Sunday, December 07, 2008

New Civil Suit Filings

Late November featured several filings in the civil suit—some from the plaintiffs, mostly repeating previously advanced arguments, and an explosive filing from Bob Ekstrand, raising serious questions about the Durham legal team’s veracity. Today’s post will look at the defendants’ filings; Wednesday’s will examine the Ekstrand filing.

Some of the old and new defendants’ assertions that raised eyebrows:

1.) Durham and Duke authorities continue to defend the non-testimonial order that kicked off the media firestorm.

Under North Carolina law, an NTO requires both probable cause that a crime was committed and a reasonable belief that the subject of the NTO could have committed the crime. In March 2006, with the drafting assistance of Durham DA-elect Tracey Cline, the DPD obtained an NTO requiring DNA and photos from all 46 white lacrosse players.

In analyzing the lacrosse case NTO, apply the Brad Ross test: he’s blonde (Mangum hadn’t described any of her attackers as blonde); none of the captains listed him as attending the party (as, in fact, he did not, since he was in Raleigh that night); and his name didn’t match any of the names of the people Crystal Mangum alleged “attacked” her.

Not only did the DPD lack a “reasonable belief” that Ross committed the “crime”—they had no belief at all on the matter. Yet they sought and obtained an NTO against him. And attorneys representing both Durham and former DPD officers (and, even more incredibly, Duke) continue to assert that they had every legal right to seek an NTO against Ross.

Durham attorneys Reginald Gillespie and Roger Warin describe the non-testimonial order as “reasonable.” Duke attorney Jamie Gorelick suggests that the NTO was legally justified. Attorneys for former DPD officers Ben Himan and Mark Gottlieb go even further, asserting that “ample grounds” existed for the NTO. Indeed, the Himan/Gottlieb brief contains a 26-point chart justifying the NTO. The inference: Durham police would do it all over again.

This line of argument effectively makes the plaintiffs’ case for them, since it suggests that the Durham Police (and, incredibly, Duke as well) see nothing wrong with violating residents’ civil rights, as an official policy. The logical extension of the Durham/DPD argument is that once the city has “probable cause” that a crime has occurred, it doesn’t need “reasonable belief” against a particular subject in order to obtain an NTO against that person.

2.) Blame someone else.

The Himan-Gottlieb brief is particularly aggressive in throwing co-defendant and former SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy under the bus. “The SANE nurse [in training],” attorneys Edwin Speas and Joel Craig write, “told investigators in this case that Mangum ‘had signs, symptoms, and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally.’”

The officers, they suggest, can’t be held liable for the fact that Levicy lied to them. The brief asserts that Gottlieb and Himan had no obligation to interview the person who actually performed Mangum’s medical exam, Dr. Julie Manly. Speas and Craig don’t explain why it was OK for Gottlieb and Himan not to interview Manly.

3.) Don’t let the facts of the case stand in the way of an argument.

From the Durham brief: “The City has explained that, as a matter of law, Michael Nifong acted solely on behalf of the State of North Carolina, rather than the City.” Yes, that’s how the law is supposed to work. But in this case, of course, it didn’t, since Durham decided to allow Nifong to run a DPD investigation. That’s a major reason why Durham faces a lawsuit.

From the Durham brief, regarding Mangum’s failure to identify any of her “attackers” in lineups that loosely followed the DPD’s requirement of five filler photos for every photo of a suspect: “The fact that Mangum appeared to have difficulty identifying her attackers in the photo arrays was not material to the probable cause determination.” Mangum, of curse, didn’t “appear[] to have difficulty identifying her attackers in the photo arrays.” She could not identify her attackers in the photo arrays. Why can’t the city of Durham, after everything that’s happened, admit this?

4.) Duke maintains its “straw man” legal strategy.

Duke attorneys Donald Cowan and Jamie Gorelick, still seeking to try a case that doesn’t exist, maintain that the lacrosse players’ “fundamental contention is that Duke University and its administrators were legally obligated to protect them from the consequences of a police investigation—by quelling media coverage of the case, preventing campus protests, and even interceding to stop the investigation.” And, they add, “Plaintiffs contend that the Duke health care providers, who were responsible for the medical examination of Crystal Mangum on the night she alleged she was raped, should be liable for harms allegedly caused by Durham Police officers and the prosecutor in investigating those allegations.”

I can sympathize with the plight of Cowan and Gorelick: it sure would be easier to argue against such a case than the case that they confront: that Duke officials took money from the lacrosse players but failed to enforce either the Faculty Handbook or the Student Bulletin; that Duke’s inability or refusal to supervise one of its employees, Tara Levicy, was critical to first initiating and then sustaining the case; and that Duke employee Levicy’s false statements to police were critical to first initiating and then sustaining the case.

That said, the Cowan/Gorelick approach seems more appropriate to the world of political spin—where talking heads base arguments on wild and easily noted distortions of the opponents’ words and arguments—than to the world of a federal court, where words are supposed to mean what they say.

5.) Duke still defends its suppression of the student voter registration drive.

Write Gorelick and Cowan,

All the alleged efforts to “shut down” their voter registration drive took place on Duke’s private property. They argue, however, that the First Amendment was implicated when “uniformed police officers” carried out Duke’s alleged decision to curtail their registration efforts. That argument lacks merit; courts have repeatedly held that the police may assist private property owners in exercising their right to restrict political activities on their property without violating the First Amendment.

The 1998 Higher Education Act requires any university that receives federal funds (as Duke does) to encourage students to register to vote. I’m not aware of any litigation specifically defining the scope of the act, but surely suppressing a student-led voter registration drive would not fulfill the act’s provisions.

The lacrosse players lack standing to sue for Duke violating the Higher Education Act. It nonetheless is astonishing to see the University's legal team so nonplussed by Duke's apparently unwillingness to adhere to the HEA's terms.

6.) A no-winner for Duke.

Assert Gorelick and Cowan bluntly, “The Duke bulletin is not a valid contract.” A translation for Duke parents: if activists in the Duke faculty decide to target your son to advance their pedagogical or ideological agendas, Duke considers itself under no obligation to uphold its own policies to protect its own students.

I wonder what all the students ensnared in the Duke judicial system for real and imagined violations of that bulletin think of the argument that the bulletin “is not a valid contract.” And I wonder what prospective parents of the Class of 2013 would think of Duke’s dismissal of its own regulations. Somehow, I doubt that Duke will share with them the words of Gorelick and Cowan.

7.) When all else fails, count on Linwood Wilson for comedy.

Fired DA office investigator Linwood Wilson, acting as his own lawyer, demands that sanctions for unethical behavior(!) be filed against the lacrosse players’ attorneys.

We’re talking about a man who denied ever seeing Mike Nifong behave in an unethical fashion. So it could be argued that Wilson doesn’t understand what constitutes unethical conduct. Speaking of himself in the third person, Wilson writes:

Defendant Wilson had no arrest powers and no prosecutorial powers and could not have arrested nor prosecuted any of the Plaintiffs’. Defendant Wilson had no supervisory authority placed upon him by the City of Durham Police Department nor did Defendant Wilson share with Nifong and have “certain final policymaking authority, delegated from City Officials”. Plaintiffs’ have continued to group Defendant Wilson as a law enforcement officer in all their pleadings knowing full well that was not true. Plaintiffs’ failure to properly investigate, if by nothing else but simply reading the State Statute (GS 7A-69), or by simply calling the Attorney General’s Office, would have verified those facts. Defendant Wilson argues that Plaintiffs’ failure to do so, and by filing an action against Defendant Wilson knowing that certain allegations were false, has resulted in a Rule 11 Violation and the sanction for that violation should be dismissal as set out as a remedy in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

In other words, Nifong wasn’t supposed to be supervising the police investigation, and Wilson, his employee, wasn’t supposed to be engaged in de facto police activity, and because the players’ attorneys pointed out these inconvenient facts, they should be sanctioned.

Wilson’s legal creativity rises to even greater heights, however, in his concluding section, which tries to promulgate new law:

Plaintiffs’ [sic] were never even charged with any crime and have no foundation for this action and it is increasingly clear that Plaintiffs’ motives are to extort money from these defendants by bringing an action they know to be frivolous. Therefore Defendant Wilson’s Motion to Dismiss should be granted.

Wilson’s filing only confirms the old aphorism: A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.

34 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nonplussed is defined as meaning "bewildered". Do you not mean to say "It nonetheless is astonishing to see the University's legal team so nonchalant with Duke's apparently unwillingness to adhere to the HEA's terms."?
Unless of course you were being ironic.'
The Universitys position has been from the get go that this "was not about the truth".
Do you know if anyone has defied such an illegal NTO before? What would happen if this action were taken?

Anonymous said...

Pretty clear what Gorelick and Cowan are up to. They are trying to confuse the issues of fact and law in the minds of potential jurors and delay the proceeding as long as possible. In this case it's probably the best they can do.

Anonymous said...

On any number of times and dates I have driven up or down the interstate through Durham and past Duke University. I have even visited Duke and its famed environs. I am white . . . white and male . . . how can I find out if an NTO was obtained against me? Which one of these dishonest police forces do I visit to make my request? Oh, I understand now. They just give them out gratis before howling mobs of people demanding a pound of flesh. Oh! My!

Anonymous said...

"an explosive filing from Bob Ekstrand,
raising serious questions about the Durham
legal team’s veracity." -- KC.

Okay, so the Durham lawyers are liars also.

Let's add this up now. Crystal is a liar. Nifong
is a liar. The Durham police- Gottlieb, Himan
anybody else we can find at headquarters are
all liars. Ditto Duke Police. And of course
Duke hospital, the Sane Unit and all those MD's.

Then there is liar Dr. Meehan and all those
DNA lab people. Have we missed anyone?

Oh yes, the Duke President, the Chairman,
hell the entire Board of Trustees, they all must
be liars. And that damn Faculty too.

And then there are 250,000 ignorant and uniformed
Durham County residents- damn liars everyone of them.

Wait, there are still more liars to uncover. All
those despicable liars in the Media. The News &
Observer, the Herald- Sun, Newsweek, my god even
the Almighty New York Times.

Do you people really believe this stuff?

My money is on Crystal, who maintains she
was attacked in the bathroom. It makes perfect
sense now.

Debrah said...

Someone clue me in.

What adult professional, especially someone working in law or within the justice system, has his or her profile on Facebook or MySpace, etc.....or any of the social networking websites the way this Nifong assistant Tracy Cline does?

Is this kind of infantile to anyone but me?

Is that photo supposed to convey a "mean Mama" who's going to get justice for the people of Durham?

LOL!

Debrah said...

TO (7:58 PM)--

You must be an attorney who practices in Durham.

One doesn't have to have lived a lifetime to know that the law profession would disappear tomorrow if attorneys had to start telling the truth.

The majority are worthless paper shufflers.

Anonymous said...

Hey, 7:58. Why don't you identify yourself instead of hiding behind "anonymous"? Also, since you insist Crystal was telling the truth, would you care to provide the evidence that demonstrates her own veracity?

In fact, Nifong DID lie, and that was demonstrated in a court of law. So, I guess in your world, Judge Osmond Smith is a liar, too.

W. R. Chambers said...

I wonder how often, with whom and in how much detail the lawyers for the defendants consult with their clients about cost, objectives, alternatives and means.

Anonymous said...

"My money is on Crystal, who maintains she was attacked in the bathroom. It makes perfect
sense now."


Well, Victoria Price is a liar.

District Attorney Knight is a liar.

All the subsequent prosecutors and even the governor of the state were liars.

The 1000 prospective jurors who said they wouldn't treat a black man different from a white man, are liars.

The doctors who said the girls were raped were liars.

The woman who heard of their physical injuries were liars.

The lurid tales the newspapers printed were just made-up lies.

The thousands of ignorant and uniformed Morgan County residents- damn liars everyone of them.

I tell you, my money is on Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, who said they were raped in that boxcar on the way to Scottsboro.

That's the only way to make sense of it, I guess...

(People haven't changed much in the last 75 years...)

Anonymous said...

7:58 --

Yup. When people are caught lying, we call them liars.

Crystal has to be a liar, simply because of the fact that her stories have contradicted each other so blatantly. In one version, she claimed that she and Kim Roberts were forcibly separated from each other, as they screamed and tried to cling together. In another version, she claimed that Kim Roberts acted as an accomplice to the lacrosse players, holding her down during the alleged assault.

Any person of normal intelligence can easily understand that if one of those stories is true (something we have no reason to believe, by the way) then the other must be false. Do you understand that? Crystal is a liar.

When someone comes along and says "I believe Crystal Gail Mangum!" what they're really saying is "I'm a seething fountain of hatred and bigotry; I want to choose who's right and who's wrong based on skin color and social strata, and if facts get in the way, facts be damned! Like the citizens of 1984 who truly believed that 2 + 2 = 5 when the Party demanded that it be so, I will believe all Crystal's wildly varying and mutually contradicting accounts, because my bigotry demands that she be right."

One Spook said...

Debrah writes @ 8:37 PM:

"Someone clue me in.

What adult professional, especially someone working in law or within the justice system, has his or her profile on Facebook or MySpace, etc.....or any of the social networking websites the way this Nifong assistant Tracy Cline does?"


I can clue you in: Barack Obama

If you read Cline's site, you'll note it was put up by her campaign manager.

Big Deal. Cline, like Barack, was running for office.

Relax.

One Spook

One Spook said...

Anon @ 7:58, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, writes:

"My money is on Crystal, who maintains she
was attacked in the bathroom. It makes perfect
sense now."


Cool! So, spare us the suspense ... are you one of the 250,000 "damn liars" in Durham, or among the liars on "that damn faculty" ... to which group do you belong?

One Spook

Anonymous said...

To paraphrase the greatest writer alive or dead, "I need another Linwood Wilson aphorism like I need a hole in my head."

**********

K.C., your inferences are chills that run up and down my spine. Please stop! Seriously, great job of reviewing the legal docs!

**********

Readers of this blog and Liestoppers should be aware that a number of the Plaintiffs' claims will likely be dismissed by the Judge. This is to be expected, as the boys' attorneys have done their jobs well and have crammed their suits with even gray-area causes of action. There will still be plenty of claims left with which to cripple the defendants financially.

***********

The real **** will hit the fan when it gets closer to trial, and the defendants' attorneys are forced to tell their clients that they need to either bring Crystal Mangum into the suit as a necessary party or settle the case and avoid the likelihood of massive damages. Will Durham and Duke settle before suing the Potbanger Madonna? I think, yes.

**********

MOO! Gregory

Anonymous said...

Folks, don't worry about 7:58. He/she just realized that the value of his Duke diploma just got flushed down the toilet and/or he can't sell his Durham home because potential buyers now understand that already sky-high property taxes are going to spike, big-time, to pay for a massive civil judgment against, among others, Durham.

Candidly, I'd be pissed too. Delusional?, well that's another story. Then again, 7:58 might be "Crystal Meth" herself.

Anonymous said...

To Anon 7:58,

First, only an handful of the people you listed could be considered "liars" by any standard. Your off topic hyperbole, as it were, is a gross distortion itself. Perhaps you took your cue from Ms. Gorelick's brief.

Second, "lie" is such a harsh word and boring too when used nine times in such a short piece of writing, even when used repeatedly for rhetorical purposes. Here are some other suggestions to break up the monotony: deceived, cast aspersions, defamed, acted dishonestly, spread disinformation, distorted, evaded, invented a fable, created a fiction, perpetrated a fraud, embellished, exaggerated, libeled, misrepresented, misstated, prevaricated, perjured, slandered and told a whopper. These choices could add greater subtlety of meaning to your comment.

For the record, some police officers were truthful. Only one doctor examined Ms. Mangum and she was, I believe, completely truthful. I am not aware of any other doctors at Duke even commenting on the case. Only one almost but not quite yet member of the SANE department examined Ms. Mangum, and that almost SANE nurse behaved quite unprofessionally, grossly exaggerating the results of the exam to suit her own preconceptions and perhaps meet the expectations of the police officers. No one at the DNA labs exactly "lied," but Brian Meehan buried the truth in such as way as to utterly compromise his ethics and run afoul three separate requirements for open discovery. A fairly small percentage of the faculty participated in the ad and signed the "clarifying statement." Quite a few residents of Durham followed the case closely, recognized the inevitable evidence-based conclusions, and spoke out accordingly here and in Durham. And by now almost no one in the media clings to the whopper our confused and deluded Ms Mangum told.

The truth of this case is not difficult to ascertain. But it seems you have fallen for the fiction, the big lie, and prefer it to the now well established truth.

Observer

Anonymous said...

To 7:58: Anyone who is so stupid as to publish their thoughtful preference to "bet" on Crystal Mangum's veracity must be so ashamed that he/she would not want any other thinking human being to know his/her identity.It's one thing to disagree with the NC Bar, the NC Attorney General, Ms. Mangum's co-workers and most of America regarding the honesty of Nifong,Wilson et al. It's another to support a prostitute/ exotic dancer as the only individual in the entire Duke LAX "soap opera" who has not lied.Utterly ridiculous.

skwilli said...

If this post was read aloud at trial by a voice we all hear all the time (Keifer Sutherland or another commercial voice-over artist) it would be an open and shut case. The lacrosse players could then OWN Duke Univ. and Durham NC, and we could all get on with our lives. Instead, we will hear voices like Jamie Gorelick hemming and hawing and obscuring the truth beneath layers and layers of bovine excrement, dragging this on for years to come.

Anonymous said...

just in the hope of raising the analysis.

Although you are scathing about the legal strategy, I wonder if there is a reasoning. If duke simply fights really hard on every issue that comes up, then that will greatly increase the amount of money needed by Plaintiffs' solicitors. Are they simply trying to prove that they have deeper pockets than the plaintiffs, and that they can wait them out in court ?

For the NTO, is there any protection offered by the fact that a judge approved the NTO (if I recall correctly) ? Doesn't that absolve durham completely ?

per

Anonymous said...

7:58 PM

Well, you said it, and it turns out that is exactly what happened. That's is the psychology of a lynch mob. It is group think grown amuck. That was the preconditioned thinking of an entire group of so called educated people . . . it is the way they are educated, and they are educated to be afraid and fearful of what others in their group think . . . fear more than anything else drove Broadhead's response. Can you imagin the "throw them under the bus" mentality that materialized in Durham . . . you could cut it with a knife . . . but you knew that already. The fact of the matter was that nothing happened. There was no DNA evidence to support any of that which so many wished. It just wasn't there. No matter 7:58 tell a lie. It's all good.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said at 10:40 PM...

"My money is on Crystal, who maintains she was attacked in the bathroom. It makes perfect
sense now."

Well, Victoria Price is a liar.

District Attorney Knight is a liar.

He wasn't the District Attorney; he was the Alabama Attorney General.

All the subsequent prosecutors and even the governor of the state were liars.

The 1000 prospective jurors who said they wouldn't treat a black man different from a white man, are liars.

The doctors who said the girls were raped were liars.

The doctors didn't say the girls were raped; they testified that the girls had engaged in recent sexual activity.

The woman who heard of their physical injuries were liars.

The lurid tales the newspapers printed were just made-up lies.

The thousands of ignorant and uniformed Morgan County residents- damn liars everyone of them.

I tell you, my money is on Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, who said they were raped in that boxcar on the way to Scottsboro.

It wasn't a boxcar; it was a gondola car.

That's the only way to make sense of it, I guess...

(People haven't changed much in the last 75 years...)

12/7/08 10:40 PM

Anonymous said...

And dragging it (the lawsuits) out for years is about the only course of action Durham/Duke has. As soon as they get to discovery someone is going to be questioned/deposed under oath. Then it's perjury or massive damages. And God help 'em if this case actually goes to an honest jury. Game over.

Anonymous said...

IS Gorelick a Communist?

Debrah said...

H-S article from January.

Cline, of course, denies her role.



Assistant DA gets harassing messages

BY RAY GRONBERG : The Herald-Sun

Jan 10, 2008

DURHAM -- Assistant District Attorney Tracey Cline says callers have targeted her with racist hate messages after she was identified -- incorrectly, she maintains -- with a key document in the since-debunked Duke lacrosse rape case.

"It's really nasty people," Cline said of the anonymous phone callers.

The content, she added, is "racist stuff." She quoted one caller as saying "How's your black a-- going to run for DA?" because of a document that local defense lawyers maintained was unconstitutional.

"It's really distressing me," Cline said of the hate calls, which she said are jamming her voice mail. "I'm just stressed out."

At the heart of the matter is material taken from the notes of lacrosse case lead detective Ben Himan, and notes and a deposition from Durham police Sgt. Mark Gottlieb.

They referred to Cline's role in the creation of a non-testimonial order, or NTO, that allowed police to take photographs of and collect DNA evidence from 46 of the 47 members of the Duke lacrosse team.

Cline denied that she had any role in writing the order.

"The record will indicate that David Saacks did it," she said. Saacks is the interim district attorney but was an assistant DA at that time. "I didn't prepare any paperwork on that case. Nothing at all. I've never even seen or laid hands on a non-testimonial order."

She said, "I remember Gottlieb asked me about a non-testimonial order, and I told him I was not available."

But when asked by The Herald-Sun whether she'd asked police to draft the non-testimonial order, Cline responded, "I don't recall."

Himan's notes and Gottlieb's deposition indicate that police consulted Cline on March 22, 2006, after they learned players, on the advice of attorneys, wouldn't show up that day for a scheduled meeting with investigators.

As soon as that was clear, Himan contacted Cline, who handled most sexual-assault cases for the district attorney's office.

Himan -- who turned over his notes to defense lawyers in May of 2006 -- reported that the conversation took place at about 4:15 p.m. He said Cline urged police to secure the order.

"I went to Assistant District Attorney Tracey Cline and spoke to her about our case," Himan said, summarizing what happened. "She stated that we should do the non-testimonial on the players including upper-torso pictures, current mug shots and cheek swabbings."

Gottlieb's notes -- turned over to the defense in July of 2006 -- backed Himan's account.

"I spoke to [Police Attorney] Toni Smith and notified her that Investigator Himan spoke with ADA Tracey Cline. Ms. Cline asked them to draw up the NTO so the DA's office could present it to a judge in the morning. [Smith] stated follow the directions of the DA's office since they are the ones conducting the possible future prosecution."

The sergeant's deposition -- given to N.C. State Bar investigators as they assembled evidence for then-District Attorney Mike Nifong's eventual disbarment -- echoed his notes.

"I had actually spoke with Ms. Smith and Investigator Himan spoke with the District Attorney's office, Ms. Cline, and they decided to -- the district attorney's office thought it was a good idea [--] to go ahead and do a non-testimonial, and I assisted Investigator Himan in preparing it," Gottlieb told bar investigators.

Himan and Gottlieb worked on the order overnight and had it ready for a judge's signature the morning of March 23, 2006. Cline, however, wasn't available to help the detectives get it signed. Himan said he turned to Saacks, who presented the draft order to Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens.

Asked for comment, Saacks backed up the accounts offered by Himan and Gottlieb, and at least part of Cline's. He said the detectives first went to Cline.

"They just called her and asked her what they should do," Saacks said. "When they came to me, they said they had already talked to Tracey about it. But she wasn't available that morning, so I took it through court."

He said police -- and not anyone in the DA's office -- drafted the order. The only change made to the draft, once it was presented to Saacks, was one that helped authorities bypass a rule that normally gives targets of an NTO three days to challenge it in court.

Saacks said he didn't know whether police suggested the order or whether Cline "brought it up" when she talked to them.

The detectives' use of the order was controversial from the outset because lawyers questioned whether authorities had probable cause to demand DNA samples from 46 players.

One Durham lawyer, Tom Loflin, told The Herald-Sun in March 2006 that the order was "mammothly unconstitutional" and a "dragnet fishing expedition."

In one of two civil-rights lawsuits pending against the city, Durham lawyer Bob Ekstrand alleged that police lied in the affidavit supporting the order because they knew they couldn't establish that all 46 of the players had attended the team party that touched off the case.

The suit also contended that Himan and Gottlieb requested the NTO to retaliate against the players for refusing to show up at the planning meeting to answer questions.

Cline is widely expected to run for district attorney this spring.

Debrah said...

From the Greta (Van Susteren) Wire archive:


North Carolina!! What did she know? and if nothing, why didn’t she ask?

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

If I were a voter in Durham County, I would have wanted to cross examine Tracey Cline about what she knew about Mike Nifong’s handling of the Duke Lacrosse case. She worked in the office at the time the case was the high profile case in the office…and I can’t believe it was not discussed a great deal. If it was not discussed, I would like to know why she did not quiz Nifong about it. Certainly she heard all the lawyers on TV and in the local press complaining about his handling of it as early as 2 weeks after the dancer was at the house. Important issues - including the withholding of evidence — were constantly discussed on TV. Every Assistant DA in that office while Nifong was handling that case should have had the courage to step forward….before I would vote for her, I would want to know why she did not. Prosecutors have enormous power — and communities must be confidant that those with great courage hold those jobs.

Anonymous said...

To 5:06
You said it in 'that's the way they were educated'! Can Duke salvage its reputation by choosing between admitting that it sided with irrational people or asserting that the political correctness of an education means more than historical objectivity.

Big Al

Anonymous said...

Well, it would seem that the whole of Duke and its faculty were holding up their pants with buttoned gallases and pullin' the straw out of their mouth to blather inanities of legal wisdom and call students tryin' to vote "racist" and the students knowin' the truth and all . . . well, you know that professor that gave a bad grade to someone just because . . . do you honestly believe that was a first time for that . . . er, person. I don't think so . . . dey's edumacates demselves to behave like that . . . and they look like rank bumling bumpkins doing it. They embarass themselves and anyone who believes in the rule of law.

Anonymous said...

Thee will be a limit as to how deep Duke's pockets really are. They will have a hard time justifying to those who ultimately part with their hard earned monies to support Duke (parents of current students and alumni)that pursuing at enormous expense lawsuits that point out the egregious behavior of the Duke administration and DUMC is a good use of those investments. Additionally, the statements that Duke (in essence) has no real responsibility to enforce its own rules and responsibilities towards its students will take a toll. Finally, if one is a responsible parent, one has to ask oneself if it is wise and prudent to send one's child to a school and in a community (Durham) where one's civil rights can be violated for no cause. I would be willing to bet that those parents of students who were the victims of the NTO would have thought long and hard about Duke and Durham if they had known when their high schoolers were applying to colleges what they know now.
cks

Anonymous said...

I may have missed it: is Dr. Manley a defendant? If so why?

She seems to have been one person that tried to perform her job well and actually told the truth.

Anonymous said...

"She seems to have been one person that tried to perform her job well and actually told the truth."

Dr. Manly is a defendant, and her conduct on that evening has definitely been called into question.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Manley is a defendant, I believe, for failure to supervise almost SANE Nurse Levicy. Someone correct me please if I am wrong.

Observer

Anonymous said...

re "Dr. Manley" comment/questions of 12/9/08 5;41 AM [Anonymous]; 2:29 AM [Anonymous]; and 4:23 PM [Observer].

See my long comment of 12/2/08 in Duke Sues Insurance Co thread [started in late November].

It may answer your questions.

Anonymous said...

qa: very through and very impressive, thank you.

I'm still uncomfortable that Dr. Manly is a defendant, even if its tactically required to avoid an "empty chair" that other defendants can point to.

Manly's negligence if it is such, seems minimal. There was no malevolence from her end as with the SANE trainee, the DPD and Nifong.

Perhaps I see her role against the malfeasance and bad faith of others and wrongly conclude she ought to be given a pass for what seems to be minor error.

Whatever the reason, her presence as a defendant bothers me, and I bet it will bother a jury too. Even if it never gets to a jury, it just seems wrong to have lumped her in with the others.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous@7:58

The gist of your argument is that the three lacrosse players would not have been charged and arrested if they had not been guilty. That is the kind of justice(?) that applies in a totalitarian police state, like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

bobo1949 said...

Assert Gorelick and Cowan bluntly, “The Duke bulletin is not a valid contract.”

As the bulletin is not a valid contract, may the students who have been punished up to and including expulsion from Duke, sue for damages? Having your future negatively affected by a non-binding contract seems to be overly harsh.