Bad News for Duke

[cjwilhelmi]

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - It's been a long summer for Duke athletics director Joe Alleva.

For months he endured the bad headlines, from with rape charges against three lacrosse players in March to former basketball star J.J. Redick's drunken-driving charges in June, followed by Alleva's own injury in a boating accident in which his son was charged.

Still, he set an optimistic tone Wednesday as he looked toward the lacrosse program's fresh start under new coach John Danowski and back at the way the university dealt with the rape case.

"I think that Duke has handled it really, really well," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Given all the facts that we had as we were going along, I think we made the right decisions. I've said this numerous times and I'll say it forever: we are going to be better because of this."

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/5879416

[Sonny]

DURHAM, N.C. There likely won't be any cameras and other electronic media in the courtroom for pre-trial hearings in the Duke lacrosse case, although there's been no decision yet about the trial.

The decision comes after an hourlong meeting of attorneys on both sides and Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith the Third, who will preside over all matters pertaining to the criminal case.

LINK:
http://www.fox21.com/Global/story.asp?S ... 1&nav=2KPp

[mnref]

The New York Times just posted a fairly extensive story on the case.

Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details but No Answers

DURHAM, N.C. — On March 21, a week after an African-American woman charged that she had been raped by three white Duke University lacrosse players, the police sergeant supervising the investigation met with the sexual-assault nurse who had examined the woman in the emergency room. The sergeant, Mark D. Gottlieb, reviewed the medical report, which did not say much: some swelling, no visible bruises.

But the sergeant’s case notes also recount what the nurse told him in response to his questions: that the woman appeared to be in so much pain that it took “an extended period of time” to examine her, and that the “blunt force trauma” seen in the examination “was consistent with the sexual assault that was alleged by the victim.”

About a week later, the sergeant met with the Durham County district attorney to go over the case. For several days, the prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, had been beseeching Duke lacrosse players to break their “stonewall of silence” about what had happened at a team party on March 13. Now, he turned up the pressure, telling Fox News that there was “no doubt in my mind that she was raped.”

Read the whole story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/us/25duke.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[Sonny]

Duke students organize to oust Nifong over lacrosse case

DURHAM, N.C. -- Two students at Duke University have launched a voter registration drive to oust Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong.

Emily Wygod and Christiane Regelbrugge, both juniors on opposite sides of the political spectrum, said they were outraged by Nifong's handling of the high-profile rape case against three members of the Duke men's lacrosse team.

"The people that Durham residents elect need to be held accountable to treat every resident fairly," said Regelbrugge, an economics major from Charlotte.

Nifong has been criticized for the way he handled allegations by an exotic dancer who said she was raped during a team party for Duke lacrosse players earlier this year, including public statements he made before filing criminal charges against three players.

Wygod and Regelbrugge received 35 completed registration forms after handing out 300 forms on campus Monday. They hope to register more than 2,000 students by Oct. 13, the registration deadline for the November elections.

LINK:
http://dwb.newsobserver.com/news/ncwire ... 3906c.html

[StrykerFSU]

An eye opening rebuttal to the NYT piece...

http://www.slate.com/id/2148546/nav/tap1/

Witness for the Prosecution?The New York Times is still victimizing innocent Dukies.
By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Imagine you are the world's most powerful newspaper and you have invested your credibility in yet another story line that is falling apart, crumbling as inexorably as Jayson Blair's fabrications and the flawed reporting on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD. What to do?

If you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

[Sonny]

An eye opening rebuttal to the NYT piece...

http://www.slate.com/id/2148546/nav/tap1/

Witness for the Prosecution?The New York Times is still victimizing innocent Dukies.
By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Imagine you are the world's most powerful newspaper and you have invested your credibility in yet another story line that is falling apart, crumbling as inexorably as Jayson Blair's fabrications and the flawed reporting on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD. What to do?

If you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

I'd say it was eye-opening:

The Wilson-Glater piece highlights every superficially incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence, and reports hotly disputed statements by not-very-credible police officers and the mentally unstable accuser as if they were established facts. With comical credulity, it features as its centerpiece a leaked, transparently contrived, 33-page police sergeant's memo that seeks to paper over some of the most obvious holes in the prosecution's evidence.

This memo was concocted from memory, nearly four months after the underlying witness interviews, by Durham police Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the lead investigator. Gottlieb says he took no contemporaneous notes, an inexplicable and indefensible police practice. Gottlieb had drawn fire before the alleged Duke rape—perhaps unbeknownst to the Times—as a Dukie-basher who reveled in throwing kids into jail for petty drinking infractions, noise violations, and the like, sometimes with violent criminals as cellmates.

[Rob Graff]

Compare/Contrast the following two situations....


1. Defendant confesses to crime, defendant has history of criminal behavior, defendant has intimate knowledge of crime scene details known (supposedly) only to perpetrator and police, defendant's family has only circumstantial alibi for criminal's whereabouts during crime (no pictures, no electronic evidence), BUT defendant's DNA doesn't match DNA at crime scene. RESULT - Dropping of all charges.

vs.

2. Defendants deny involvement in alleged crime, defendants (or at least some) can provide electronic evidence that provides alibi, defendants (or at least some) can provide witness evidence that casts doubt on accuser's timeline, there appears to be widespread prosecutorial and police errors in handling of case AND defendants DNA testing doesn't match that found on victim: RESULT - DA decides to go forward with charges.

[SMorrison]

I was thinking the same thing.

[StrykerFSU]

Durham Police Department Sergeant Mark Gottlieb--a lead investigator in the rape case against members of the 2005-06 men's lacrosse team--has a checkered past with Duke students.

http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2006/09/11/News/Students.Criticize.Lax.Cops.Behavior-2265465.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dukechronicle.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

You may remember Sergeant Gottlieb as the police officer who was able to recall the details of his interviews in this case four months later without taking any notes. The New York Times, all the news that's fit to omit.

[laxfan25]

Here's a very good, if a bit high-brow article on Duke. Good reading, good background on the roots of the incident and how it all exploded, and on the Duke culture.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/a ... 904fa_fact

[Gvlax]

I was flipping through the channels this morning and I passed courttv. I saw a commecrial showing that part of the Duke case on Oct 26 or 27, cant remember, was going to be aired on courttv. It was a commercial showing what cases was going to be aired. Has anyone else seen this?

[Sonny]

I've heard that 60 Minutes will be running a report on the Duke Lacrosse Case on October 15th.

[Sonny]

Joseph Neff, Staff Writer
Psychologists Gary Wells and Brian Cutler helped design a procedure in 2003 for witnesses to identify crime suspects. Police departments across North Carolina embraced the procedure. The Durham Police Department adopted it almost word- for-word in February.

The conduct of the Durham police in the Duke lacrosse case, however, is a case study in violating the new policy, the psychologists said. And as a result, police have injected doubt into a woman's selection of three lacrosse players whom she accused of rape.

Police violated two fundamental rules for running an identification procedure, said Wells, a professor at Iowa State University, and Cutler, a professor at UNC-Charlotte.

First, the psychologists said, police did not have an independent investigator administer the process. Second, they neglected to include photos of nonsuspects, known as fillers.

The procedures used can yield only uncertain or misleading results, Wells said, and that's bad for everyone.

If the woman was raped, Wells said, the botched lineups undermine the prosecution and the search for justice.

LINK:
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/496369.html

[StrykerFSU]

The dancing partner of the woman who accuses three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her refutes a key part of her partner’s account of the alleged crime.

Kim Roberts, who danced at the same party where the alleged rape took place, makes the revelation in an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley this Sunday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/11/60minutes/main2082140.shtml

I'll be setting my DVR for this.

[TexOle]

This week's 60 Minutes is supposed to be fully devoted to the Duke Lacrosse issue. Apparently it is supposed to be more on the pro Duke side.