long ago.

Now, what is left is a 'victim' who has changed her story several times. The victim also has a history of mental illness. The other dancer has also changed her story more than once and is on probation for major theft of money. The witnesses are not believable. All of the hard evidence is on the side of the three Duke lacrosse players. What is staring the City of Durham, the county and the State of NC in the face is several big money lawsuits by the three Duke lacrosse players.

There is really only one realistic defense by the governments. That defense is to make sure that the investigation of Nifong wraps up about a week before the February 5 hearing. They then fire Nifong and the 'replacement DA' goes into court and says, "Judge, I don't know why the defendants are here. Only Mr. Nifong knows that and he is gone. I need more time to prepare a case." The Judge will refuse the time extension and dismiss the case. Then, when the three Duke lacrosse players file a lawsuit, the governments say, "It wasn't us, it was that no-account Mr. Nifong who did all of the bad things. Sue him."

Just a prediction.

Nifong is an elected official. He would have to be impeached or recalled. Perhaps if he were to be disbarred by the state bar of North Carolina, he would be declared ineligible to be a DA, and could be fired that way.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by R. Richard
...If the case were not white boys and a black girl, it would have been thrown out of court long ago...

You mean if it was black boys and a white girl, things would have gone better?

I don't know what you meant by "gone better". However, I believe that if it had been three black men and a white woman, and the evidence were as nonexistent as the evidence in this case and it had gotten as much publicity, it would have been thrown out. I am referring to now, in 2007, not in 1927.

I will always believe that Nifong made such a big flap about the case because he was facing a tough primary election, and wanted to gain black votes. He succeeded, but now he has to find a face-saving way to dismiss the charges. Personally, I think he and Durham County are in deep doo-doo.

 

[R. Richard]

You mean if it was black boys and a white girl, things would have gone better?

Nifong needed the black vote to get elected. He violated rules to get the case as far as it has gone. If the accused were black, he would have had no motive for violating the rules and alienating the black voters.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I see Nifong has now been removed from this case by the state AG. I rather expect that his replacement will immediately move to dismiss the case against all defendants. That's fine but I hope Nifong doesn't get away with his bullshit. Disbarment and impeachment and lawsuits are called for now.

 

[R. Richard]

As predicted, Nifong is no longer on the Dule lacrosse case. It turns out that, under North Carolina law, only the DA can request a special prosecutor. So, Nifong 'decided' to resign from the case. ["Yes, I have decided to resign from the case, now have your bully boy take the gun away from my head."] Nifong's resignation happened a bit sooner than I predicted, but it was obvious.

Now what will happen is a super straight arrow prosecutor will be handling the case. The new guy will meet with defense attorneys and the meeting will go something like this:

"Mr. prosecutor, you have no hard, physical evidence."
"At this time, we have no hard, physical evidence. Unless something shows up during the trial, it is a weak point in out case." [Under the law, the prosecution must reveal any and all hard evidence to the defense.]

"Mr. prosecutor, your indictment was obtained by an illegal photo lineup."
"It was not my photo lineup and I have no control over that."

"Mr. prosecutor, your only evidence is that testimony of two witnesses, one of who is the alleged victim. Both of your witnesses have changed their stories several time already."
"Yes, there are problems with the witnesses."

"Mr. prosecutor, we have hard, physical evidence that at least some of the accused were elsewhere when the alleged attack took place."
"It seems that our prosecution case is not a very good one. Perhaps we should dismiss the charges, assuming that you will not take action against the city, county and/or state." [Translation: "At least give us a large jar of vaseline."]

"Mr. prosecutor, our clients have been publically damaged. There will have to be some compensation."
"If you willl agree to restrict your claims to the city, count and/or state insurance coverage, I think we can agree to dismiss the charges. We are not concerned with Mr. Nifong." [Translation: "Nifong will not get a large jar of vaseline."]

The result of what is clearly a politically motivated prosecution is that three Duke students will now have a lifetime of living with being indicted for rape, sexual assault and kidnapping.

JMNTHO.

Duke lacrosse district attorney asks for special prosecutor in sexual assault case

January 12, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Facing ethics charges that could lead to his disbarment, the embattled district attorney in the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case asked the state attorney general Friday to appoint a special prosecutor to take over the case.

Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, said District Attorney Mike Nifong made the request in a letter.

Nifong's attorney insisted the veteran prosecutor was not running from a weak case and said Nifong was disappointed he would not be able to take the matter to trial. "He feels, as a result of the accusations against him, that he would be a distraction, and he wants to make sure the accuser receives a fair trial," attorney David Freedman told The Associated Press. "He still believes in the case. He just believes his continued presence would hurt her."

Nifong met with the accuser this week to tell her of his decision, Freedman said.

Attorney General Roy Cooper's office declined to comment on whether it would take the case. Officials planned to speak with reporters Saturday.

Last month, the North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with violating four rules of professional conduct for making misleading and inflammatory comments about the athletes under suspicion. The ethics charges carry penalties ranging from admonishment to removal from the bar.

It was not immediately clear what impact Nifong's decision would have on the troubled prosecution of Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans.

If the attorney general accepts the case, "then they would transfer the files over, and they would probably have a lot of interviews to do," said Peg Dorer, director of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. "It would probably stop things for a while, I imagine."

Under North Carolina law, only a district attorney can formally request a special prosecutor. The request can be made when there are potential conflicts of interest, when a case is particularly complex or when there are other unusual circumstances.

Once the ethics charges were filed, Nifong "had a conflict of interest with respect with the case," said Ron Sullivan, a criminal law professor at Yale University. "It's probably safe to say that Nifong felt that he couldn't be completely objective."

Legal experts and observers have railed against Nifong in recent weeks, calling his case pitfully weak and casting doubt on his chance of winning. Even longtime colleagues have questioned his judgment and integrity. "I think we're all delighted that we're going to have objective and competent prosecutors reviewing this case," said James P. Cooney III, an attorney for Seligmann. "We look forward to cooperating with those prosecutors fully and completely in bringing this prosecution to an end."

Wade Smith, an attorney for Finnerty, was also pleased and pledged to meet with any new prosecutors. "We will assist them in every way we can," he said.

From the case's earliest days, Nifong has led the investigation into allegations that a 28-year-old student at North Carolina Central University was gang-raped and beaten at a March 13 party thrown by Duke's highly ranked lacrosse team. The accuser had been hired as a stripper for the party.

Experts have said it appears Nifong's case is based only on the testimony of the accuser, who has told wildly different versions of the alleged assault. Her shifting account of that night led him to drop rape charges on Dec. 22.

The three players remain charged with sexual offense and kidnapping.

"I think justice is better served with a fresh set of eyes on this case," Sullivan said. "This way, the personality of the prosecuting attorney won't be a factor in the investigation."

 

[Seattle Zack]

And now it's not just this gold-digging slut stripper that we have to look at. Turns out the District Attorney Michael Nifong has resigned from the case and has now requested his own lawyer.

So, he's in hot water for making prejudicial (and blatently false) comments about the case. I'm sure re-election issues are tough to come by, but I bet Mr. Nifong wishes he'd chosen another one to hang his hat on.

 

[R. Richard]

And now it's not just this gold-digging slut stripper that we have to look at. Turns out the District Attorney Michael Nifong has resigned from the case and has now requested his own lawyer.

So, he's in hot water for making prejudicial (and blatently false) comments about the case. I'm sure re-election issues are tough to come by, but I bet Mr. Nifong wishes he'd chosen another one to hang his hat on.

The State of North Carolina has now taken over the case and Mr. Nifong is under investigation for a number of no-nos in the Duke lacrosse case.

I would guess that NC will drop the case as soon as practical.

As for Mr. Nifong, the defense has filed several motions. Among the defense motions is one to dismiss one of Mr. Nifong's motions because the handwriting in Mr. Nifong's motion is illegible. Boys and girls, prosecutor's motions in a rape, kidnapping and sexual assualt case are not normally filed in handwritten form. I can understand a court and even the state bar association not wanting to get involved in Nifong's trouble, but his own secretary???

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I read the latest on Reuters this morning. The facts as I can decern them:

1. The victim has changed her story again to fit the time frame better. However, her new time frame has her talking to her mother on her cell phone during the rape. Also 4 minutes after the rape she was photographed doing her strip routine. She's confused about when it happened?

2. Nyphong ordered DNA tests from a private firm. The tests did not bear out his case so he covered it up and withheld "scupitory evidence" from the defense. That's enough to have him disbarred.

3. The victim's story now says only two of the three raped her, but she's confused as to which two it was. Also all three seem to have at least three different names. I doubt if she had been raped she would be so confused.

4. Her partner now claims the whole thing was bullshit from the beginning and was a plot hatched by the victim to hold up the "purps" for $$$.

And Nyphong still wanted to go ahead with the case?

 

[Pure]

you guys should start a thread on the sufferings of white jocks at expensive university.

 

[R. Richard]

you guys should start a thread on the sufferings of white jocks at expensive university.

Pure, all I can tell you is to wait until you find yourself falsely accused of a serious crime. [The Duke lacrosse guys have been falsely accused, since the accuser has offered several different stories and many of the details are incompatible.] Once you have been falsely accused of a crime and you get a prosecutor who doesn't follow the rules, you have an uphill strugle to prove your innocence. [It is no longer innocent until proven guilty, it is then gulity until proven innocent.]

I am not so much concerned about the suffering of the "white jocks at expensive university." My real conern is with the citizens of NC who will be paying the "white jocks at expensive university" a lot of money once the non-case collapses.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

A Dirty Game
The Duke "rape" case unravels.

BY STUART TAYLOR JR. AND KC JOHNSON
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 1:00 p.m. EST

It's no secret that hugely disproportionate numbers of the innocent people oppressed by abusive prosecutors and police in this country are African-Americans. Now one of the most outrageous cases of law-enforcement abuse is unfolding in Durham, N.C., home of the Duke lacrosse case. And African-Americans are leading the cheers for the oppressors. Why? The poison of identity politics, plus class hatred of the prosecutor's three main victims, well-off white men falsely accused of rape by an unstable black "exotic dancer," and a deeply dishonest district attorney.

Last spring, Durham D.A. Michael Nifong, who is white, was facing a primary in a racially divided electorate. He was badly behind and out of campaign money, excepting almost $30,000 in loans from his personal funds. Then came the accuser's allegations. Mr. Nifong responded by assuming control of the police investigation and making racially inflammatory statements pronouncing the Duke lacrosse players guilty of rape. Even as evidence of their innocence accumulated, he brought rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges that fed the racial resentments he had stoked. The black vote put him over the top in both the May 2 primary and the Nov. 7 general election.

Black leaders--including Durham Mayor Bill Bell, the appallingly demagogic North Carolina NAACP and others--should know better. So should the powerful, identity-politics-obsessed hard left of Duke's own faculty, 88 of whom issued a statement in April saying "thank you" to protesters who had branded the players rapists. And so should the media, most of which gleefully joined the clamor last spring.





It has been clear for many months that the rape claim is almost surely a lie. But not until the DA's dramatic dismissal last Friday of the rape (but not the sexual assault and kidnapping) charges did Mr. Nifong enablers such as the New York Times and Duke President Richard Brodhead begin distancing themselves from his oppression of three innocent young men.
How can we be confident that the charges are false? Let us count the ways: The police who interviewed the accuser after she left the March 13-14 lacrosse team party where she and another woman had performed as strippers found her rape charge incredible, and for good reason. She said nothing about rape to three cops and two others during the first 90 minutes after the party. Only when being involuntarily confined in a mental health facility did she mention rape. This predictably got her released to the Duke emergency room for a rape workup, whereupon she recanted the rape charge.

Then she re-recanted, offering a ludicrous parade of wildly implausible and mutually contradictory stories of being gang-raped by 20, five, four, three or two lacrosse players, with the other stripper assisting the rapists in some versions. After settling on three rapists, the accuser gave police vague descriptions and could not identify as a rapist any of the 36 lacrosse players whose photos she viewed on March 16 and 21. These included two eventual defendants: Dave Evans, whom she did not recognize at all, and Reade Seligmann, whom she was "70%" sure she had seen at the party, but not as a rapist.

All of the 40-odd other people at the party have contradicted every important part of the accuser's various accounts. The second stripper called the rape claim a "crock" and said they had been apart less than five minutes. The accuser told doctors she was drunk and on the muscle relaxant Flexeril, whose side effects include badly impaired judgment when taken with alcohol. She has a history of narcotic abuse and bipolar disorder, a mental illness marked by wild mood swings from mania to depression, and spent a week in a mental hospital in 2005.

In court filings last week, even Mr. Nifong conceded that, contrary to his claims since March, medical records show no physical evidence of rape--let alone injuries consistent with the accuser's April claim of being beaten, kicked, strangled and raped anally, orally and vaginally by three men in a small bathroom for 30 minutes. Above all, DNA tests by state and private labs, which Mr. Nifong's office had said would "immediately rule out any innocent persons," did just that. They found no lacrosse player's DNA anywhere on or in the accuser and none of her DNA in the bathroom.

Yet two weeks ago we learned--only because dogged defense lawyers cracked a prosecutorial conspiracy to hide evidence of innocence--that the private lab did find the DNA of "multiple males" in swabs of the accuser's pubic hair, panties, and rear after the supposed rape. None of this DNA matched any lacrosse player.

After the first two photo sessions, it was clear that the accuser had no idea what her rapists (if any) looked like. By the end of March, it should have been clear to any prosecutor that there probably had been no rape at all. But Mr. Nifong had driven the black community into a rage with dozens of guilt-presuming, race-baiting attacks on the lacrosse players like this one, on March 27: "The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race, was totally abhorrent."

Such statements flagrantly violated North Carolina ethical rules requiring prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." They also poured gasoline on the flames of racial rage.





Black leaders and voters made it clear that Mr. Nifong's only chance of winning the primary was to put his money where his mouth was by indicting the lacrosse players. He closed his door to defense lawyers offering evidence of innocence and rigged a multiple-choice test with no wrong answers. On March 31, he instructed police to conduct a third photo ID lineup, and to show the accuser (and tell her that she was being shown) photos of only the 46 white lacrosse players.
On April 4, when this third photo-ID process took place, the message to the accuser was, effectively: Pick three, any three. At random, if you like. You can't go wrong. This setup trashed the defendants' constitutional due process rights and specific Durham, state, and federal principles for identification procedures. To test the reliability of often-mistaken eyewitness ID's, these principles require showing at least five "fillers" (non-suspects) with each suspect and telling the witness that the lineup may or may not include a suspect. Mr. Nifong recently defended his procedure through word games, asking, "What is a lineup?"

The accuser's responses demonstrated her unreliability in ways too numerous to detail here. For one, she picked four as rapists. For another, the only player she twice identified with 100% certainty as attending the party could prove he was in Raleigh that night. But the accuser gave Mr. Nifong enough to obtain three indictments from a rubber-stamp grand jury. When he went to the grand jury, Mr. Nifong knew that the DNA results were inconsistent with the rape allegation. But he pressed ahead with the charge until the defense exposed his efforts to conceal the forensic evidence. Then he abruptly changed his theory of the crime.

The case is now unraveling so rapidly as to be ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live." Mr. Nifong is on his way to being disbarred, unless North Carolina's legal establishment wants to be held up to national scorn. He faces lawsuits and at least a remote risk of federal criminal investigation. As for Durham's black leaders, and many in the media, and much of Duke's faculty, history will mark them down as enablers of abusive, dishonest law enforcement tactics. They will share responsibility for the continued use of such tactics, mainly against black people, after the Duke lacrosse players' innocence has become manifest to all serious people and the spotlight has moved on.

Mr. Taylor, a National Journal columnist and Newsweek contributor, and Mr. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, are writing a book about the Duke case.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The Michael Nifong Scandal
The Duke rape hoax is redolent of past decades' phony child-abuse cases.

Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

No one could have imagined, when the story began last March, how soon and completely that bit of shorthand--"the Duke University scandal"--would be transformed.

Scarcely 10 months after, the term is now almost universally understood as a reference to the operations of Michael Nifong, the Durham County district attorney (pictured nearby), whose abandonment of all semblance of concern about the merits of the rape and assault accusations against three Duke University students was obvious from the first. So was his abundant confidence while broadcasting comments on the guilt of the accused. He seemed a man immune to concerns for appearances as he raced about expounding on the case against the accused lacrosse players and calling them hooligans. He would hear nothing by way of concern from Duke administrators (seven months into this affair, the university president did find an opportunity to mention the accused students' right to a presumption of innocence)--and certainly none from the politically progressive quarters of the Duke faculty who lent their names to an impassioned ad thanking everyone who had come out to march in protest against the rape and assault of the exotic dancer; 88 faculty members signed it, among them such Duke luminaries as Alice Kaplan, author and student of fascism, and Frank Lentricchia, literary critic.

Unable to take part in the ad signing, Duke's administrators nonetheless found ways to identify with its spirit. Soon after news broke of the Duke athletes' alleged brutish sex crimes against a black woman, the administration undertook a well-publicized campaign targeting the entire lacrosse team for offensive behavior. President Richard Brodhead was, it seems, barely able to recover from the shock of his discovery that a party thrown by male jocks could occasion heavy drinking. And related loutish behavior. Not to mention a stripper. Lacrosse was suspended for the season, and the team coach, Mike Pressler, was shortly after forced to resign. Mr. Brodhead in due course reinstated the team, but on probation, and with conditions, i.e., no underage drinking and disorderly conduct, and no harassment. The members of other Duke organizations, sports teams included, which had sponsored parties where alcohol flowed freely and which had featured strippers--an informal count reveals at least 20 known to have done so--no doubt understood that they faced no similar disciplinary action. The reason for the moral-cleansing program devised for the lacrosse team could scarcely have been missed.

Mr. Nifong's confidence that he had nothing to fear from establishment opinion or from the leaders of the great university as he bounded about making hash of the rules of justice--prime among them the accused's right to a presumption of innocence--proved justified. And might have remained so longer but for the catastrophic effects of the accuser's unraveling stories.

Mr. Nifong is no anomaly--merely a product of the political times, a prosecutor who has absorbed all the clues about the sanctified status now accorded charges involving rape, child sex-abuse and accusations of racism. Which has in turn ensured their transformation into weapons of unequalled power. Like others before him, the DA quickly grasped the career possibilities open to him with such a case and proceeded accordingly--denouncing racism, and the rape and assault of a helpless black woman, and the Duke athletes guilty of these crimes in every media interview available to him (and they were many).





For all the public shock and fury over his behavior, there is little that is new or strange about Mr. Nifong. We have seen the likes of this district attorney, uninterested in proofs of innocence, willing to suppress any he found, many times in the busy army of prosecutors claiming to have found evidence of rampant child abuse in nursery schools and other child-care centers around the country in the 1980s and throughout most of the '90s. They built case after headline-making case charging the mass molestation of small children, and managed to convict scores of innocent Americans on the basis of testimony no rational mind could credit. Law officers who regularly violated requirements of due process in their effort to obtain a conviction, they grasped the special advantage that was theirs: that for a prosecutor dealing with molestation, and wearing the mantle of avenger, there was no such thing as excess, no limits to what could be said of the accused. In court, rules could be bent, any charges presented, and nonexistent medical evidence proclaimed as proof positive of the accusation.
In his role of avenger of a young black woman alleged to have been brutalized by white males, Mr. Nifong proceeded with similar assurance. His was a crusade. Who but enemies of the good would object? Confronted with hard questions about his evidence, whether from the defense or the press, Mr. Nifong answered that these challenges were all designed to intimidate the rape victim. More than once the DA suggested, as criticisms of his case multiplied, that he was himself a victim of the press. He could have had little complaint, last summer, about the New York Times, which provided its own reports on the Duke story. It maintained that that the DA's case had been distorted by the defense and that there was, in fact, a body of evidence that supported the decision to take the case to a jury. A close study of this work's wondrous logic, and of its body of evidence, should provide rich material for students of the press for years to come.

The jury to which Mr. Nifong played--the black population of Durham--duly helped re-elect him. This could not prevent his case of rape and abuse against the three Duke students from coming undone, thanks in part to his own heedless behavior but mainly to the accusing dancer herself, whose shifting stories and checkered past could not be hidden.

Mr. Nifong had, of course, nothing like the advantages of nursery school prosecutors: endearing 4- and 5-year-old witnesses clutching teddy bears, who came to court to recite lies they had been cajoled into inventing, about how the accused had raped and stabbed them, cut off the legs of animals--the kinds of charges mounted, against elderly Violet Amirault of Massachusetts and her adult children Cheryl and Gerald, proprietors of the respected Fells Acres Day School. Many like them were caught up in the era's whirlwind of accusation and sensational trials invariably leading to conviction, on which ambitious prosecutors built careers. Almost all those cases would ultimately be thrown out by appeals courts, most of the time not before those convicted had served long years and paid with the ruin of their lives.

Mr. Nifong's case has come undone long before any trial, fortunately for the three Duke students charged. They have had, nevertheless, a powerful taste of what it means to have been named and despised as perpetrators of abhorrent sexual crimes. I could go to prison for 30 years, Reade Seligmann, one of the accused, told the late Ed Bradley during a "60 Minutes" interview last October--and "for something that never happened"

Neither Mr. Seligman nor the other accused Duke students will ever have to contend with a punishment like the one meted out to Gerald Amirault, who was sentenced to a 30- to 40-year term for something that never happened--atrocious sex crimes that never took place, of which there was no physical evidence, or anything resembling a credible allegation. What did it matter that the child's testimony that resulted in Gerald's conviction had claimed rape with a large butcher's knife--one that had magically left not the slightest injury? The jury's most important duty was, the prosecutors informed them, to believe the children and show that they honored their testimony. The same young witness also testified that Gerald was accompanied by a green, silver and yellow robot, R2-D2, from "Star Wars."

What did it matter, either, that special judicial hearings about the Amiraults' prosecution had concluded that it was a travesty, that a tough panel of former prosecutors, the Governor's Board of Pardons, had virtually declared Gerald Amirault innocent and voted for commutation of his sentence--or that he was finally granted parole nearly three years ago, after nearly 18 years' imprisonment? He was almost immediately classified by Massachusetts's Sex Offenders Registry Board as a Level 3 offender. The kind, that is, deemed the most dangerous and most likely to re-offend. This bizarre classification, the board made clear, had to do with the number of counts of sex abuse charged to him--and the fact, too, that he continued to deny guilt. He now has to wear a large tracking device around his ankle, and obey a curfew confining him to the house from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day. He has, not surprisingly, been unable to find a job. He is sustained, as ever, by the unstinting devotion of his family, and he grieves now mainly for the loss of the chance he had dreamed of in prison--of earning a salary and finally lightening the burden his wife had carried, uncomplaining and alone, during his years in prison. (He has recently been advised of pending legislation that will require him to pay $10 a day for the global positioning tag on his leg, that tracks him.)





The accused Duke students can be grateful that the case against them has collapsed, and that Mr. Nifong now confronts a serious ethics complaint filed by the North Carolina State Bar. They will never have to face anything like the malignant force which descended on the happy and ambitious Amiraults in 1984, and turned their lives to dust. But Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty have this year had a look into an abyss that has claimed many others, and that is never less than terrorizing. It is a piece of their Duke education they are unlikely to forget.




Correction: Duke President Richard Brodhead did not mention the accused students' right to a presumption of innocence only seven months after the alleged rape. He included such references several times in early public comments on this affair.

 

[Retrieval]

The accused should sue Nifong and leave him with nothing.
That'll be a worse punishment then anything the Government will do to him.

 

[Pure]

In case anyone is interested, the story, above, "The Michael Nifong Scandal" is a column by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Jan 11, Wall Street Journal. the url is:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/?id=110009507

the comparison of the duke boys to mr amirault who was falsely convicted and served 18 years for child molestation seems a bit forced.

 

[cloudy]

...and the fact that cops and prosecutors could give a rat's ass if a defendant is guilty, and will lie, cheat, and do anything at all in the pursuit of the almighty conviction is news how?

 

[Pure]

'cuz three nice white boys--possibly-- are the victims? all their teammates say nothing happened and surely they speak the truth.

 

[Boxlicker101]

The accused should sue Nifong and leave him with nothing.
That'll be a worse punishment then anything the Government will do to him.

They may not be able to sue him. There are limitations on what actions can be taken against an elected official who is acting in his official capacity. It may be possible to get around this if it can be shown that his actions were intended to benefit him personally, such as winning an election.

Of course, Pure thinks these guys should be locked up for a long time anyhow. From time to time, white people have done evil to black people, (black people sometimes do evil deeds to white people, but never mind that) and he thinks these guys, even though innocent, should pay for what others have done.

I know, but his idea doesn't make any sense to me either.

 

[Boxlicker101]

'cuz three nice white boys--possibly-- are the victims? all their teammates say nothing happened and surely they speak the truth.

The "teammate" of the accuser also says nothing happened. Is there any reason to doubt her?

 

[Boxlicker101]

In case anyone is interested, the story, above, "The Michael Nifong Scandal" is a column by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Jan 11, Wall Street Journal. the url is:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/?id=110009507

the comparison of the duke boys to mr amirault who was falsely convicted and served 18 years for child molestation seems a bit forced.

I don't see much forced about it. In the one case, the ambitious prosecutor was able to get an obviously innocent person locked up for a long time, even with no valid evidence. In this case, the prosecutor tried, but was thwarted. The lack of success is the only real difference.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

...and the fact that cops and prosecutors could give a rat's ass if a defendant is guilty, and will lie, cheat, and do anything at all in the pursuit of the almighty conviction is news how?

This case was about that kind of corruption in the service of purely crass political purposes. The tactic was made effective by the poison of identity politics, and class hatred of the prosecutor's three main victims - well-off white men. Yes, that last an interesting twist, and it's also interesting how some who share that particular class hatred come right up to the edge of justifying the corruption, or at the very least sneering at those who decry it.

 

[Pure]

no doubt, on roxanne's analysis the civil right mvt brought evil 'identity politics' to the Old South.

it would be interesting to see how many column inches the Wall Street Journal has devoted to race-related injustices over, say the last 40 years.

why do i have the feeling the WSJ is gearing up to defend another, possibly 'set up' and beleauguered white male, Scooter Libby?

 

[R. Richard]

...and the fact that cops and prosecutors could give a rat's ass if a defendant is guilty, and will lie, cheat, and do anything at all in the pursuit of the almighty conviction is news how?

It isn't news to me. Unfortunately, it is news to too many people.