Moneta: “Not Really a Topic I’m Interested in Talking About”

In a recent radio interview, Duke’s Larry Moneta criticized a website called juicycampus.com. Moneta pointed to the site’s anonymous rumor-mongering to describe it (correctly) as worthy of condemnation.

Moneta’s outrage about the site prompted an understandable question from panelist Christopher Anderson, who wondered why Moneta hadn’t seemed concerned in spring 2006, when Duke professors and some students embarked on a rumor-mongering campaign against the lacrosse players. “I don’t see any correlation between the two incidents,” responded Moneta. The exchange is below.

I’m puzzled that Moneta struggled to see the connection raised by Anderson. After all, what were Group of 88’er Grant Farred’s unsubstantiated musings about the lacrosse players’ “arrogant sexual prowess” or their having committed “perjury” if not rumor-mongering about Duke students?

Though Moneta might not have done so, surely others would see a link between expressing concern about a website making false, anonymous rumors about Duke students and condemning Karla Holloway’s sending out a January 2007 mass e-mail containing a claim that she either knew or should have known was false: that a secret witness existed who would say there were racist remarks when Reade Seligmann and Collin were at the lacrosse party.

And it seems to me that a professor—say, Peter Wood—informing a New Yorker reporter that a lacrosse player had advocated genocide against Native Americans (when, in fact, Wood was basing his claim on nothing more than an anonymous course evaluation form) poses a far more serious issue of protecting student rights than speaking up against an anonymous rumor-mongering website.

Could it be that one reason Moneta wasn’t too concerned with the rumor-mongering of Holloway, Farred, and Wood was that he shared their basic approach to the case? This was, after all, the same Larry Moneta who—when the case first broke—dismissed attorney Samantha Ekstrand’s request that the administration protect the lacrosse players against the local mob and against Duke professors intent on retaliation. Why no concern with the lacrosse players? As Moneta told Ekstrand, “Frankly, Samantha, I don’t believe them.”

When pressed on the lacrosse case by Anderson, Moneta responded bluntly: “Not really a topic I’m interested in talking about.”

Lindgren on the Lubiano Trio

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Jim Lindgren comments further on the peculiar Lubiano/Hardt/Wiegman defense of the Group of 88:

I strongly doubt that suggestions that the offending professors should “work as maids” or “return to the slave quarters” were “typically” offered by their critics. Indeed, in a very quick Google search, I couldn't find any instances of these two suggestions. Such disgusting insults must have been relatively rarely made by their editorial and blogger critics, if made by them at all . . .

I can’t recall one blog posting anywhere that suggested members of the Group should “work as maids” or “return to slave quarters”—and the idea that such remarks were typical is, of course, absurd. Lindgren wonders whether Social Text will run a correction on the unsubstantiated claims. I’m not holding my breath.

Lindgren also asks a not unreasonable question:

Why do these Duke professors bother to write about the Duke lacrosse hoax if they are not going to deal with their own actions honestly? If they can’t simply face the truth, they should put down their shovels and stop digging.

Recalling similar instances—the Cathy Davidson apologia, the “Shut Up and Teach” forum, the Charlie Piot conflict-of-interest essay—it mystified me why the Group and its allies have chosen to discredit themselves further through such transparently absurd defenses of their actions.

You can read Lindgren’s entire post here.

The DOJ

Tomorrow, two subcommittees of the House Judiciary Committee will hold joint hearings on the following topic: "Allegations of Selective Prosecution Part II: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System."

Here are the members of the two subcommittees; the links will proceed to the individual members' websites and email addresses. It would seem that one obvious topic for inquiry: why did the DOJ refuse Attorney General Cooper's request for a federal inquiry into the conduct of Mike Nifong, DSI, Linwood Wilson, and the Durham Police?

For those with time, it might be worth an e-mail.

One of the subcommittee members, Trent Franks (R-Arizona), did call for a DOJ inquiry; perhaps he could raise the issue publicly at the hearing.

Duke/Loyola

Yesterday, Duke ousted Loyola from the NCAA lacrosse tournament. For Loyola, the leading scorer was Collin Finnerty, who had three goals. After the game, a reunion photo:

North Carolina Results

Last night, Barack Obama scored a sizeable victory in what his opponent had suggested could be a “game-changing” contest, one that would place the eyes of the “world” on North Carolina. Obama won by around 233,000 votes—or around 3,000 votes fewer than Hillary Clinton’s combined popular vote-margin in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Obama’s tally of pledged delegates bested Clinton’s by 15—either one more or one fewer (depending on a late certification) than her advantage from her Pennsylvania and Indiana wins combined.

In short, Obama is basically in the same position today as he was on March 12—before the first of Rev. Wright’s two emergences—but with only a handful of states left to vote. He is, as Tim Russert pointed out last night, the presumptive nominee.

While North Carolina Democrats embraced change in their presidential primary, Durham County Democrats resolutely and defiantly clung to the status quo. The last time Durham Democrats had a primary for district attorney, they marched to the polls to nominate a man who had indicted a demonstrably innocent person (the videotape of Reade Seligmann at the ATM machine was shown on newscasts the night before the primary); then, in the fall, Durham County voters elected a man who—thanks to the 60 Minutes broadcast—had become a national symbol for prosecutorial misconduct.

You’d think with such a record, the city’s leadership and voters would have insisted upon an ethically pristine chief prosecutor this time around. But, of course, Durham operates under its own set of rules. Bolstered by the exact same coalition that propped up Mike Nifong (the Herald-Sun, the Independent, the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, and the People’s Alliance), Tracey Cline won last night’s Democratic nomination. She’s unopposed for the general election.

Cline still has never explained how she developed a reasonable suspicion—as required by state law to have recommended a non-testimonial order—that (to take the most extreme example) Brad Ross, who was 20 miles away the night of the lacrosse party, could have committed a crime. Yet she recommended an NTO against Ross, and 45 Duke students, anyway. During the campaign, Cline gave a version of events about her involvement in the case that was contradicted by contemporary documentary evidence. Yet none of her institutional supporters reconsidered their endorsements. And, as the office’s point person on sex crimes prosecutions, Cline has never publicly explained what precisely (if anything) she thought Mike Nifong did wrong in handling the lacrosse case.

Yet she’ll be Durham County’s next “minister of justice.” I can only imagine how most Duke parents feel today.

Then there’s the Durham academic world. In Sunday’s N&O, Anne Blythe reported on NCCU’s graduation, where “Crystal Gail Mangum, the woman at the root of the Duke lacrosse case and the phony gang-rape allegations dismissed by the state attorney general, was among the graduates Saturday. Mangum, in a cap and gown, flashed a smile to a friend after posing for an official graduation photo with her degree.”

I’ve seen a bit of Mangum’s writing (her police statement); I’d say she reads and writes at a ninth or tenth grade level. And everyone learned quite a bit about her schedule and lifestyle during at least part of the time she supposedly was taking classes at NCCU. She appeared to have both a drug and/or alcohol problem and a problem with emotional stability; and she appeared to organize her existence around not anything academic but instead her exotic dancing/prostitution schedule. NCCU doesn’t have the greatest academic reputation, but it’s embarrassing to see the university confer a degree on Mangum.

Imagine, moreover, if a student with the behavior described above (and, on top of that, had filed a police report the state AG had termed baseless) attended not NCCU but Duke. It’s hard to imagine that Larry Moneta and Dean Bryan would not (appropriately) have ensured that such a student would face disciplinary charges. If the student were white and male, doubtless most of the Group of 88 would have publicly demanded such a move. Yet Mangum never appears to have faced any disciplinary charges at NCCU, which speaks volumes about (to borrow a phrase frequently invoked by the Group) the institution’s campus culture.

Tracey Cline: The Nifongesque Choice

[At this stage, nothing should surprise me about this case, especially when the issue is Durham politics. Yet I confess that I am amazed that former Mike Nifong ADA Tracey Cline is a frontrunner for the position--endorsed by (of course) the Herald-Sun and several local PACs, despite the heavy shadow that Nifong should cast over her candidacy.

As of late, Cline has taken to rewriting history, claiming that she had little or nothing to do with the lacrosse case. Facts, of course, can be stubborn things. And what can also be said: if Durham County Democrats nominate Cline for district attorney, they would effectively be saying that they approve of a figure who aided the highest-profile instance of prosecutorial misconduct in recent memory.

As a reminder of Cline's real history, I'm reposting an item from last fall, when Cline first tried to run from her record of aiding Nifong in the case.]

From an October 2007 Herald-Sun, ADA Tracey Cline outlined the relationship between the lacrosse case and her bid for district attorney:

According to Cline, a major lesson was learned from the Duke lacrosse scandal: “The people of Durham expect one thing from the DA -- to do the right things for the right reasons. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not doing anybody a favor. It’s knowing you have done the right thing and being able to sleep on it.”

Lesson No. 2: “You need to be transparent when you are district attorney. Everything should be out in the open. People might not agree with everything I do, but they should at least understand why I did it.”

Some suggested during the lacrosse meltdown that Nifong’s assistants dropped the ball by not reining in their boss, halting the scandal in its tracks.

Cline agreed last week that attorneys have a duty to report unethical conduct among their colleagues.

But she said she lacked insights into what Nifong was doing.

“I didn’t have any personal information about what went on in the lacrosse case, other than what the media reported,” she said.

Really?

1.) If she had no information other than what was reported in the press (which, as of March 23, 2006, was next to nothing), how, then, did Cline help Ben Himan prepare the fraudulent nontestimonial order that got the case rolling? Indeed, according to the Gottlieb deposition, he and Himan spoke to Cline, and then “the district attorney’s office thought it was a good idea to go ahead and do a Non-Testimonial.” [emphasis added]

To obtain an NTO, of course, authorities are supposed to have probable cause to believe a crime occurred, and a reasonable suspicion that the subject of the NTO could have committed the crime.

As part of her new commitment to transparency, will Candidate Cline reveal the evidence that gave her a reasonable suspicion that Brad Ross—who wasn’t even in Durham the night of the party—could have committed a crime?

2.) It came out during the Nifong ethics hearing that the ex-DA was planning to prosecute the case alongside Cline. Indeed, according to the Gottlieb deposition, Nifong told Crystal Mangum that “he would be working very closely with Ms. Cline.” [emphasis added]

Is Candidate Cline now asking the citizens of Durham County to believe that even though Nifong planned to prosecute the case alongside her, and even though he told Mangum he would be working “very closely” with her, and even though she was the office’s expert on sexual assault cases, and even though she was the office’s highest-ranking African-American and woman in a case charged on race and gender lines . . . that she and Nifong never spoke about the details of the case, and that she knew no more about the details of the case than what appeared in the paper?

If so, is Candidate Cline calling Ben Himan a liar? After all, in cross-examination from Lane Williamson at the Nifong ethics hearing, Himan said that Cline told him that she had read over some of the case file.

3.) It came out in the Kendra Montgomery-Blinn testimony at the ethics hearing that Cline implemented the “No-Drop” policy, in which the Durham DA’s office has adopted a policy of effectively abandoning even the fiction of prosecutorial discretion, but only on sexual assault cases. Does Cline still believe that district attorneys don’t have to exercise discretion in prosecuting sexual assault cases; and that they can and must take all such cases to trial, regardless of the evidence, as long as they, for whatever reason, happen to believe the accuser? And, given the facts of the lacrosse case—on which, according to her boss, Cline was going to serve as co-counsel,

Did she approve of the procedures used in the April 4 lineup?

Did she approve of the decision to seek an indictment against Reade Seligmann even though police didn’t even know if Seligmann attended the party?

Did she approve of sending Linwood Wilson to interview Crystal Mangum on December 21?

Did she approve of Nifong’s decision to treat Mangum’s December 21 story—which included a wholly new timeline and description of the “attack”—as reliable?

As part of her stated commitment to transparency, no doubt Candidate Cline will be eager to answer these questions.

A Well-Deserved Award

From Editor & Publisher:

Kristin Butler, a senior English major at Duke University, has won the $1,000 first-place prize in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' annual student-scholarship contest . . .

The winners were selected by Boston Globe/Washington Post Writers Group columnist Ellen Goodman, who'll receive the NSNC Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization's June 21-24 conference in New Orleans. Butler will be the guest of the NSNC at that meeting.