Updates from Durham

[Update: Mangum was found guilty of 2nd-degree murder, and sentenced to a minimum of 170 months (14.2 years) in prison.

The Chronicle reports that Mangum's attorney asserted that his client's disastrous decision to testify in her own defense (see below) came against his advice.

The paper has no comment from any member of the Group of 88, nor have I seen any comments elsewhere on the web from any Group members. Presumably few if any of the Group continue to find Mangum credible, but it's worth reiterating that all except Arlie Petters have not in any way distanced themselves from their 2006 statement.]

Mangum has taken the stand in her own defense, and WRAL has the video. Cross-examination starts at the 46.30 mark.

Mangum's basic argument: she's telling the truth; and various police officers, neighbors, friends were all lying; and videos and photos that don't corroborate her version of events are for inexplicable reasons all inaccurate.

Recall: this is the person to which, in different ways, Mike Nifong and the Group of 88 attached their public reputations. Recall: this is the person whose allegations the Group of 88 deemed credible, to the extent they were willing to publicly affirm that something "happened" to her, based solely on her version of events, as presented by police and Samiha Khanna.

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The oft-delayed murder trial of Crystal Mangum is underway in Durham. (WRAL has been live-streaming the proceedings.) Testimony in the first two days has featured evidence of Mangum trying to mislead police about her name—Marcella Mangum was the preferred choice—and (as she did in the lacrosse case after police were called to Kim Roberts’ car) her going limp when handcuffed by police.

A ruling by the judge presiding over the case that prosecutors could introduce evidence of Mangum’s previous arrest—in which she allegedly tried to get a knife to stab her then-boyfriend, Milton Walker—makes a conviction likely. But, then again, this is Durham.

As expected, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal filed by Bob Ekstrand on behalf of his three clients. This decision was all but certain once the Court declined to hear the appeal from the falsely accused players.

Limited claims against ex-officers Gottlieb and Himan (from the falsely accused players) and against Duke (from the three former players represented by Ekstrand) are the only remaining matters of civil litigation arising from members of the 2006 team.

There is, however, one potential civil suit that could expose items related to the case. The Herald-Sun has reported that Ekstrand, who’s representing former DPD Sgt. John Shelton (who’s now working for the Durham Co. sheriff’s office), has threatened a suit against Durham for its mistreatment of Shelton.

Ekstrand alleges that the DPD retaliated against Shelton because Shelton—apparently alone among Durham police officers—from the start doubted the veracity of Mangum’s tall tales in the lacrosse case. In another department, Shelton’s prescience would be grounds for praise. But, then again, this is Durham.

Mangum Update

WRAL reports that false accuser and accused murderer Crystal Mangum has posted a $200,000 bond and is now out of jail, awaiting trial. The article doesn't reveal the source of the cash. Presuming Mangum hasn't suddenly inherited money, it would seem as if an unexpected financial backer has delivered for her.

Updates

A couple of updates:

Stuart Taylor and I had an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, examining the . . . considerable gap between how Penn State responded to the scandal of the Spanier/Paterno cover-up and how Duke’s trustees and administration responded to their lacrosse case failures.

The op-ed focuses on the (almost comical, in retrospect) conclusions of the Bowen/Chambers report—for background, you can see here and here.

The H-S reports that next week, the State Bar will send a letter admonishing pro-Nifong crank Sydney Harr to cease practicing law in his attempt to represent false accuser and accused murderer Crystal Mangum.

The article’s most interesting comment, however, came from Woody Vann, Mangum’s attorney. During the lacrosse case, Vann distinguished himself as one of the fiercest of Nifong enablers. Even as Nifong moved toward disbarment, Vann told the AP, "Nobody knows anything about the previous 28 years. The cases he's tried and won, and the cases he's tried well and won."

Now, however, Vann has changed his tune: “I’m the first one to say I don’t think it’s good for my client to have her name in the same paragraph with … anyone who is a member of the Committee for Justice for Nifong. All that does is tie their names together and dredge up memories of 2006 and 2007 and that’s not what we’re dealing with.”

Even for Durham...

Every so often, we see an event that raises eyebrows even by the upside-down standards of Durham legal culture. Take, for instance, the three legal motions filed late last week on behalf of false accuser and accused murderer Crystal Mangum. The motions weren’t filed by Mangum’s court-appointed attorney—who told the H-S that he knew nothing about them. Instead, they were ostensibly written on the accused murderer’s behalf by none other than “lay advocate” Sydney Harr, who has spent the past few years in a quixotic crusade to restore Mike Nifong’s law license. Even more strangely, Mangum’s court-appointed lawyer said that Mangum hadn’t authorized the motions’ filings—but each motion has a signature that appears to match Mangum’s.

In his motions, Harr, speaking of himself in the third person, admits that “he has not received formal legal training.” (But, perhaps, he once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.) The three motions combine character assassination, bizarre interpretations of the law, and revisionist history of the lacrosse case to call for dismissal of the murder charges against Mangum; the recusal of Judge Smith from Mangum’s case; and a change of venue in the event the first two requests aren’t granted.

The motion to dismiss the murder charges is almost comically bad. Harr contends that Mangum shouldn’t face charges for murdering her late boyfriend, Reginald Daye, either because Daye’s doctors initially gave him a “prognosis for a full recovery” and thus are guilty of “medical malpractice” or because Daye’s family took him off life support after doctors said he had no chance of survival and thus engaged in a “hospital homicide.” (Harr, who identifies himself as a retired physician, also offers his medical opinion on Daye’s cause of death, even though he never treated Daye; indeed, he claims that Daye “might have even regained consciousness” had he remained on life support.) In perhaps the motions’ most bizarre line, Harr faults Duke Medical Center doctors for removing Daye from life support “without the consent or input from Defendant [Mangum].”

Why an accused murderer would have the right to make medical decisions for the person she allegedly murdered Harr does not reveal.

Applied nationally, the motion’s argument would free hundreds of convicted killers—anyone whose victim’s life wasn’t artificially sustained by life support. Harr doesn’t cite even one case to bolster his novel legal theory, but he does accuse the media of having “concealed” the fact that Daye had been on life support. Why the media would have engaged in this conspiracy of silence Harr does not explain.

Harr’s motions also devote considerable space to a claim of conspiracy on behalf of the Durham Police Department and the Durham DA’s office to invent and prosecute unsustainable charges against Mangum, because the “Defendant was the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case.” Harr provides no explanation as to why the office of would-be lacrosse case second chair Tracey Cline or the Durham Police, which in 2006 spent months violating procedure after procedure in an attempt to prop up Mangum’s false charges, would have an incentive to invent criminal charges against Mangum. And, needless to say, he presents no evidence to sustain his . . . counterintuitive . . . theory.

His introduction of the lacrosse case does, however, provide Harr with an opportunity to relitigate the events of 2006. His motions, filled with gratuitous character assaults on the former Duke students, ooze with hatred for the falsely accused players (raising questions of whether the documents were prepared with some pro bono assistance from a certain disgraced ex-DA). Every so often, out of the blue, Harr throws in an attack on (of all people) Rae Evans.

Harr laments that Duke (who he himself has sued!) has faced “greed-driven lawsuits” because of what the motion alleges were $20 million settlements to the falsely accused players. (He provides no evidence for this figure, which he appears to have conjured from thin air.) And Harr, without citing any authority or case law, criticizes AG Roy Cooper for declaring the lacrosse players innocent, a move he attributes to the pernicious influence of Brad Bannon(!!). Cooper's actions, Harr suggests, were improper, since a declaration of innocence is “something that only a jury or a judge in lieu of a jury can do.” Of course, a jury delivers a verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty”; juries do not declare innocence. And what any of this revisionist history has to do with the motions’ ostensible topics Harr leaves for the reader to guess.

Perhaps temporarily forgetting the identity of his client, Harr veers from character assassination against the falsely accused lacrosse players to a claim that Nifong was wrongfully convicted of criminal contempt. Why? Because “as long as NIFONG believed what he was telling the court was true, even though it might not have been totally factually correct.”

This postmodern view of the truth might carry some way with the Group of 88 (did Harr seek to consult “law professor” Karla Holloway in his effort?) but has little bearing in the actual world of the law. As occurs throughout his motions, Harr cites no case law to sustain his novel legal theory. But he does employ it to suggest that Smith must recuse himself from Mangum’s trial.

The motions do reveal two new items: (1) that Nifong was “advised to drop prosecution of the Duke lacrosse defendants.” Harr doesn’t reveal who advised Nifong to take this course; and (2) that after her 2010 conviction for arson-related charges, Mangum was expelled from her graduate studies at North Carolina Central. Falsely accusing people of rape, apparently, doesn’t affect a student’s status at NCCU; conviction on misdemeanor arson charges does.

It’s hard to imagine that these motions will do Mangum any good. If, in fact, the false accuser didn’t authorize their filing, they could allow Harr to spend some time in jail for contempt. And WRAL reports that the State Bar is looking into Harr’s behavior.

A Few Updates

[Update, Tuesday, 11.51am: The N&O reports that in an unpublished decision, a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of Angel Richardson, even though DA Cline didn't turn over to the defense a statement that someone else claimed he had committed the killing until the trial was already underway.

In a remarkable piece of legal reasoning, the panel conceded that the evidence was exculpatory, and acknowledged that the Supreme Court's Brady standard (as well as, of course, North Carolina's seemingly toothless open file discovery law) requires turning over exculpatory material to the defense, but that there's nothing wrong with "the disclosure of evidence at trial, so long as disclosure is made in time for the defendant to make effective use of the evidence."]

A few updates on legal matters from Durham:

False accuser Crystal Mangum has been deemed mentally competent to stand trial for murder. Such a finding, it seems to me, best illustrates how low the bar for competency actually is—if Mangum isn’t seen as mentally imbalanced under the law, it’s hard to see who would be.

That said, the false accuser still has her defenders. Mangum co-author Vincent “Ed” Clark recently offered the following:

"The one thing I would want to add to this is that the story has been reported all wrong from the beginning . . . The narrative that Crystal lied about what happened that night is not true either. I was involved in the case from nearly the start. There are so many things that people don't know . . . the Duke case got used by a lot of people to score points in North Carolina . . . Unfortunately, reporter[s] and the general public are too lazy to do the work it takes to tell the real story. If you could just see, read or hear any of the interviews Crystal did with major media like NBC, CNN and the Daily Beast, you would have a completely different impression of what went on. Unfortunately, the attorneys for the players were very affective [sic] in killing any interviews Crystal did that made her look favorable . . . What I can tell you is that Crystal didn't make up being hurt. There were problems with the case but it didn't have anything to do with the information she provided . . . attorneys for the players[:] Many of them wereon the OJ [Brad Bannon as Johnnie Cochran??], Michael Vick and other similar cases . . . Racists [sic] idiots have no idea that the poor white boys in the case are and their parents have strong connections to the very media the hate[??]. The stress and lack of support for our own community really hurt Crystal. She has struggled to try and have a normal life but can't. Those clowns have hounded her for over five years. It has been said and unnecessary."

It’s worth pointing out: (1) none of the lacrosse players sued Mangum, as they obviously would have done if they had desired to “hound” her; (2) even the Queen of Bias, former SANE-nurse-in-training Tara Levicy, didn’t find any evidence that Mangum was “hurt”; (3) if the lacrosse players’ families had such strong connections to the media, how to explain the guilt-presuming media barrage in the early stages of the case?; (4) given that Mangum went on record with her rape-by-levitation theory, it’s hard to argue that anyone could deem any of her interviews credible.

But such comments offer a sense of the continuing reputational harm to the lacrosse players caused by Mangum’s false accusations and the Nifong/DPD misconduct.

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The ethically challenged Tracey Cline remains Durham County’s chief prosecutor, even though her behavior prompted this extraordinary in-court remark from her former boss, now-Judge Jim Hardin: “In respect to motions in this court, and any others, please ensure they are factual . . . Consider this a warning and a public admonition as to that.”

That said: despite the public admonition, Hardin allowed Cline to “withdraw” her motions asking for prison-visitor records, apparently as part of an attempt to dig for evidence to prove her wild claims of a “conspiracy” against her. And Hardin chose leniency even though, as Andrew Curliss noted, “Cline offered explanations for why she sought the documents that do not match up with records requests made by her office's investigator or in the motions she presented to Hardin."

Meanwhile, the N&O is reporting that a Durham attorney, Scott Cooper, has organized a grassroots legal campaign to remove Cline from office—as the State Bar has requested between 800 and 900 pages of files from five of Cline’s cases.

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Duke has filed a follow-up motion as the university continues its efforts to conceal as much as possible regarding its spring 2006 decisionmaking process. In the McFadyen lawsuit, attorney Bob Ekstrand requested material from the two public relations firms retained by Duke to craft the university’s public response to the lacrosse case. The requested material included items of considerable interest to any student of the case:

• Burson-Marsteller’s public relations advice and communications with Duke University, its administrators, officials, employees, alumni, board members, regarding both “on” and “off-the record” statements to members of the press;

• Duke University’s actions on April 5, 2006, including but not limited to […] the firing of former Head Coach Mike Pressler, President Brodhead’s television interviews, President Brodhead’s Letter to the Community, setting up a committee to examine the culture of the lacrosse team, setting up a committee to investigate the Duke administration and/or the decision to create any of the 5 committees announced by President Brodhead on April 5, 2006.

In a sometimes overheated reply, Duke’s attorneys described the subpoenas as an attempt to “harass the Duke Defendants” by prying into “confidential commercial information.” Somehow, I doubt that in future letters to prospective donors, Duke will describe itself as a commercial institution.

In the event, I suspect Judge Beaty will side with Duke on this matter—but his reasoning will be intriguing.

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Finally, an issue unrelated to the specifics of the lacrosse case but one that touches upon some of the themes of the case.

A few days ago, the Suffolk (MA) County DA dropped all charges against New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman, who had been accused of indecent assault by a woman he allegedly groped at a Halloween Party. Early press coverage, especially from the tabloid-ish Boston Herald, presumed if not guilt at the least a demonstration of extremely poor character.

When the charges were dropped, the DA’s office also released a video of the alleged “assault,” which the accompanying press release conceded showed what was, at most, “fleeting” contact between Edelman and the accuser—who neither the Globe nor the Herald deigned to name.

Perhaps, as occurred initially when the New York Times refused to identify Mangum after the exoneration, the papers didn’t want to do anything that might deter false-grope accusers from coming forward in the future.

Mangum Indicted

For murder, reports the N&O.

Mangum's Alleged Victim Dies

WRAL reports that the man false accuser Crystal Mangum allegedly stabbed has died.

Mangum will presumably face new charges next week. She is currently being represented by none other than an old friend of Mike Nifong's, Woody Vann, who had previously labeled Mangum "a very credible, believable person." Of course, this is the same Vann who in June 2006 dismissed Jim Coleman's (accurate) critique of Nifong and bizarrely claimed that the defense attorneys were "satisfied" with Nifong's performance as prosecutor.

The whole affair is very sad, all the more so given that a different outcome in her arson trial (or a more robust sentence from the judge in the case) would have ensured that Mangum never would have met Reginald Daye.

Mangum supporters issued a statement last night appearing to blame Duke Hospital for Daye's death.

There's no word on whether Bob Steel's million-dollar-man, Tim Tyson, stands by his description of Mangum as "somebody’s daughter and somebody’s sister and somebody’s mother and somebody's sweetheart."

Mangum Arrested (Yet Again)

False accuser Crystal Mangum was arrested, yet again, reports WTVD-11:

Officers say they were called to the scene of a stabbing at a home located in 3000 block Century Oaks Drive, early Sunday.

When police arrived they say they found a 46-year-old male who had been stabbed in the torso.

The man was taken to Duke University Hospital for treatment of his serious injuries.

Officers say they later arrested Mangum, 32, in a nearby apartment.

Mangum is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. She is being held at the Durham County Jail on no bond.

Investigators say Mangum is the victim's girlfriend, and believe the stabbing occurred during an argument.

Will the Group of 88 rally to her defense? After all, in her apologia for the Group of 88's ad, Cathy Davidson reached out to Mangum, lionizing her as a figure deserving sympathy, "a single mother who takes off her clothes for hire partly to pay for tuition at a distinguished historically black college."

The Wonderful World of Nicole Kubon

Every so often, a post or comment comes along that even I find extraordinary. Such was the case with a recent post by Nicole Kubon, a self-described “modern day feminist, struggling between the desire for social change and bitterness towards the depraved decadence of our backward culture."

Kubon, who claims to possess a Masters’ Degree in social work from the University of Michigan, posted an item stating, “If you like the Duke Lacrosse Team because they are really good at running around, throwing balls to each other in little nets, and getting high after games, it might be hard to hear that they allgot inordinately drunk and sexually assaulted a stripper they hired for their drunkfest.” [emphasis added]

Not even the false accuser Crystal Mangum ever claimed that she was sexually assaulted by all the people at the party (though she did seem to make one assertion, which she quickly retracted, that 20 people had raped her). And, more generally, I was curious as to what evidence Kubon possessed to substantiate her assertion, and in particular whether she had read the official reports of the North Carolina State Bar and the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office.

In reply to an e-mail from me, Kubon asserted that in making her claims, she relied on this March 26, 2006 posting from Brendan Nyhan. Yet this particular Nyhan post was far from his last word on the matter--it certainly didn't reflect his overall views on the lacrosse case--and all the post did was to (correctly) suggest that the story was likely to get a lot of attention and to alert readers to the (error-riddled) Khanna N&O “interview” with Mangum.* In this respect, Kubon is sort of an extreme version of the Group of 88, someone who rushed to judgment about the case and then simply closed her mind to any and all inconvenient data points that emerged thereafter. Even most of the Group of 88, however, are not so fantastically closed-minded. (Houston Baker, Grant Farred, and perhaps Wahneema Lubiano would fall into Kubon territory.) In a follow-up e-mail, Kubon then retracted her claim that she had relied on the March 2006 blog post for her own writings, but refused to supply any additional material on which she based her assertions. She also declined to state whether or not she had read the AG’s report.

Quite oddly, Kubon further informed me that her original post hadn’t proclaimed that all (or even any) of the lacrosse players were guilty. I’m not sure how else anyone would interpret the following line: “They all got inordinately drunk and sexually assaulted a stripper they hired for their drunkfest.” [emphasis added]

Kubon also appeared to be quite angry that commenters had criticized her . . . cavalier . . . use of facts. She promised that, since she “believe[s] that something happened that night,” she will not issue a correction of her post, and that she has no obligation to actually substantiate her claims with facts or evidence.

It is, to put it mildly, rather difficult to come up with a response, other than utter contempt, to a figure who all but gloats about her closed-mindedness while making heinous accusations against people.

*--modified for clarity, and to stress that, given his position as a Duke-based blogger as of 3-26-06, there was nothing, in any way, improper about Nyhan's post.

Four Updates

In an expected move, Crystal Mangum will not be re-tried on the most serious arson charge that she faced. What message the jury’s original majority-acquittal vote sends to Durham is anyone’s guess.

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In another unsurprising move, a new (albeit minor) demonstration of the continuing vise the Group of 88 and their allies exercise over Duke. The issue is the five-year review process for Blair Sheppard, dean of the Duke business school.

It would be hard to come up with an area of the academy further away from the Group’s race/class/gender vision than the business school. Yet the six-person review committee includes two Group members—Paula McClain (the political science professor who said she wouldn’t publicly call for Mike Nifong to respect due process in his treatment of Duke students) and Cathy Davidson (she of the fact-challenged, “revisionist” interpretation of spring 2006 events at Duke). A third member of the committee is the “vice provost for faculty diversity.” The administrator’s purview, of course, does not include pedagogical or intellectual diversity.

Does anyone want to bet against the proposition that the McClain committee will recommend the business school adopting new measures for certain types of “diversity”?

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An item at least tangentially related to the civil suit. Ames et al v. County of Harford, Maryland et al is a lawsuit by various anti-abortion rights activists against police and municipal officials in Maryland. As in the lacrosse civil suits, the Maryland police and municipalities filed motions to dismiss the case, citing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which they (like the Duke/Durham defendants) contended should shield them before discovery could commence.

In May, a district court judge dismissed the motion; and a Fourth Circuit appeals court panel has just upheld the decision, thereby allowing the suit to continue. Two passages from the district court decision that should resonate to anyone who followed the lacrosse case:

“The Court finds that the qualified immunity issue cannot be resolved at the current time because of the fact-dependent nature of the required inquiry and the undeveloped status of the record.” The Maryland case can’t hold a candle to the lacrosse case in this regard, given the reams of e-mails likely available from the Duke and Durham defendants.

And, as to the standard that the court should use, in cases like the lacrosse case and the Maryland case where claims of civil rights violations are involved: “Where, as here, the Defendants seek to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ civil rights complaint, this court ‘must be especially solicitous of the wrongs alleged’ and ‘must not dismiss the claim unless it appears to a certainty that the plaintiff would not be entitled to relief under any legal theory which might plausibly be suggested by the facts alleged.’” [emphasis in original]

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Finally, for those concerned about the lax editorial standards at The Atlantic, the letter to the editor form is here.

The Durham Way

Final thoughts on the last few weeks:

Given all that we’ve seen of Durham’s attitudes toward criminal justice—reflected best in the nomination and then election of Mike Nifong, followed by the nomination and election of his deputy, Tracey Cline—the verdict in the case should come as little surprise. True, false accuser Crystal Mangum didn’t deny that she had set the fire in her house’s bathroom. And, also true, the jury saw a contemporaneous video of her confessing to setting the fire. But this is the same city in which a near-majority of voters appeared unconvinced by a videotape showing Reade Seligmann someplace else at the time Mike Nifong claimed he committed a horrific crime. In Durham, it seems, normal laws of space and time don’t apply—or at least a lot of the residents wish it could be so, when it would serve their ideological interests.

(1) Even given this environment, I was surprised by the post-trial comments of the Mangum case judge, Abe Jones. After seeing Mangum convicted on a misdemeanor count of child abuse, Jones lifted a previous court order and allowed Mangum to regain custody of her three children. The false accuser, he suggested, was a good mother, and the fire-setting incident was an exception in her treatment of her children.

Whatever investigation North Carolina children’s services conducted of Mangum remains confidential. But considerable documentation—spread across four years—casts considerable doubt about Mangum’s fitness as a mother. The lacrosse case file included contemporaneous documents (such as statements from Mangum and her “drivers”) that detailed a woman who spent late nights on “dates” in hotel rooms and most of the time left her children with her parents and, on one occasion, her “driver.” The AG’s report indicated that Mangum showed up to one 2007 interview behaving erratically and testing positive for (among other drugs) methadone, a drug frequently proscribed for patients with heroin addictions. And in 2010, Mangum’s own attorney admitted that her client set clothes in the bathroom on fire (with her kids down the hall) and then didn’t tell police officers what she had done, even as her kids remained in the house.

While reasonable people can disagree over whether the record outlined above would justify a loss of custody, surely few would suggest that the clothes-burning incident was an exception in Mangum’s parenting skills. But, then again, in North Carolina, judges are elected, and Judge Jones has to face the same electorate that voted into office first Mike Nifong and then Tracey Cline.

(2) It was interesting to see who in Durham rose to Mangum’s defense—or who defended her defenders—and who took a pass on the case. Foremost, of course, in the latter category was the Group of 88. Though each and every member of the Group remains on record as publicly affirming that something “happened” to Mangum the night of the lacrosse party, and though each and every member of the Group remains publicly committed to “turn up the volume no matter what the police say or the court decides,” it appears as if no Group member gave a public statement sympathizing with Mangum or contributed to her legal defense fund. Unlike the lacrosse case, in this matter the Group saw no advantage in exploiting Mangum’s position.

Also quiet was the Durham professional Left. The leadership of the People’s Alliance, the “progressive” PAC whose voters did so much to ensure first Nifong’s and then Cline’s victory, shied away from defending Mangum. Even as they did so, however, the group’s spokesperson, Milo Pyne, announced his continued “sympathy” for Nifong, making Durham perhaps the only city in the country where left-wing activists express sympathy for a figure who committed massive prosecutorial misconduct in trying to send innocent people to jail.

Today’s news suggests that indifference to prosecutorial misconduct extends beyond the Group of 88 and the People’s Alliance, to the very core of Durham’s “minister of justice.” DA Tracey Cline—Nifong’s would-be second chair if the lacrosse case went to trial—has dismissed ADA Mitchell Garrell, after previously cutting his pay. Garrell, it’s worth remembering, had opposed Cline in the four-way 2008 race for the DA’s nomination, when he ran on a campaign calling for the “minister of justice” to behave ethically. According to the N&O, his dismissal occurred after he behaved ethically—he turned over, as he should have, all case-related material to the defense in the case of Derrick Allen. Unfortunately for Garrell, these files included material suggesting that “Minister of Justice” Cline had misled the court.

[In 2008, Cline was nominated courtesy of the “Nifong coalition” (which gave Nifong his victory first in the 2006 primary and then the general election)—Durham’s “progressive” whites, plus most African-Americans.]

(3) Silence from the Group and the PA left defense of Mangum to a motley crew of professional race-baiters—figures like Durham’s most prominent homophobe, Victoria Peterson; ex-school board member Jackie Wagstaff, whose courtroom behavior yielded her a 10-day sentence for contempt; and Steven Matherly, a PA “activist” who told the N&O that he considered his own previous brushes with the law a “badge of honor.”

Matherly repeatedly made the . . . peculiar . . . assertion that the attorney general (the state’s chief law enforcement officer) lacks the power to declare innocent people in his state who are falsely accused. He supplemented this legal “analysis” with a wild claim that those who did Ms. Magnum wrong (including, as he referenced in one post, the behavior of the lacrosse players) created a Durham environment, 2006-2010, that resembled the anti-black South of the 1920s and 1930s, in which lynchings occurred. Those looking to Matherly, however, for the 1920s/1930s Southern equivalents of Mike Nifong (a prosecutor who violated rules to keep alive a criminal claim from an African-American) or the Group of 88 (members of the local Establishment who tied their professional prestige to a criminal claim from an African-American) would still be waiting. I doubt that Matherly will provide any such examples in the future.

Given Matherly’s ignorance of both legal procedure and history, defending him is no easy task. But into the breach stepped Duke professor Robert Zimmerman, a prominent apologist for the Group of 88. Prof. Zimmerman, who in 2007 spent months hinting that he possessed secret evidence that would show the Group of 88’s statement wasn’t about the lacrosse case (ultimately, he produced no such evidence), made a surprise re-appearance in the DIW comment thread. His entertaining submissions featured his usual combination of a (as one commenter noticed) “passive-aggressive” attitude with Amelia Bedelia-style textual analysis.

(4) As the nation’s highest-profile false rape accuser faced trial on unrelated charges, two other blows challenged the ultra-feminist claim that women never lie about rape. In New York City, weather reporter Heidi Jones was charged with filing a false claim of rape after she gave police an inconsistency-riddled tale of a mysterious Hispanic man first raping her and threatening her. And in Sweden, even Wendy Murphy (“I never, ever met a false rape claim") expressed doubt about sexual assault charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

(5) Finally, in a classic example of how the academy’s lack of accountability has broader effects, Mangum’s legal proceedings coincided with the nomination of Group of 88’er Cathy Davidson to a position on the NEH’s advisory board. That would be the same Cathy Davidson, it’s worth reiterating, who published a January 2007 op-ed that was either lying or delusional in its description of the March 2006 environment at Duke.

The Mangum Trial Continues [with updates]

[Update, Thurs., 11.58am: One of my classes has an exam this afternoon, and so I will be off-line most of the afternoon; Matthew Milliken is back in court, and you can follow his twitter feed.]

[Update, Thurs., 10.17am: The Mangum case has gone to the jury. And here's a remarkable update from the twitter feed of H-S reporter Matthew Milliken, who covered the trial yesterday: "Jackie Wagstaff [a race-baiting former school board member, and outspoken Nifong supporter] overheard during recess: 'They are not understanding the nature of the black household.' Not sure if she's referring to [the racially-mixed] jury." Only in Durham could we get the insinuation that a mother burning clothes in a room near to where her children were sleeping is part of the "nature of the black household."]

[Update, Wed., 9.40am: The N&O reports: "In a videotaped interrogation shown to the jury Tuesday morning, Crystal Mangum confessed to smashing her boyfriend Milton Walker’s windshield with a vacuum cleaner, slashing his tires and setting his clothes on fire because she says he punched her in the face repeatedly." Mangum's attorney tried and failed to get the confession excluded from evidence, on grounds that at the time, the false accuser "was medicated after a spinal tap for headache treatment and hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous two nights."]

The first week of the Crystal Mangum trial (on charges of arson, injury to personal property, contributing to the delinquency of her three children, and resisting arrest) has concluded in Durham. The trial raises one obvious question: namely, what criteria the North Carolina children’s services department possibly could have used to keep Mangum’s three children in the same house with her, given that the record of the lacrosse case proved that she either was a monster, willing to lie and send innocent people to jail for decades, or a person so mentally disturbed that she believed her lies. It’s perfectly clear from the record of the trial that the children were not well-served by remaining in Mangum’s custody.

A few items:

(1) A courtroom observer passes on news that upon her arrest, Mangum (falsely) told officers that she was pregnant. She also, of course, lied to the officers about her identity.

(2) Mangum’s intriguing defense amounts to a version of entrapment: (a) that police officers, having received a desperate 911 call from one of Mangum’s children, should have trusted the assurances of this mentally imbalanced woman that everything was OK, and not entered the premises; and (b) that, having been arrested, Mangum had no obligation to inform police officers that she had set clothes on fire in the bathroom, even as her three children were in a nearby room.

(3) For those desiring a peek inside the pro-Mangum fantasy world, Steve Matherly is attending the trial. In a recent post, the People’s Alliance “activist” has taken a break from defending Mangum, and instead has launched into the character attacks on the lacrosse players that were so common from figures like Cathy Davidson and her Group of 88 comrades. Matherly made the mindboggling claim that the role of the lacrosse players in the lacrosse case is comparable to “the racist riots of the 1920s and 30s.”

Yes, because as any student of U.S. history knows, in the 1920s and 1930s, local prosecutors throughout the South were—like Mike Nifong in the lacrosse case—willing to violate myriad ethical procedures in order to imprison innocent white people, despite baseless charges from a local African-American woman.

The Mangum Trial

The trial of false accuser Crystal Mangum is underway in Duham; the serial fabricator stands charged with arson, injury to personal property, contributing to the delinquency of her three children, and resisting arrest.

A few items: (1) Prosecutors agreed that they wouldn’t bring up Mangum’s myriad lies in the lacrosse case to undermine the credibility of her tales regarding the criminal charges against her.

(2) In the seating of the jury, Mangum’s attorney seemed determined to use preemptive challenges against people tied to Duke, especially Duke students. I can see where Duke students wouldn’t be likely to ignore the evidence to bolster Mangum’s position, but I’m not sure about Duke employees or administrators. Certainly, the false accuser would have been incredibly lucky if one of the Group of 88 had somehow slipped through to the jury.

Reported the N&O, Mangum’s attorney asked the judge “to release the eighth juror interviewed because his family has strong ties to Duke and his wife, a university employee, sat on a committee charged with helping the campus deal with the lacrosse scandal.

The mentioned committee was presumably the Campus Culture Initiative—a body dominated by the Group of 88 and its allies. It would seem that this juror would be ideal for the false accuser.

(3) The pro-Mangum People’s Alliance activist Steve Matherly has a blog that gives the party line on the trial from Durham’s extreme left. Matherly has posts complaining about the prosecutor’s issuing preemptive challenge to jurors who seemed disinclined to value circumstantial evidence. But he spends most of his time playing the race card, offering conspiratorial rants about the media’s “racism” in its reporting on Mangum (this is the same “media” that included the Times and the Herald-Sun, which propped up Mangum’s bogus charges for months after it was clear they were false) and wildly demanding that Mangum’s defense attorney be allowed to question every white juror regarding what they “think[] about black folks.”

Intriguingly, Matherly claims that Mangum still possesses considerable “support” at North Carolina Central—which, if true, would be astonishing.

(4) And, one final point worth reiterating; Matherly is a minor player in the People’s Alliance. But Milo Pyne is a significant actor, co-chairing the PA’s PAC and serving as the group’s spokesperson. This is the man, again, who just announced his “sympathy” for Mike Nifong.

I’d be hard pressed to come up with any other case in which local liberal leaders publicly, and repeatedly, sided with the perpetrator of prosecutorial misconduct. In this respect, the actions of figures such as Matherly and Pyne cast an ugly light on the sincerity of “progressives” in Durham.

Mangum Bail Revoked

ABC-11 is reporting that authorities have revoked the bail of serial fabricator Crystal Mangum. The false accuser violated the terms of her bail, and therefore will be returning to jail.

Another troublesome figure from the lacrosse case in the news: state NAACP head William Barber, whose organization posted a wildly slanted, factually challenged "memorandum of law" and whose case advisors repudiated a host of traditional NAACP positions in a vain attempt to bolster Mike Nifong's case. Barber received an award from Democratic governor Beverly Perdue, who (remarkably) hailed his efforts to "build coalitions to fight for equality."

Perdue's cowardly act should serve as a reminder of the courage displayed in the case by AG Roy Cooper. It's almost impossible in North Carolina for a Democrat--whether Perdue or Cooper--to win statewide without an overwhelming African-American vote. Yet Cooper--even though the state NAACP and sympathetic "journalists" like Cash Michaels were threatening a political price to be paid b not giving False Accuser Mangum her "day in court"--did the right thing, despite the political risk.

The same can't be said of Perdue.

And, following up on a previous post, I highly recommend this offering from Craig Henry.

Mangum & N. Buchanan

The false accuser Crystal Mangum recently gave an interview with the Tom Joyner Show. Her interviewer, Jacque Reid, wasn’t exactly hard-hitting: Reid never mentioned that AG Cooper had declared the player innocent based on a comprehensive inquiry. Instead, she reported that North Carolina authorities merely “said that they did not have enough evidence” to pursue charges.

In the interview, Mangum maintained her conspiracy theory about her recent domestic violence/arson arrest. She claimed that the “state took it upon itself to come after me” because she had falsely accused people in the past, and that once the Durham Police discovered who she was (Mangum, of course, had initially given to police a false name), they decided to blame the incident on her.

Mangum maintained that she was the “victim” in the incident. Her children, she asserted, had called 911 out of a desire to defend her (that 911 call apparently wasn’t recorded, since the 911 call that actually occurred painted a quite different tale); and that she had “bruises on my face” (which apparently did not appear in any contemporaneous photographs). The false accuser added that she couldn’t understand why anyone would consider her to be prone to violence, since she “didn’t have a prior record.” She’s apparently forgotten her guilty plea to charges stemming from an incident in which she stole a taxicab and then tried to run down a police officer.

The interview’s two most stunning lines, however, came in her discussion of the lacrosse case. First, this textbook example of a false accuser asserted, “I never falsely accused anyone.” Mangum’s approach is, apparently, that her accusations can’t be false as long as she believes them t be true.

Second, in a quite remarkable interpretation of the ethics charges against the disgraced Mike Nifong, Mangum asserted that Nifong lost his law license because defense attorneys said “I was not a credible witness.” Apparently Nifong’s withholding exculpatory evidence, lying to the court, and making unethical inflammatory statements didn’t count.

On another front, news from Durham this morning that Duke decided to tear down the house at 610 N. Buchanan.

This move reverses a 2009 decision by Duke, as reported by the Chronicle:

Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said the University contacted attorneys representing members of the 2005-2006 lacrosse team about tearing down the house to build a new residence as part of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, but the request was denied.

"610 N. Buchanan remains a piece of evidence, and so it can only be removed with the consent of all the parties," Trask said in an interview with The Chronicle in February. "The lawyers all have to agree that they don't need it. I think actually we might ask them again, but their argument was you have to actually stand in that bathroom to understand how preposterous the claims were, and the pictures just don't do it justice."

In an interview with WRAL, rising Duke senior Emily Fausch probably got at the reason why Duke decided to go forward: "It's a reminder of the past that some people don't want to be reminded of.” Indeed, I can see why the Brodhead administration and its allies among the Group of 88 would seek do everything they can not to be reminded of their 2006 behavior.

Wilson & Mangum (Updated)

Two recent developments from the Wonderland that is Durham (updated below):

First, ex-DA’s investigator Linwood Wilson was issued a new fugitive arrest warrant, after the AG’s office assumed control of his stalking obscenity case. Court papers revealed that Wilson allegedly had boasted to his wife that “he owned Durham (and) lawyers and judges would do anything he said.” Little in the case to date had contradicted this claim—Wilson was released on a laughably low $1000 bond.

Wilson’s case also was removed from the purview of his cronies on the Durham bench; Guilford County District Judge Thomas Foster oversaw the hearing on the new warrant, and released Wilson on a $10,000 bond, coupled with restrictions on his movement and an order not to contact his estranged wife or her family.

Wilson’s attorney defended the justice of the original $1000 bond, and denounced prosecutors for requesting a $100,000 bond: “I just think $100,000 is outrageous for a man who has served the citizens of Durham to uphold the law," the counsel huffed.

And who is Wilson’s attorney? None other than former Nifong campaign contributor Fred Battaglia, who also was one of the last Nifong apologists. In January 2007, Battaglia fantastically suggested that Nifong could continue prosecuting the fraudulent sexual assault case—and that the State Bar should have filed ethics charges against the defense attorneys(!) for publicly rebutting Nifong’s myriad inaccurate and inflammatory statements.

Only someone who considered Nifong an ethical attorney could make the bizarre claim that Linwood Wilson—the man immediately fired as soon as Nifong left the DA’s office—“served the citizens of Durham to uphold the law.”

A curious passage, by the way, in the Herald-Sun article on Wilson’s new bond hearing. Reporter John McCann writes, “According to Wilson's wife, her husband's treatment of her worsened in 2007 after he was fired from his job in Nifong's District Attorney's Office. It has been speculated Wilson's removal had to do with his role in the case involving exotic dancer Crystal Mangum's since-discredited accusation of being sexually assaulted in 2006 by members of Duke University's lacrosse team. In particular, that he crossed swords with Nifong by raising doubts about the Mangum's credibility and suggested she take a lie-detector test, a suggestion Nifong disregarded.”

It’s true that—well after the fact—Wilson claimed he had wanted to give Mangum a lie-detector test. But no connection exists between the DA’s office firing Wilson and his having “crossed swords” with Nifong at a point in December 2006. Indeed, all evidence suggests that Wilson was fired because of his pattern of unethical behavior in attempting to prop up Nifong’s fraudulent case.

Wilson wasn’t the only unethical lacrosse case figure now on the other side of the law—he’s joined in this status as a criminal defendant by the false accuser herself, Crystal Mangum.

It would be hard to top the strange circumstances of Wilson’s case—the disgraced investigator getting his bond lowered by placing a phone call to a friend in the Durham judiciary—but Mangum was able to do so.

After a court appearance yesterday by the false accuser, her defense attorney, Clayton Jones, withdrew from the case. Jones said that Mangum had refused to follow his legal advice. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that a competent defense counsel would have allowed Mangum’s bizarre press conference, at which she suggested that Duke and the DPD were now engaged in a conspiracy to prevent her from having a fair trial.

Jones also suggested that Mangum was now taking legal counsel from a handful of pro-Nifong cranks (a group including former Nifong citizens’ committee chair Victoria Peterson) who hold up the disgraced former prosecutor as a paragon of ethics. These are also about the only people (apart, of course, from the Group of 88) who are still on record as saying something “happened” to Mangum.

Perhaps Battaglia can take Mangum’s case as well?

[Update: Jones says he will remain as Mangum's attorney of record, at least through Monday. By phone today, Jones said Mangum has not been following his legal advice. The N&O reports, "He pulled her aside after the hearing Wednesday when he saw her talking with members of the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong, who say the public defender's office can't adequately represent her because they work for the state, which they say is out to punish her because of the Duke lacrosse case. '[Committee member] Sidney Harr has absolutely no clue what's going on with this case,' Jones said. 'I have told him a number of times to stay away from my office.'"]

More from Wonderland (Twice Updated)

In what could only be described as a classic case of chutzpah, false accuser Crystal Mangum gave a press conference this morning claiming that the Durham judicial system--the same Durham judicial system that the disgraced Mike Nifong rigged to prop up Mangum's "fantastic lies"--is . . . out to get her.

That's her explanation for her February arrest on a variety of domestic violence charges. It's troubling to see that Mangum continues to live in a fantasy world. Perhaps her next event will be to serve as character witness for the fired, and recently arrested, Linwood Wilson.

To confirm, however, that Durham isn't the only locale where such bizarre behavior occurs, take a look at New York City, which just appointed Bob Steel(!)--whose stints as Duke BOT chairman and as head of Wachovia could charitably be described as failures--to be deputy mayor.

[Three updates: (1) In a statement released to the media, false accuser Mangum affirms that "my past entanglement with Duke reached out to drastically influence the legal problems that I now face." This would be the same "Duke" who had 88 faculty members who publicly declared that something "happened" to the false accuser; or whose president released multiple public statements condemning the character of the group that she falsely accused. Why Duke--heretofore a major Mangum supporter, if for reasons unrelated to the veracity of her tall tales--suddenly has decided to coopt the DPD to go after Mangum remains a mystery.

(2) The spokesperson for the crank committee demanding restoration of Mike Nifong's law license has filed a complaint with the Justice Department, alleging a federal violation of Mangum's civil rights. Mangum and like-minded figures, the complaint alleges, have experienced discrimination because they reject the "widespread, vitriolic propaganda spread by the media against Mike Nifong and the prosecution team in the Duke Lacrosse case."

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I rather doubt that the DOJ will consider Nifong apologists to constitute a protected class.

(3) The North Carolina AG's office has taken over all matters relating to Linwood Wilson, after one judge (Ron Stephens) delayed a protective order, thus allowing Wilson to keep his guns, and another judge (David LaBarre) mysteriously lowered Wilson's bail, based on incomplete information provided by Wilson in a phone call to the judge.

According to a court document filed by Wilson's estranged wife, the ex-Nifong investigator told her that "he owned Durham [and] lawyers and judges would do anything he said."]

No Shame

Though publicly rebuked by his own ideological comrades, Group of 88 extremist Grant Farred doesn’t appear to have lost any of his pedagogical influence. The homepage of Cornell’s English Department includes an announcement of a new concentration—“cultural studies”—which supposedly allows students to “study different media and forms of culture in terms of historical, social, and political contexts.”

According to the link the department provides, the two departmental specialists in this new concentration are none other than Dr. Farred, along with colleague Jane Juffer.

Farred’s . . . peculiar research interests already have been noted. Juffer, a former director of Penn State’s Latino/a Studies Initiative, is author of At Home with Pornography: Women, Sex, and Everyday Life. The book offers the only-in-academia thesis of viewing “women’s erotica within the context of governmental regulation that attempts to counterpose a ‘dangerous’ pornography with the sanctity of the home. Juffer explorers [sic] how women’s consumption of erotica and porn for their own pleasure can be empowering, while still acting to reinforce conservative ideals.” NYU Press assures readers that completing Juffer’s work will “transform our understanding of women's everyday sexuality.”

What sorts of topics will this new concentration enable students to explore? Prof. Debra Fried gave two examples to the Cornell student newspaper: “anything from comparing Ithaca’s coffee shops to how a ‘news anchor’s hairdo and clothing can contribute subtly to how the news is “spun” on a TV news report.’”

And beyond the offerings of Farred and Juffer, the new concentration will offer such courses as “Food, Gender, Culture,” which explores “the way food practices help shape our sense of [of course . . .] gender, race, sexual orientation, and national identity.”

In a comment that must have been made tongue-in-cheek, Cornell Daily Sun reporter Joseph Nickzy affirmed that “English majors are excited by the prospect of a new field of study, particularly one so relevant.”

Cornell’s annual tuition—not counting room and board—is $39,450. For the opportunity to partake of such “relevant” course offerings from such student-friendly professors as Grant Farred, surely any parent would be eager to fork over $160,000 plus room and board for a four-year period.

--------------------------

Farred, it’s worth noting, isn’t the only disgraced figure associated with the lacrosse case recently in the news. John McCann, a due process-unfriendly columnist from the Herald-Sun, last week suddenly decided the time had come to stand up for criminal defendants. His preferred choice? False accuser Crystal Mangum.

In the column, Mangum co-author Vincent Clark wildly charged, according to McCann’s summary, that Mangum’s bond (from criminal charges earlier this year) “is too high,” because of “the woman’s role in the lacrosse case.” Neither McCann nor Clark provided any evidence to corroborate the claim, nor did either man offer a theory (plausible or otherwise) as to why the Durham criminal justice system would operate from such a motive.

Magnum, according to Clark, is an innocent victim in the affair: “It could have been anybody's daughter . . . It could have been my daughter.” Clark didn’t say if his daughter had ever set clothes on fire inside an apartment while screaming at her boyfriend, with her children in the next room.

(The line recalled Duke extremist Timothy Tyson’s justification for being part of the potbangers’ protest weekend: Mangum was “somebody’s daughter and somebody’s sister and somebody’s mother and somebody’s sweetheart.”)

Clark additionally complained about difficulties in his fundraising campaign for Mangum’s bond. Laments McCann: “Problem is, folks are scared to contribute to Mangum's cause out of fear of being linked to her and attracting unwanted attention.” Indeed. The danger of publicity is undoubtedly the only reason why “folks” are not lining up to contribute to a bail fund for a repeat criminal who lied about a high-profile local case.

Perhaps Clark should turn to Farred for donations? After all, the ex-Duke professor did everything he could to prop up Mangum’s case, and the median salary for his current rank is $154,300.

Suggested Panels for the Stone Center

[Update II, 8.23pm: Another fine summary of the Mangum event, from Chelsea Walker. Its closing paragraph: "The event planners’ idea of trotting out victims of false accusations at the end of the presentation to juxtapose with Crystal Mangum’s bald-faced lies as examples of the “harsh reality of minority treatment” was just embarrassing because Mangum’s case is an exemplification of the harsh realities of the antithesis to the subject being discussed: false accusations and injustice against non-minorities. In fact, Mangum herself single-handedly proved that minorities are not the only victims of failings in our justice system by leveling and pursuing false accusations against the white Duke Lacrosse players. Hearing the stories of minority victims of prosecutorial misconduct only put me in the awkward position of sympathizing with the Duke Lacrosse players, who are certainly no angels, but who were also victims of overzealous prosecution at the hands of Mike Nifong and at the behest of Crystal Mangum. It is an intolerable irony that Miss Mangum is now claiming to be an expert on the “injustices” of the legal system because the fifteen minutes of fame she bought with the reputations of the Duke Lacrosse players had almost come to an end."

[Update, 12.49pm: An excellent suggestion from the comment thread: "I think that the Stone Center should be asked to sponsor a discussion about the NCNAACP and its actions in the Duke lacrosse case. One of the saddest aspects of this affair is that the NCNAACP and other leaders (such as the Wilmington Journal) might have made common cause with the lax supporters but did not (this is nicely discussed in Until Proven Innocent). I propose a debate format around the question of whether this organization helped or hurt the interest of black people by the actions it took." I'm not holding my breath that such an event will occur.]

As noted below, on Wednesday, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center hosted an address by Crystal Mangum who spoke about “the harsh realities of minority treatment both in the justice system and the media.” The event sponsors—Theta Nu Xi Inc. sorority and Alpha Phi Alpha Inc. and Lambda Upsilon Lambda Inc. fraternities—announced that, to ensure that the event would not “be a negative experience for her,” questions would be submitted beforehand to organizers to prevent questions related to the Duke lacrosse team. As it turned out, Mangum didn't even answer any of the pre-submitted questions, but left early--either due to the flu or due to an unspecified "appointment" occurring after 8pm in the evening with her wearing jeans, a hoody, and a baseball cap.

In light of the unusual policy of inviting . . . controversial . . . speakers but censoring any questions on the central matter of the speaker's significance, I have some suggestions for future events at the Stone Center.

• “The Stone Center is pleased to announce an address by George Tenet, who will speak on appropriate methods of gathering intelligence and the importance of accurate intelligence in going to war. To ensure that the event will not be a negative experience for Mr. Tenet, questions will be submitted beforehand to organizers to prevent questions related to the run-up to the Iraq war or Tenet’s role in developing the ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques.”

• “The Stone Center is thrilled to announce an address by John Edwards, who will speak on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family in a political campaign. To ensure that the event will not be a negative experience for Mr. Edwards, questions will be submitted beforehand to organizers to prevent questions related to Mr. Edwards’ affair with a campaign videographer and the woman’s subsequent pregnancy.”

• “The Stone Center is delighted to announce an address by Miss California USA, who will speak on same-sex marriage policy in the United States. To ensure that the event will not be a negative experience for Ms. California, questions will be submitted beforehand to organizers to prevent questions related to Ms. California’s apparent belief that same-sex rights exist in all 50 states or her subsequent statement that in her ‘country’ only ‘opposite’ marriage is allowed.”

• “The Stone Center is excited to announce an address by Terrell Owens, who will speak on the need for mutual respect on a football team and the importance of wide receivers trusting their quarterbacks. To ensure that the event will not be a negative experience for Mr. Owens, questions will be submitted beforehand to organizers to prevent questions related to Mr. Owens’ behavior toward quarterbacks Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, and Tony Romo.”

Of course, any announcement such as the ones above would be greeted with widespread derision on any campus. UNC should be ashamed that one of its centers allowed Ms. Mangum to speak while prohibiting the most relevant questions that could be asked of the false accuser.

The False Accuser Speaks

[Update III, 1.45pm: I emailed both of the listed student organizers for the event, asking if they would share their rationale for inviting someone whose false claims initiated a case of massive prosecutorial misconduct to speak at event supposedly highlighting the difficulties that NC minorities have experienced with prosecutorial misconduct. Neither student replied.

[Update, II, 7.01pm: Chris Halkides attended the talk last night, and posts his reflections at View-from-Wilmington. While you're there, I strongly recommend taking a look at his critique of Robert O'Neill's analysis of how Duke's faculty responded to the case.

[Update, 11.59am: A few other attendees have posted their notes on the event in the comments section, including items from the Q&A with Ed Clark; my thanks to all. In addition, the Daily Tar Heel story on the event says that Mangum "was especially bothered by a news segment showing her dancing at a bar, which she said the media falsely stated was two days* after the alleged rape." I can't say that I read everything published about the case, but I did read an awful lot--and I cannot recall a single article that claimed the video of Mangum dancing at the strip club "was two days after the alleged rape." (The video took place on March 25, 2006, at about the same time as the 'candelight vigil' protest.) But, as we know, Ms. Mangum has serious psychological problems, and a tendency to invent things.

Additionally, DTH reports that "due to an appointment, Mangum had to leave before the question and answer session of the event." I will leave it to others to determine what type of "appointment" Ms. Mangum would need to reach at 7.30 in the evening wearing a pink ball cap, an Old Navy hoodie and jeans.]

At the Liestoppers forum, Walt-in-Durham has a detailed rundown of Crystal Mangum’s appearance tonight at UNC. As I have noted previously, it is mindboggling that an academic institution would invite someone who the state AG had, with copious evidence, deemed a false accuser and not allow her to be questioned on the myriad contradictions in her story. It is all the more mindboggling that the only reason for this refusal to allow questions was to prevent the false accuser from saying something that could open her to a lawsuit.

I should note, in addition, that Mangum’s p.r. representative had similarly informed me of the media difficulties that the false accuser had in promoting her book. As I told him at the time, it’s my sense that most media organizations will not put on the air someone whose assertions they know to be false, if only to avoid massive legal liability.

Below is an excerpt from Walt’s rundown; the full version, with an excellent graphic, is now at the Liestoppers homepage:

After the Ed Clark monologue, he introduced Crystal. But, he immediately launched into a vigorous narrative, again rehearsed, about how the CBS show 60 Minutes would not pay for Crystal’s interview and he claimed to have a copy of an email from CBS saying that one of the families had total access to 60 Minutes and they would bury Mike Nifong. He continued on that HBO had been in contact with him about interviewing Crystal and doing a promotion for the book. He then complained that HBO had a line producer call to kill the project. They pushed back the publication date while they hunted for another media outlet for the launch. Then he claimed that the NBC Today Show sent a vice president, and a camera crew to interview Crystal. The NBC crew allegedly followed her around North Carolina Central’s campus, talked to her Pastor, family and friends. She gave them a four hour interview where they could and did ask any questions. Clark never disclosed the questions. According to Clark, the “contract” between NBC and Crystal would have her on the Today Show, Dateline, MSNBC and CNBC all on the day the book launched. Again a “line producer,” not the VP or producer they had met, called to tell them the promotion was off and the book launched without a major network availability. After Clark’s recitation of his difficulties launching the book, Crystal Gail Mangum spoke.

She opened immediately by stating unequivocally that she was raped. She did not name names though. She did mention Duke Lacrosse in the same general time frame, but it seemed like they were being careful not to make too close a linkage between the two. She also claimed that she had never been heard. She claimed that on the night she was “raped” she was not on medications. She claimed that the defense team had her medical records and was taking a whole year’s worth of medications and claimed that she was on them the night of the “rape”. Crystal then described some symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder that she suffered, and closed with a pitch for the book.

*--DTH reported "two hours," but two DIW readers at the event recalled that Mangum said "two days."