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Comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case (2006-2014).
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Blog Archive
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2007
(872)
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June
(174)
- The Bitter-Enders
- Brodhead Wins a Sheldon
- Cline on Quadruple Homicide Case
- The Group in Action
- 9-22 Transcript
- The Meehan Deposition
- Smith Sets Date
- Nifong Hearing
- Nifong Deposition: Personal Issues
- Nifong Hearing Tomorrow
- Freedman: Communication Matters
- Assorted Deposition Items
- Responding to Syl Jones (and Nifong)
- Linwood Bails on Nifong
- Nifong Deposition, Part II
- Nifong Rationalizes His Statements
- More from Wonderland
- Nifong Deposition, Part I
- Linwood Is Out
- Ethical Dimension
- More Foolishness
- Nifong Hearing
- Weekly Roundup
- "Mr. Obfuscation" in Action
- The Herald-Sun: Wrong Again
- "Mr. Obfuscation"
- The Gottlieb Deposition
- Nifong as "Unique Person"
- The Wacky World of Dr. Meehan
- WRAL Headline Saturday
- Still Foolish
- Nifong: An "Old-Fashioned" Guy
- The Sanctions Motion
- Eviscerated
- The Worst of Witt: "Egregious" Mistakes
- The Worst of Witt: The DNA Evidence
- The Worst of Witt: The Neophyte Defense
- Hardin's Choices
- Nifong: What?! Non-Laxers Were There?
- Nifong: "I Don't Read Discovery Requests"
- Nifong Explains His Approach to DNA
- Nifong & Emostafa
- Chronicle Op-Ed
- "Something Happened"
- Judge Tjoflat's Perspective
- Nifong: Politics and the Press
- Jones Renews Call for Federal Inquiry
- Easley: Hardin as Interim DA
- When Suspects Aren't Suspects
- The Great Dissembler
- Nifong Defends the "Old-Fashioned Way"
- The Origin of Hooligans
- Nifong's "Law Enforcement Purpose"
- McClain: Group of 88 Defiant, Despite Settlement
- On the Bookshelf, II
- Montgomery-Blinn and NC "Innocence"
- Praising Beth Brewer
- Lane Williamson
- A Wild Day
- Nifong Is Out
- Nifong and Williamson
- Easley: Nifong Should Go Now
- Bannon on Absolute Innocence
- Duke and Three Families Settle
- Nifong Resigns . . . Eventually
- Marsha Goodenow Testimony
- Professor Bannon's Lecture
- Reflections on the Hearing
- More from Wonderland
- Beard on Nifong
- Nifong Defends Linwood Wilson
- The Himan Smoking Gun
- Brad Bannon on Nancy Grace
- Williamson Remarks
- Sunday Hearing Roundup
- Findings
- Nifong Accepts Disbarment
- MaryEllen Finnerty
- David Evans
- Bar Character Witnesses--Jerry Parnell
- Verdict
- Brocker Follow-up
- Freedman Closing
- Nifong: "Old-Fashioned Guy"
- Nifong Closing Statement
- Nifong Inconsistencies
- Nifong and DNA: Closing Statement
- Nifong False Statements
- Bar's Closing Statements, Continued
- Closing Arguments: "Minister of Injustice"
- Nifong's Selective Memory
- Mike Nifong's "Flexible" Apology
- Nifong Trial, Day Four
- Bar Rebuttal
- Nifong Character Witnesses
- Tara Levicy
- Nifong: "Something Happened"
- Nifong: "I Don't Read Files"
- N&O: Nifong Is Out
- More Nifong Cross
-
▼
June
(174)
Comments Policy
(1) Comments are moderated, but with the lightest of touches, to exclude only off-topic comments or obviously racist or similar remarks.
(2) My clearing a comment implies neither that I agree nor that I disagree with the comment. My opinion is expressed in my words and my words only. Since this blog has more than 1500 posts, and since I at least occasionally comment myself, the blog provides more than enough material for readers to discern my opinions.
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- "From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review
Links
Motions and Documents
- Attorney General's Report
- DNA motion
- Lineup motion
- Supplementary lineup motion
- Change of venue motion
- Bar amended complaint/Nifong response
- December 15 hearing
- State Bar v. Nifong
- Brewer removal motion
- Nifong December 28 letter to Bar
- Nifong January 16 letter to Bar
- Group of 88 statement (removed from Duke website)
- Group of 88 membership
- Transcript of relevant sections, April 4 "identification" "procedure"
23 comments:
Nifong's lawyer...
"Mr Nifong did not create the media interest in the Duke case"
Said with a straight face - If that's the best he has to offer, we are witessing one very slow death here.
I made a kind of a weird connection watching this. Remember the two lawyers whose dog killed their neighbor? Well besides the fact that they were totally immoral; they were also stupid and totally incompetant as lawyers. They did absolutely boneheaded things like blame the victim. And when they went to trial, they had a totally incompetant lawyer defending them. (She was also batshit crazy.)
Seeing this makes me think: when bad lawyers get in trouble, they hire bad lawyers to defend them. How many times did Freeman say "um" in his opening statement? It doesn't seem this guy can litigate himself out of a paper bag.
We want the Victoria Peterson video! :)
Yeah, we want the video!
Evidence of an alien life-form!
Maybe we can get pictures of
Polanski, while we're at it!
I sure would like to see the one
where she pops her head into
the viewfinder!
To Anon @ 8:21,
I'm no Nifong fan and have said for many months that he should be disbarred and very likely tried for criminal acts.
That said, Nifong didn't "create the media interest in the Duke case."
That was done by the Raleigh News & Observer.
Remember, Nifong didn’t begin speaking publicly about the case until Mar. 27, 2006.
On Mar. 24 the N&O "broke" the Duke lacrosse case with a front page story in which the accuser was repeatedly described as "the victim" without the N&O using "alleged" even once.
So in the first story the public and the rest of media read about the Duke Hoax, the N&O cast Mangum as "the victim" and the Duke students as her victimizers.
On Mar. 25 the N&O ran the fraudulent "anonymous interview" story about what in front page headlines above the fold it said was a night that ended "in sexual violence."
The N&O described the anonymous accuser as a young black mother and student who was "so scared" when, performing for the first time as an “exotic dancer,” she found herself before a group of boozing, barking white racist Duke male lacrosse players, three of whom then gang-raped, beat, robbed and chocked her for thirty minutes, after which their teammates formed "wall of solidarity" to cover up for them.
That story “went national.” By the evening of Mar. 25 the networks were broadcasting it and newspapers were laying the N&O’s fraudulent story out for their Sunday editions. And the satellite trucks were gassing up to head for Durham.
On Mar. 26 the N&O reported on a vigil by Duke faculty and students, religious groups and community organization (never named) in support of “the victim” and demanding the students “break their silence”
On Mar. 27, a Monday, the N&O ran a story on a demonstration outside the house on N. Buchanan Blvd. The N&O said activists were demanding with signs and shouts that the students “confess.” The N&O didn’t mention the activists gathered under a large “CASTRATE” banner.
That same day an N&O news columnist, Ruth Sheehan, said the team’s silence was sickening and that “good guys” didn’t cover up.
By Mar. 27 the N&O had, for four days, been in a full throated mob cry savaging the students, laying out the false script (frightened black mother raped by drunken, racist, privileged white males) Nifong would make his own, and poisoning the public’s mind against that students.
Only after all of what you’ve just read did Mike Nifong on Mar. 27 begin speaking to the public.
And when he did, Nifong said what we’d been reading in the N&O since Mar. 24, and what the rest of media had been sheep-like repeating.
Nifong even, like the N&O, made no mention of the extraordinary cooperation the players had provided police. In fact, he followed the N&O’s lead and promulgated what the N&O and Nifong both knew was a deliberate falsehood: the players hadn’t cooperated.
Again, I want Nifong disbarred. I think he should be investigated for committing criminal acts while he and others pursued a frame-up.
But, please, don’t tell me Nifong “create[ed] the media interest in this case.”
John in Carolina
JinC: Who set up the N&O interview? Is it possible/likely that someone in DPD or the DA's office fed this to them? If not, any idea if anyone outside the N&O had a hand in shaping things?
JIC then why did Nifong refer to the media attention as free advertisement for his re-election?
New(?) info about the Victoria Peterson incident:
"According to sources in the courtroom, Maryellen Finnerty, the mother of Collin Finnerty, one of three men indicted and charged in the Duke lacrosse case, felt threatened when Peterson started speaking loudly."
http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/1494418/
JIC get real. Remember Nifong looked at the intitial report at a fax copier and said holy shit and went straight to the media with it.
initial
Jinc
Are you saying the DA's office had no role in getting the N&O info, access, generally excited about the story ? That's SOP for these guys.
8:21
It isn't the "Duke" case, it is the Nifong/Mangum case.
'Fong cannot be having a good night's sleep. He knows the jig is up. He knows his license is toast; he knows civil suits are coming; he knows that he faces the possibility of a criminal investigation. Can you imagine this worm squirming in a deposition? Durham better start budgeting for a huge tax increase because the check will be huge. It has the 'Fong to thank for that.
None but his most ardent defenders will stand by him now. He has the unmistakable stench of a loser.
Nice interview with Pressler
http://www.wral.com/news/local/page/1074184/
To Anon @10:17,
You ask very good questions. I'm not ready to post on them, but hope to in a week or so.
Meantime, take a look at this post at Liestoppers. It's by Montothree but they head it as "Our Collective Voice." It touches on some of your questions and is, IMO, a breakthrough post:
http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/2007/06/our-collective-voice-how-duke-rape-hoax.html
Anon @ 10:22,
We can agree Nifong welcomed and used the publicity.
But he didn't crate the media interest.
Do you even wonder what might have happened if the N&O hadn't repeatedly called Mangum "the victim," and had reported in the Mar. 25 story that the players had been cooperative, and had reported that Mangum had told the N&O the Kim Roberts was also sexually assualted at the party but couldn't report it for fear of losing her job and, what's more, said that Roberts would do anything for money?
Anon @ 10:34,
You say: "JIC get real. Remember Nifong looked at the intitial report at a fax copier and said holy shit and went straight to the media with it."
What "initial report" are you talking about at what "fax copier?"
If Nifong "went straight to the media with it," on what day did that happen? Where can I read a report of it?
I don't see why, based on your comment, it's me that needs to "get real."
To 8:21 commenting at 11:39,
I don't know whether the DA's office had a role in getting the N&O interested, etc in the story.
I don't have a solid answer to that question yet.
I'm inclined to think some person or person's on what I call the "Nifong/DPD investigative team" did.
As you say, DA offices often provide media with "background." So do cops.
That typcially, as you know, isn't considered a professional ethics violation of the type that is one of the charges Nifong faces.
I hope you take a look at the Liestoppers post I mention above.
BTW - If you read the N&O's Joe Neff's recent five part series you may recall he reports Nifong first learned about the case on Mar. 23 when he "discovered" the NTO on his office copier.
As near as I can figure, the next time Neff tells us anything about Nifong is on the afternoon of Mar. 27 what Neff describes a meeting Nifong has with defense attorney Bob Ekstrom.
That gap from the 23rd to the 27th interests me. I'm guessing it does you, too.
John in Carolina
Someone should really look into getting a copy of the video of Victoria Peterson interjecting herself into the live newsfeed on WRAL outside the courtroom after she was ejected.
It was fantastic.
JLS says...,
John in Carolina is there are particular editor at the N&O who might have pushed their early coverage?
Dear JLS,
Good question.
At this time the best answer I can give you is there were a number of editors pushing their early coverage.
You don't, for example, at a newspaper the size of the N&O get a story like the Mar. 25 "anonymous interview" story placed on page one, above the fold, with headlines five columns wide on a six column page without a good number of editors working on the story and agreeing to give it what years ago in the newspaper used to be called "the war's declared" treatment.
I hope you and others keep asking the N&O questions such as the one you just asked me.
Now I'm signing off this thread. I've enjoyed "talking" with folks here.
John in Carolina
To JIC
All you have really said is that the list of extremely guilty parties is more extensive than Nifong and his Ass.
I have no problem with that. It might well take a lot of trials and prosecutions to get anywhere near justice in this case.
I'd guess the Nifong household
is about like the Tuileries
on the night before the royal family attempted to flee in
the French Revolution.
Hasn't the N&O earned some redemption by their subsequent coverage?
If it wasn't for Neff and his consistently detailed stories the national media might never have turned on Nifong.
They've issued their mea culpa and have done a better job since they saw the light than any other outlet in the country.
Thanks for interesting article.
Excellent website. Good work. Very useful. I will bookmark!
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