These strippers and DA by making and aiding and abetting false claims of rape, not only hurt those falsely accused, but also hurt real victims of rape. These Duke women should be commended for their courage.

Many feminist and racists overlook the injustices done to these innocent boys. Justice will prevail only if boys and fair-minded people take a strong stand against the false accusations of rape. These strippers deserve prison and DA Mike Nifong needs to face a federal grand jury for his part played in this malicious prosecution.

The Women’s LAX should be commended for their courage in supporting the men who had their reputations destroyed by a politically motivated district attorney and the accusation of one woman with severe integrity issues.

There are many conflicting research that show false claims of rape range from 12% to 50% of all rape claims, yet we continue to live in an era where too many believe that a claim of rape should go uncontested.

In the Duke rape accusation, the accuser and her account of events have serious integrity issues to warrant whether a crime actually occurred. No DNA evidence is linked to any of the lacrosse team, but the absolute void of DNA at the crime scene suggests the accuser is lying.

There is no way three drunken men, inside an enclosed bathroom with a woman violently clawing and fighting would leave absolutely no DNA behind at the alleged crime scene. Where’s her tears, sweat, saliva, and other bodily fluids? If condoms were used, were are the condoms, wrappers, boxes or evidence of lubricant on or in the alleged victim? The scene described by the alleged victim is one of violence and chaos, yet even in the most calm and best of situation, anyone who has ever had sex with a condom knows that there is no way to remove a condom without touching DNA evidence from either yourself or partner.

Earl Holt was very generous in listing the misdemeanor offenses shared by some of the young men on the lacrosse team, yet avoided fairness by completely ignoring the more serious criminal history of the accuser, which puts Mr. Holt’s integrity into question.

All members of the men’s lacrosse team were publicly harassed by many racist and sexist political groups fueled by the irresponsible behavior of a district attorney with an agenda. These boys became targets just for being on the lacrosse team, and anyone who spoke in their defense were immediately drowned out and themselves became targets.

There is enough evidence to suggest that the crime in question never happened. The Duke women’s lacrosse team knew that by taking a stand against false accusations would make them targets; thus their actions were nothing less than commendable and courageous.

False claims of rape do not only destroy the reputations of innocent young men and their families, it hurts real victims of rape. By taking a stand, these Duke women support all victims of this heinous crime – not only the men of the lacrosse team, but also every real victim of rape.

According to Newsweek, the young man at NCCU said that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted, “whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past.”

This is the ugly attitude that is casting a cloud over this whole case. More important, this collective guilt and collective revenge attitude has for years been poisoning race relations in this country.

It has torn apart other countries around the world, from the Balkans to Sri Lanka to Rwanda. Nor is there any reason to think that the United States is exempt from such polarization.

At one time, the black civil rights leadership aimed at putting an end to racism, and especially to the perversion of the law to convict people because of their race, regardless of guilt or innocence.

Today, this young man at NCCU represents the culmination of a new racist trend promoted by current black “leaders” to make group entitlements paramount, including seeking group revenge rather than individual justice in courts of law.

This attitude poisoned the O.J. Simpson case and it is now polarizing reactions to the Duke University case. Racial polarization is a dangerous game, especially dangerous for minorities in the long run.

Tragically, the way the Duke case is being handled, it looks as if District Attorney Michael Nifong is pandering to these ugly feelings. Legal experts seem baffled as to why he is proceeding in the way that he is because it is hard to explain legally.

It is not hard to explain politically, however. The District Attorney may well owe his recent election victory to having tapped into the kinds of racial resentments expressed by the young man at North Carolina Central University.

Now Mr. Nifong is riding a tiger and cannot safely get off. His bet best may be to let this case drag on until it fizzles out, long after the media have lost interest. His extraordinary postponement of the trial for a year suggests he understands that.

In the meantime, the taxi driver who provided the first airtight alibi for one of the accused Duke lacrosse players has been picked up by the police on a flimsy, three-year-old charge, supposedly about shoplifting. He was held for five hours for questioning — reportedly not about shoplifting, but about the Duke rape charges.

Does this smell to high heaven or what?

The taxi driver himself is not accused of shoplifting. But two women who were passengers in his cab were. Since when are taxi drivers held responsible for what their passengers did before or after being in their cab?

What purpose can this harassing of the taxi driver serve? His account of what happened in the Duke rape case has already been corroborated by a surveillance camera at the bank to which he took one of the lacrosse players, as well as by other time-stamped records indicating where his passenger was during the time when he was supposed to be raping a stripper.

If the prosecution cannot discredit the taxi driver’s statement in a court of law, what can they gain by harassing him? One thing they can gain could be to at least stop the cabbie from going on television again to repeat what he has said before.

If nothing else, the harassment can serve as a warning to anybody else who might feel like coming forward with testimony that undermines the prosecution’s case.

Is this America or some banana republic?

Some people in the media saw this case from day one as a matter of taking sides rather than seeking the truth. They want to be on the politically correct side — for a black woman against white men — and the facts be damned.

If such attitudes prevail, we will indeed become a banana republic. Or worse.

On Monday, May 15, a Durham County grand jury handed up a third indictment in the nothing-short-of-notorious Duke rape case. This latest indictment charges the lacrosse team’s captain, David Evans, with first-degree rape, first-degree sexual assault, and first-degree kidnapping.

The charges against Evans are identical to those handed up last month against fellow players Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. Still, this final indictment does come as a bit of surprise. As I detailed in a prior column, the cases against Seligmann and Finnerty appear quite weak. As I’ll discuss in this column, the case against Evans may be even shakier. It’s true that the grand jury did return indictments against Evans, and previously against the other two. It’s also true that the District Attorney, Mike Nifong, is forging ahead — seemingly undeterred.

But Nifong’s judgment has been poor all along- and the old adage that a D.A. can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich” shouldn’t be forgotten. Without defense attorneys there to test the prosecutor’s evidence via the invaluable process of cross-examination, weak evidence can be made to look pretty convincing. It’s not the grand jury’s fault; it’s just the reality that if you only hear one side, you tend to believe it.
At least a ham sandwich has some weight to it. As I’ll explain in this column, the Evans indictment - like the two that preceded it - does not. The very evidence that may have convinced the grand jury - accuser identification and new DNA evidence - is just the kind that will ultimately fall apart when defense attorneys finally do get to cross-examine the witnesses presenting it.

The Mounting Evidence in Favor of Defendants’ Innocence

All three defendants in the Duke lacrosse case have unfailingly and repeatedly proclaimed their innocence - Evans doing so most eloquently, on behalf of all three men, in a brief public comment following his being formally charged.

In fact, in a highly unusual move, newly indicted defendant Evans went to so far as to volunteer to take a lie detector test at the direction of law enforcement. When the D.A. refused, Evans enlisted a top polygrapher to administer the test anyway. He passed.

Thus far, the defense camp has come forward with a host of seemingly reliable, exculpatory evidence -evidence that will be admissible in court, and that is likely to sway a jury. I’m not talking about, maybe, kinda, sorta, or could be, exculpatory evidence either. I’m talking about weighty evidence - receipts, photos, phone records, alibi witnesses, an absence of DNA, and now actual DNA - that directly supports the defendants’ claims of innocence.

A plethora of proof supporting a defendant’s claim of innocence - not just the government’s failure to carry its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt — is a rare pearl in the practice of criminal defense. It should cause the D.A. to reassess his case.

The Problems with the Accuser’s “Identification” of Evans

In my prior columns, I discussed the problems with evidence against Seligmann - who has strong evidence supporting an alibi - and, to a lesser extent, against Finnerty. The evidence against Evans is also weak, maybe even more so.

Evans reportedly was not initially indicted, with the other two, because the accuser couldn’t identify him with certainty (only with “90 percent certainty,” in her words) from a photo lineup. Ten percent doubt sounds like a lot like reasonable doubt to me - and perhaps, at least initially, it sounded that way to D.A. Nifong too. And if the accuser herself has reasonable doubt, how can a prosecution go forward?

The accuser’s lack of certainty is even more worrisome in light of the fact that the photo lineup was grossly biased. It included only Duke lacrosse players - meaning that the accuser had no choice but to select a Duke lacrosse player if she were to select anyone at all. And this photo lineup was apparently the sole means of identification for all three defendants.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, the accuser is reported to have said that Evans’s photo “looks just like [one of my assailants] without the mustache.” According to Evans’s defense lawyer, Evans has never worn a mustache. And party photos support this contention.

For all these reasons, the accuser’s identification testimony is likely to be destroyed upon cross-examination.

The Problems with the New DNA Evidence

Besides the accuser’s testimony, prosecutors also presented to the grand jury the results of a second round of DNA testing.
Readers may recall that the first round of DNA testing was, if anything, exculpatory: There was no DNA match whatsoever linking any of the forty-six lacrosse players whose DNA was taken, to the accuser.
Following those results, D.A. Nifong reportedly hired a private lab to re-test certain samples. In so doing, the new lab found a possible connection between defendant Evans and the accuser’s discarded fake fingernail, found in the trash bin inside the bathroom.

To begin, it’s awfully odd that the fake fingernail found its way into the trash bin in the first place, if a rape really occurred, and if the fake fingernail broke off during the victim’s struggle, as she claims. No victim would clean up after her accusers; she would flee the scene. And if a culprit had the presence of mind to clean up — realizing that the fake fingernail might be evidence against him — surely he wouldn’t just drop it in the trash can in the very room where the rape occurred, for police to easily find.

Significantly, too, defense attorneys claim the DNA material was found on the front of the nail — not on the underside, where it would logically have lodged had the accuser scratched and clawed at her attackers as she claims.

But even putting these points aside, the DNA connection to Evans is weak. To begin, this isn’t remotely close to the kind of “match” you may be familiar with from CSI - the kind where the odds of a false positive are infinitesimally small. Indeed, “match” here is a misnomer. All that can be said is that the DNA is “consistent” with DNA voluntarily supplied early on by Evans.

Shocking? Hardly. Evans lived in the house, and therefore may have, from time to time, blown his nose, swabbed an ear, or otherwise disposed of DNA-laden waste into that very trashcan.

Moreover, it was reportedly Evans himself who fished the fake nail from the garbage, voluntarily handing it over to police and maybe, just maybe, shedding some skin cells in the process.

As for direct evidence of sex, there is none; none from any of the forty lacrosse players, that is.

While the second round of DNA testing proved that semen was found inside the accusers vaginal cavity, spokespersons close to the defense are confident the source of the semen is the accuser’s own boyfriend.
In sum, after cross-examination, there is little, if any, chance that a jury will give weight to this DNA evidence. It clashes with the accuser’s own story, and it’s as fully consistent with Evans’s innocence as it is with his guilt.

The D.A.’s Unusual Hostility to Even Viewing Defense Evidence

Defense lawyers have repeatedly implored District Attorney Nifong to meet with them and to examine the evidence that favors the defendants. But Nifong has said no - with an attitude that boils down to, “Talk to the hand.”

That’s unusual. More often than not, prosecutors are quite open to exchanging - or at least being entertained by - the defense’s evidence. After all, it provides them with a valuable preview of what the defense’s case may ultimately look like in court. Prosecutors are legally required to turn over certain evidence to the defense, but no obligation runs the other way. And since the defense goes second, prosecutors may not be able to effectively counter defense “surprises.”

For prosecutors, meeting with the defense is thus typically a win-win situation: If they are convinced to drop the case, then that’s embarrassing - but far less than as a loss at trial would have been. If they aren’t convinced to drop the case, they’ve gotten a precious new edge at trial. And either way, both the reality and appearance of fairness to the defendants are enhanced.

Giving a defendant a lie detector test, in contrast, isn’t a win-win situation: It may hurt prosecutors’ case if the results are released to the public. (Lie detector results are rarely - if ever - admissible in court.) But at the same time, a lie detector test - while risky, and far from perfect - is likely to get prosecutors closer to the truth, which is supposed to be what they are after.

As noted above, in this case, Evans claims Nifong refused to give Evans a lie detector test. (He ultimately took one himself, and passed.) In my professional experience, a prosecutor’s refusing to administer a lie detector test to a defendant is nearly unheard-of. The defendant’s answers - and the lie detector’s response to them - may provide the prosecutor with a road map to what his vulnerabilities on the stand may be.

Just as meeting with the defense previews the defense case for prosecutors, administering a lie detector can preview the defendant’s testimony, as well as his on-the-stand demeanor, showing prosecutors what kind of a witness he will be. (Confident? Nervous? Shifty? Solid?)
I can’t help but believe that, were any of these defendants to assert that they had proof that a crime was indeed committed, this district attorney would be all ears. Suppose, for instance, that Seligmann or Evans were to turn on Finnerty, to try to save themselves - surely Nifong would happily hear them out. So how can the prosecutor justify, then, turning a blind eye to evidence of any of the accused’s innocence?

If There’s A Card Up the D.A.’s Sleeve, the Law Requires Him to Play It Soon

Some pundits have suggested that the only explanation for the District Attorney’s pressing on in the light of strong evidence that the defendants are innocent, is that he has a card up his sleeve. If so, then he needs to show that card, pronto.

The discovery statutes in North Carolina - as in most states - do not allow prosecutors to play “hide the ball.” This is a judicial proceeding, not a magic show. So D.A. Nifong will have to reveal this evidence sometime before trial.

He ought to opt to reveal it right now - to give the defense a chance to counter it. When evidence suggesting innocence is as strong as it is in this case, it’s wrong to just let the case go to trial and “see what the jury says.” These three young men’s live will be forever affected, even if they are acquitted. Even an arrest leaves a scar; the scar of trial is far deeper.
D.A. Nifong should listen to the defense, and should drop the case unless he has strong evidence supporting the accuser. Moreover, if he does have such evidence, he should show it to us now. The defendants have been forthcoming - especially Evans, who volunteered to, and then did, take a lie detector test. The prosecution should follow their example.

nor do i think one structure is more overbearing than another.”

This is exactly right. Race, class and gender intersect to create divergent experiences for an assortment of individuals. Neither should be privileged as a power structure because each works together to create inequality.

“and i see this duke incident as proof not simply of racism but also of masculinism. these are men, involved in a sporting world that values competition and aggression, who raped (allegedly anyways) a women. it doesn’t matter that she was african american and they were white in a white enviroment. they were men and she was a women. that was enough. ”

If masculinity and race are evaluated at the same level - “neither more overbearing” - then wouldn’t it matter tremendously that she was African American and that “they were white in a white environment?”

This was an excellent article that went beyond an individual “bad apple” approach to look deeply at power and what it means to have it or lack it.

So then, if not an issue of race, “why wasn’t such freedom of expression the policy when the Duke women’s basketball team hit its own national stage in the very same city early last month?”

;-)
Danielle

sounds right up identity theory’s alley to me. until i have more answers i’ll wait to decide which nails are the right ones to hit on the head. it’s one thing to discuss the contruction of social power structures, but without proscriptions for deconstruction we are left with many more questions than answers.

that said, i don’t think we can say that all white people benefit from white power stuctures; that all men benefit from male power structures; and that all bourgeois children grow up to benefit from bourgeois power structures.

nor do i think one structure is more overbearing than another. deconstruct them all, i say; all unjustified structures of authority, hierarchy and domination must be dismantled to increase the scope of human freedom. but status is a provisional good and even without race people will fight over it and devise new hierarchies and social constructs of power and exclusion.

im now reading noel ignatiev, who has some interesting and important things to say, and some less convincing and desirable things to say. love your neighbour, forgive your enemy - these work for me, an agnostic, and they worked fairly well for gandhi and king. but they don’t seem to be enough for some white identity theorists and historians like ignatiev.

but he is right to suggest that any benefit accrued through unjustified privilege should be eshewed. i feel confident enough to cast the first stone…

i also don’t think that we can compare white power structures in north carolonia with those in canada.

and i see this duke incident as proof not simply of racism but also of masculinism. these are men, involved in a sporting world that values competition and aggression, who raped (allegedly anyways) a women. it doesn’t matter that she was african american and they were white in a white enviroment. they were men and she was a women. that was enough. and support for the players has less to do with race or class than with “oh these are just some good ol boys doing what good ol boys do”. its no different than the gang rapes that go unpunished in the congo and sudan - “oh, boys will be boys. this is what they do. they’re blowing off some steam.” maybe if the stripper was white it would be different. i dont know really. i dont know enough (or anything really) about basketball culture, or north carolina culture.

http://www.geoffsmith.org/blog/wordpress/2006/05/08/danielle-gillis-on-cultural-whiteness-and-hockey-in-canada/#comments