Cohan Attacks Joe Neff

Author William D. Cohan has issued a strange response to Joe Neff’s recent exposé in the N&O. Neff’s article, which I wrote about below, corrected the Cohan book’s inaccurate framing of the innocence declaration. In the book, Neff noted, Cohan implies that the attorney general blindsided his investigators when he issued the innocence declaration. By actually speaking to the senior member of the AG’s office in charge of the investigation, Neff demonstrated that the version of events (which relied on the suppositions of a convicted liar, Mike Nifong) presented in Cohan’s book was untrue. Neff also observed that Cohan passes along Nifong’s words—courtesy of multiple interviews—“virtually unchallenged.”

Perhaps channeling the sentiments of his chief source, Nifong, Cohan charges that Neff’s article included “pathetic mistakes.” On the “virtually unchallenged” point, Cohan writes, “Had [Neff] read the book before writing his article, he would have known that much of the book is one challenge to Nifong after another from Duke, from the athletes, from their defense attorneys and from the media, including Neff.”

(The index to the book references Neff’s name once.)

This is a very strange interpretation of Neff’s article, in a couple of respects. First, the article makes clear that Neff has read the book. (So have I: Neff’s portrayal of the book’s treatment of Nifong is, if anything, overly generous to Cohan.) Second, given that none of the figures who wrote or spoke the previously published material from which Cohan’s book quotes had seen any of Nifong’s interviews with Cohan, I’m not sure how any of these people could have challenged Nifong. Since Cohan didn’t interview anyone on the other side of the case apart from Ryan McFadyen, the only person who could have challenged Nifong’s current version of events was Cohan, a task for which the author showed no interest.

Neff’s piece was newsworthy in another respect: he actually spoke to Jim Coman, who supervised the investigation. Author Cohan did not do so, for reasons that remain unclear. (Cohan says he did try to speak to Roy Cooper, who declined.)

In his Facebook posting, author Cohan produces an e-mail from his public interest lawyer, in which the lawyer reported that Jim Coman had called to say that the state—like virtually every other state in the country—would not give Cohan (or any other citizen) access to investigative files. It’s not clear how this e-mail is in any way relevant to the points raised by Neff’s article; the e-mail contains no indication that the author asked Coman for an interview to discuss the case. Indeed, the e-mail includes a sentence passing along Coman's phone number—presumably in case the author wanted to contact him—but also indicating that he was currently involved in a case.

Cohan also has a new piece out in Cosmopolitan—at least, unlike in his CNN column, he’s dropped the pretense of providing a news commentary, rather than simply promoting the forthcoming book—in which convicted murderer Crystal Mangum offers yet another version of what happened. (This time, wood splinters were driven into her, but former SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy evidently neglected to write this fact down.) Cohan also allows Mangum—without pointing out the error—to claim that Reade Seligmann carried her out to the car, despite photographic and video evidence that proves otherwise.

Cohan also darkly hints that we’ll never know for sure what happened because North Carolina, like virtually every state, does not publicly release police investigative files. But a significant portion of the discovery file—one never released, and to the best of my knowledge never seen by anyone who covered the case, including by me, because Judge Smith sealed it—was Mangum’s 800-1000pp. medical file. That file included psychological records—which perhaps might explain why she’s now offering an even more delusional story.

In his jailhouse interview, Cohan had an opportunity to ask Mangum to publicly release the hundreds of pages in the discovery file over which she possesses personal control. Given his commitment to complete openness of all police files, I’m sure that Cohan made the request. Alas, his piece in Cosmopolitan doesn’t reveal Mangum’s response, beyond a bizarre claim that Mangum no longer has access to her own records.