Durham "Progressives" Again Stand Up for Prosecutorial Misconduct

In most of the country, “progressive” activists are known for their defenses of civil liberties and their (sometimes reflexive and overheated) criticism of alleged police and/or prosecutorial misconduct. This record often has led to “progressives” being attacked as soft on crime. But there is, also, an intellectual consistency in their positions on such matters that deserves acknowledgement.

In Durham, of course, everything is upside down, and in recent years, the “progressive” establishment—represented by the People’s Alliance—has emerged as a consistent, vociferous apologist for police and prosecutorial misconduct. The PA enthusiastically supported Mike Nifong’s election in 2006. The group’s closest ally on the City Council, Diane Catotti, did everything she could to squelch and then neuter the investigation into police misconduct in the lacrosse case. And the PA was in Tracey Cline’s corner in 2008.

So few should be surprised that in the Democratic primary for superior court judge, the PA has spurned Orlando Hudson in favor of ex-DA Cline’s chief deputy, Jim Dornfried.

The PA made its choice even though in their respective questionnaires, Hudson took a consistently more liberal position than did Dornfried. In responding to a question about a pending state constitutional amendment to make same-sex marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships of any type illegal, Hudson stated that the federal constitution should grant gay and lesbian couples a right to marry; Dornfried didn't mention the federal constitutional issue. In responding to a question about North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, Hudson strongly defended the law, citing North Carolina's Jim Crow heritage; Dornfried deferred comment on the matter. In a question about their respective backgrounds, Hudson spoke of his earlier work as an assistant public defender; Dornfried had been in private practice before joining the DA's office. Hudson also detailed his willingness to volunteer his legal skills to local law schools; Dornfried mentioned no such volunteer work.

But the PA ignored Hudson's seemingly “progressive” credentials, instead explaining its endorsement by hailing Dornfried’s work as Cline’s deputy. In his questionnaire to the PA, Dornfried cited the testimony of Durham’s resident ethics apologist, Judge Marcia Morey, to argue that Cline’s deeds did not harm the administration of justice--and thereby to implicitly challenge the decision to remove her from office.

(Dornfried, I should note, was answering a question that was framed in such a way to suggest the PA's fury at the decision to remove Cline: “District attorneys are elected by the people. How egregious must a district attorney’s conduct be before a trial judge may interfere with the people’s right to choose or replace their representative in criminal proceedings?”)

The cases in which Hudson and Cline tangled, as the PA understood, involved matters in which Judge Hudson had claimed that the DA's office violated the constitutional rights of accused criminals--usually a point of view that self-styled “progressives” embrace but in Durham is anathema to the “activist” left.

By the way, Dornfried is white, Hudson is African-American. And in his PA questionnaire, Dornfried identified our current President as “Barak [sic] Obama,” a misspelling that often appears on far-right websites. It appears we’ve finally found the issue—defending prosecutorial misconduct—upon which Durham’s “progressives” are willing to abandon their obsession with “diversity.”

The Peterson-Burnette (and Cline, in 2012?) Slate

[Update, Tuesday, 10.28am: Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People-endorsed candidate Solomon Burnette writes in: "Many folks have seemingly problematic histories. perhaps you should ask where myself [sic] and Ms. Peterson stand on the issues critical to this election, doing yourself and your readers a service. issues relating to education, immigration, affordable housing, and unemployment are important in this election and i, for one, have a history of engaging these issues in Durham as an artist, activist, and an academic. Ad hominim [sic] attacks are often a way to avoid critical questions. Cheque [sic] out my platform at www.solomonburnette.com."

It seems to me that a conviction for robbing Duke students, plus a written call for race-based vigilante justice, goes well beyond a "seemingly problematic histor[y]"; indeed, as I pointed out in the post, such a "history" would be disqualifying for any political committee with a rudimentary sense of ethics. Nor am I clear how pointing out such a candidate's "problematic" background constitutes an "ad hominim [sic]" attack.

That said, if I were in Endorsee Burnette's shoes, I too would want to speak about immigration (a topic, obviously, on which the Durham City Council has no policy role) rather than my background of written vigilante threats against innocent people and criminal activity against members of the Durham community.]

The N&O continues its detailed—and deeply disturbing—explication of how “justice” is practiced by Durham County “minister of justice” Tracey Cline. Andy Curliss’ articles today reveal a district attorney abusing her office through over-charging (in the hopes of pressuring defendants to accept plea bargains) and taking exceedingly weak cases to court (in apparent fidelity to Cline’s conception of her job as a “victims’ rights” advocate).

Prosecutors around the country over-charge to obtain plea bargains, but the N&O’s reporting indicates that Cline has employed the practice in an unusually blatant (and ethically dubious) fashion. And regarding the idea of bringing people to trial whose cases long before should have been dismissed, Cline’s conduct has been even less defensible. An analysis by N&O reporters found that Durham’s conviction rate on felony trials is the lowest of the state’s ten largest counties. Perhaps that’s because of cases like the below:

Torico Edwards . . . was acquitted by a jury after 30 minutes of deliberation on charges he broke into a home and stole a necklace.

Jurors said it was clear Edwards was at a shopping mall at the time of the crime

"The prosecutor," said juror Jade Russell of Durham, "really didn't prove anything."

Forcing likely innocent defendants to go through the expense and emotional punishment of a trial to give the “victim” a sense of justice is not an appropriate use of the judicial system. But in Tracey Cline’s office, it’s par for the course.

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Cline doesn’t come up for re-election till next year, but despite the record of unethical behavior laid bare by the N&O, she would seem to have little to worry regarding an endorsement from the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. As demonstrated in the committee’s recent City Council endorsements, skin color appears to be the committee’s sole criterion. Indeed, by the standards of the Durham Committee’s 2011 endorsements for City Council, Tracey Cline is a paragon of reasonableness and justice.

In this year’s City Council races, even Durham’s resident savant of political correctness, (white) Council member Diane (Nifong ’06!) Catotti, couldn’t snatch the Committee on the Affairs of Black People’s endorsement. But two of the three choices distinguished themselves as extremists even among the ranks of extremists in the Durham of 2006-7.

Victoria Peterson, co-chair of Mike Nifong’s citizens’ committee, distinguished herself during the lacrosse case by (a) participating in a march organized by an ADL/SPLC-designated hate group, the New Black Panthers Party; (b) urging participants at this march to burn down the lacrosse captains’ house; and (c) personally threatening Mary Ellen Finnerty during Nifong’s ethics trial, resulting in Peterson’s ejection from the proceedings.

But those events only constituted Peterson’s highlights. She began the case by insinuating that Duke Hospital had conspired to produce false DNA results and ended it by marching with Nifong to jail, carrying a sign testifying to Nifong’s “goodness” and “integrity.” Peterson also crusaded for accused murderer Crystal Mangum, rudely interrupting the judge at pretrial hearings on Mangum’s arson charges.

(Peterson, I should note, spreads her hate around: talking about gays and lesbians, who she suggested are all cross-dressers, the Durham Committee’s endorsee claimed that as a result of the “gay lifestyle,” “many of them are infected with diseases,” and if “they are not infected with diseases . . . they will be, even women.” Despite the typically anti-gay views of North Carolina’s African-American community, these views are extreme.)

Imagine if, after an allegation of black-on-white crime prompted a visit from the KKK, a future City Council candidate had shared the platform with the KKK Grand Dragon. How, we might speculate, would the Durham Committee have reacted to one off its rival committees endorsing such a candidate?

Then there’s the Committee’s endorsement of Solomon Burnette, NCCU Class of 2007. That name should ring a bell to people who followed the case closely. Burnette came to NCCU after experience with the other side of the criminal justice system—he spent more than a year in jail, following a conviction for robbing two Duke students at gunpoint.

After the attorney general exonerated the three falsely accused players, an enraged Burnette took to the pages of the NCCU paper. In “Death to All Rapists,” Burnette issued an ill-concealed call for vigilante justice. “The ‘facts’ of the case,” proclaimed the Durham Committee endorsee, “should not matter to us because even if we are unsure of sexual assault, these supremacists have admitted to sexually, racially and politically denigrating these women.” Burnette’s analysis of the case: “White people still rape us and get away with it. The only deterrent to these legally, socially and economically validated supremacist actions is the fear of physical retribution.” The column subsequently vanished from the paper’s website, but remains available through the Wayback Machine.

Again, imagine the Durham Committee’s reaction if a political committee endorsed a white convicted robber who then had written an op-ed recommending vigilante justice against two black people?

Burnette and Peterson seem unlikely to win seats on the Council; even in Durham, the bigot vote doesn’t seem quite large enough to bring their candidacies over the top. But the fact that the Durham Committee endorsed them should permanently discredit the organization.

Edwards Indictment

[Update, 6 June. 4.40pm: And, in another intersection between the Edwards affair and the fringes of the lacrosse case, check out this sensational co-authored piece by Joe Neff, detailing the plea bargain negotiations between the Edwards team and the Justice Department.]

Former North Carolina senator and two-time presidential candidate John Edwards was indicted today, on six counts related to his cover-up of an affair with a campaign aide. The charges were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, and so it's little surprise that Edwards has reached out to the area's best criminal defense attorneys: both Wade Smith and Jim Cooney are members of the Edwards defense team. Cooney told American Lawyer that he took the case in part because of his longstanding ties to Edwards, dating from the time when Edwards was among the state's leading plaintiffs' attorneys.

Though Edwards' behavior was undeniably unethical (he arranged for massive payments from a 96-year-old wealthy friend and donor to his mistress, all while publicly denying the affair and the woman's resulting pregnancy), it might not have been illegal. In any event, the prosecution will be a precedent-setter, one way or the other.

This is, by the way, the second occasion in which the Edwards campaign intersected with the fringes of the lacrosse case. In 2004, during his first presidential bid, Edwards ran as a Southern moderate. But in 2008, he reinvented himself as a far-left, anti-poverty crusader. As part of this effort, in early 2007, the Edwards campaign hired as its official blogger Amanda Marcotte, known for her intemperate rhetoric and extremist views.

Though Edwards, a North Carolinian and former law partner of Wade Smith, had remained silent on the lacrosse case, Marcotte had lots to say. Among her insights: "Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it?"

Once her words attracted public attention, Marcotte deleted them from her blog.

Marcotte eventually departed the Edwards campaign after an outcry over her anti-religious rants. And, of course, Edwards eventually departed the presidential race, after losing in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then getting crushed in Nevada and South Carolina.

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

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.

Island of Misfit Toys

In what was a horrific midterm election for Democrats, one of the party’s few bright spots came in Nevada, where Senate majority leader Harry Reid won re-election. The result was perhaps the biggest upset of the year: Reid’s favorability ratings were terrible, and Nevada’s economy was worse. Reid won because first, the Republicans nominated an extremist, Sharon Angle; and second, Angle eschewed guidance from national GOP operatives, instead listening to a handful of long-time associates, many of whom had either dubious backgrounds or bizarre beliefs. Knowledgeable Republicans lamented that Angle’s advisors belonged on the “island of misfit toys.”

In today’s N&O, Jesse James Deconto profiles Durham’s own version of the island of misfit toys—those who populate the interlocking committees devoted to defending disgraced rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong and serial false accuser Crystal Mangum.

Most of the committee members are the sort of cranks you’d expect to champion disreputable figures like Mangum and Nifong. Even the Group of 88, after all, has essentially abandoned Mangum, even though each and every member of the Group has never repudiated their guilt-presuming public assertion that something “happened” to Mangum at the lacrosse party.

Deconto tells the story of such activists as Douglas Register, who says he joined the pro-Mangum committee because he, like Mangum, suffers from mental illness. This problem perhaps explains Register’s bizarre analysis of the criminal case against Mangum, which he suggests is a conspiracy to improve the city’s position in the civil case filed by the falsely accused players. (If anything, Mangum’s alleged criminal activity would harm the city’s position, since it would further undermine the credibility of the figure to which the leadership of the Durham Police Department chose to attach their fate.)

And then there’s Durham’s resident race-baiting homophobe, Victoria Peterson, who Deconto observes has repeatedly interrupted the judge in Mangum’s pre-trial hearings. But speaking out of turn is nothing new from Peterson, who was ejected from the Nifong disciplinary hearing and then hijacked a WRAL live shot after her expulsion from the courtroom.

The Nifong and Mangum committees, however, don’t consist solely of cranks. Ideologues also were attracted to the dual causes. Some members, like Myra Kinderknecht, were virtual caricatures. Describing a case in which Mangum’s accuser and the chief prosecutor are black, Kinderknecht hypothesized: “It’s almost like a form of lynching, what’s happened to her. Everything that has happened to her screams white power, black oppression.”

Other committee members, however, represent more mainstream perspectives. Take, for instance, Steven Matherly, a member of the pro-Mangum committee who also belongs to the People’s Alliance, the most left-wing of Durham’s three major political committees.

The Durham political left’s consistent support for Mike Nifong’s crusade—and its turning of a blind eye to the type of police and prosecutorial misconduct left-wing activists usually denounce—is one of the darkest aspects of the entire lacrosse case. The People’s Alliance endorsed Nifong’s 2006 re-election, even though it was clear at that point Nifong had, at the least, charged one innocent person (Reade Seligmann) and violated ethics guidelines regarding pre-trial publicity. In a statement from the time, the Alliance noted, “Our general feeling was that [Nifong] is a person of high integrity and great skill. He’s a tough but fair and honest prosecutor. When you have the State’s power concentrated in one person, you want that person to be thoughtful and sober.” (Thoughtful and sober are two adjectives few objective observers would apply to Mike Nifong.)

Then there was the curious case of city council member Diane Catotti, the PA’s favorite Durham politician. Catotti strongly backed Nifong in 2006, and then did everything in her power first to block and then to undermine an investigation of the Police Department’s handling of the lacrosse case.

And, courtesy of today’s article, now there’s PA spokesman and political action committee co-chair Milo Pyne. Pyne said that he had declined to join either the Mangum or Nifong committees, but added, “I have sympathy for Ms. Mangum and Mr. Nifong.” I e-mailed the People’s Alliance spokesman to ask if he’d care to explain his sympathy for Nifong. As regular DIW readers know, I’m a lifelong Democrat, and I've never considered multi-faceted prosecutorial misconduct compatible with liberal political principles, nor have I ever believed that the perpetrators of such misconduct are deserving of sympathy.

Pyne’s response? “I am not interested in having this discussion with you.”

Durham, it seems, remains the only place in the United States where “progressives” see themselves as defenders of prosecutorial misconduct—at least when the victims of that misconduct are white males.

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.

Professional Protesters' Credibility

[Update, 8.46pm: Joining the Rev. Barber in the protest was none other than Duke's resident professional protester, Tim Tyson--the figure who humiliated himself by participating (as a teacher) in a protest outside the lacrosse captains' house as their false accuser, Crystal Mangum, was caught on videotape pole-dancing at a strip club.]

Few public policy initiatives produced such unfortunate, if unintended, consequences as mandatory school busing to achieve racial diversity.

The idea, on its face, seemed reasonable: Brown dealt only with legalized segregation, but in dozens of northeastern, Midwestern, and Border State cities, de facto racial segregation existed. Policies such as “red-lining” (as well as uglier, more overt instances of hostility in cities like Detroit) had prevented black families from obtaining mortgages in selected neighborhoods, creating overwhelmingly-white or overwhelmingly-black neighborhoods. So assigning students to public schools on the basis of their residences resulted in de facto segregated schools.

Beginning in the 1960s, civil rights groups obtained from sympathetic federal judges rulings that mandated public school busing to achieve racially balanced public schools. The most notorious of these cases occurred in Boston, where federal judge J. Arthur Garrity took control of the city’s public school system, and racist mobs in South Boston greeted the arrival of black children at South Boston High School.

However well-intention in theory, mandatory busing almost always fell short in practice. In policy terms, they precipitated “white flight,” in which most white families either moved from center cities to suburbs (Detroit is a good example of this pattern) or sent their children to private schools rather than busing them out of their neighborhoods. In political terms, these white families—disproportionately middle-class or lower-middle class Catholic ethnics—became ground zero in the backlash against the Democratic Party, opening up the way for their emergence as “Reagan Democrats.”

Busing, then, mostly left behind smaller, though not much more integrated, public school systems; and harmed the political allies of busing advocates. It’s no surprise that most cities (and courts) have abandoned mandatory “diversity” busing in favor of voluntary programs like magnet schools.

In this respect, the decision of North Carolina’s Wake County to move away from mandatory busing is a bit behind the times. But the school board meeting to implement the policy change met with a protest from four “civil rights” activists—led by none other than the Rev. William Barber. Barber and his cohort used a break in the school board’s session to place themselves in board members’ seats before being arrested. The state NAACP head claimed that Wake County’s actions would wipe away “what it took more than a century ‘of tears, sweat and blood to accomplish.’”

That’s the same Rev. Barber whose conception of “justice” in the lacrosse case consisted of abandoning decades’ worth of his organization’s principles on criminal justice matters and posting on his organization’s website a “memorandum of law” riddled with errors that made the defendants appear to be guilty.

That, after such behavior, any politician would consider Rev. Barber credible is beyond belief.

T. Cline, Esq., Paragon of Ethics (Updated)

[Update, Wed. 11.35am:

The post below notes how, in her first months as Durham County's “minister of justice,” Tracey Cline slashed the salaries of two of the office ADA's most associated with ethics reform in the aftermath of the Mike Nifong era. Simultaneously, and despite the massive budget crunch facing the state government, she awarded 10 percent raises to (1) a most intimate ally whose withholding of evidence Judge Hudson had compared to Nifong's misconduct; (2) an ADA who publicly hailed Nifong's good character in an interview with the New York Times.

Cline has declined to explain the rationale behind these unusual decisions.

Is this not an appropriate matter for oversight by the North Carolina legislature--which, after all, funds the Durham DA's office?

I urge DIW readers to contact the relevant members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, whose names and e-mails are below, and urge an inquiry into Cline's spending habits:

Senate Judiciary Committee--leadership

Chairman	Sen. Fletcher L. Hartsell, Jr. email: Fletcher.Hartsell@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Sen. Austin M. Allran email: Austin.Allran@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Sen. Don Vaughan email: Don.Vaughan@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Sen. Ed Jones email: Edward.Jones@ncleg.net

House Judiciary Committee--leadership:

Chairman	Rep. Deborah Ross email: Deborah.Ross@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Rep. Melanie Goodwin email: Melanie.Goodwin@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Rep. Paul Stam email: Paul.Stam@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman	Rep. Bonner Stiller email: Bonner.Stiller@ncleg.net

Senate Judiciary Committee--other members: Sen. Tom Apodaca, Sen. Bob Atwater, Sen. Stan Bingham, Sen. Charlie S. Dannelly, Sen. Joe Sam Queen, Sen. Doug Berger, Sen. Julia Boseman, Sen. Katie G. Dorsett, Sen. James Forrester, Sen. W. Edward (Eddie) Goodall, Sen. Jim Jacumin, Sen. John Snow, Sen. A. B Swindell

House Judiciary Committee--other members: Rep. M. Alexander, Rep. Blust, Rep. Bryant, Rep. Hall, Rep. Harrison, Rep. Insko, Rep. Martin, Rep. Mobley, Rep. Neumann, Rep. Stevens, Rep. West]

Original post:

No one can say that Durham voters didn’t know what they were getting when they chose Tracey Cline as their next “minister of justice.” In the past three years, Cline has made her contempt for ethics known in virtually every way possible.

Consider:

During the campaign, Cline at best misled voters and at worst outright lied about her role in the lacrosse case, most notably by denying the written record that she developed the idea to initiate the legal case through a procedurally preposterous non-testimonial order against all 46 white lacrosse players.

As the campaign proceeded, the Nifong Coalition rallied behind Cline, as Cline received the backing from the same four key institutions that bolstered Mike Nifong—the Herald-Sun, the Independent, the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, and the People’s Alliance.

During the transition period after her election, Cline ordered all prosecutors in the office to re-apply for their positions, and listed the qualifications she expected from Durham’s assistant district attorneys. Her list of desired attributes did not include a commitment to prosecutorial ethics.

For her inauguration, Cline invited as her special guest none other than disbarred ex-DA Nifong, a move whose symbolism she recognized and a move that indicated contempt for all prosecutors in her office who actually followed the ethics requirements laid down by the North Carolina State Bar.

Shortly after taking office, Cline found herself on the witness stand—defending herself from allegations of ethical misconduct.

With this record, it should come as little surprise that Cline has punished those prosecutors in her office who have demonstrated a commitment to ethics.

Consider:

• Cline reduced the salary of Mitchell Garrell—who challenged Cline in the Democratic primary for district attorney, when he campaigned on a platform of restoring ethics to the office of the Durham district attorney—by 7.5 percent, from $86,546 to $80,064. The clear inference: Cline is retaliating against Garrell for trying to block her bid to become the county’s “minister of justice.”
  

• Cline reduced the salary of Steven Storch—an assistant DA with a doctorate in philosophy and specialty in ethics who was hired by interim DA Jim Hardin in part to show the office's renewed commitment to ethics—by 6.7 percent, from $41,100 to $38,350, and removed the position’s permanent status. The clear inference: Cline doesn’t want anyone with an ethics focus in her office.
  

Perhaps, it could be argued, Cline’s actions simply reflected a broader, office-wide commitment to economy, given that the recession has hit North Carolina with particular severity (it has the 7^th-highest unemployment rate of any state in the country), prompting talk of a state budget freeze. But, in fact, Cline elected to boost salaries for her cronies:

• Jim Dornfried: a whopping 10 percent raise, from $86,340 to $94,974, went to this most intimate ally of the "minister of justice." In early 2008, Judge Orlando Hudson compared Dornfried's conduct to that of Nifong after Dornfried withheld evidence from defense counsel by turning over an edited version of a police tape, rather than the complete tape. Said Hudson, "You can't make a tape come out the way they want it to come out. That's what's wrong with this situation. I don't see that being any different than people working with the DA's office and deciding certain DNA shouldn't come out."

• Shamieka Rhinehart: an equally whopping 10 percent raise, from $56,035 to $61,638. This beneficiary of Cline's current largesse made the New York Times in May 2006, giving Nifong a huge kiss after Nifong prevailed in that year's Democratic primary. Exclaimed Rhinehart, "He's a good man. I'm so proud of him." That analysis testifies to Rhinehart's ethical core.
  

• Mark McCullough, a 9.8 percent from $40,782 to $44,782.
  

• Fungai Bennet: a 5.4 percent raise, from $55,767 to $58,767.
  

• Doretta Walker: a 4.1 percent raise, from $73,787 to $76,787.
  

That Cline has given her cronies raises while simultaneously targeting the members of her office most associated with ethics is fitting for a figure that saw fit to turn her inauguration ceremony into a celebration of Mike Nifong.

Cline did not respond to a request for comment. Her official website contains no explanation for the spending priorities she has pursued as “minister of justice.”

[Update, 1.30pm: Ms. Cline responds, "The District Attorney cannot speak about an employee's personnel file without a waiver from that employee. Contact each employee and attach their waiver and I will be more than happy to meet with you and that employee in my office."

It would seem, based on this reply, that the only people who could get explanations for Ms. Cline's salary adjustment rationales would be members of the state legislature; moreover, the meeting procedure that she lays out in this email would seem more appropriate for counsel to one of her ADA's than a reporter or a blogger.]

Up & Down

Sometimes doing the right thing is rewarded.

A PPP poll shows that Roy Cooper, one of the heroes of the lacrosse case, continues to lead incumbent Senator Richard ("Silent Dick") Burr in what appears to be an increasingly likely Senate bid.

And who doesn't like Cooper? The Nifong true believers. I'm sure that Senator Burr, most recently seen making bizarre comments on his personal response to the financial meltdown, will be reassured by their support.

By the way, the ethically challenged new Durham DA, Tracey Cline, was on the witness stand yesterday--showing that she's following in the footsteps of her ethically challenged former boss.

North Carolina Poll: Cooper Ahead

The second consecutive poll on the 2010 North Carolina Senate race shows one of the heroes of the lacrosse case, Roy Cooper, with a narrow lead over incumbent Senator Richard Burr--who joined his former colleague, Elizabeth Dole, in refusing to endorse Cooper's request for a Dept. of Justice inquiry into ex-DA Mike Nifong's alleged criminal conduct.

Cline: Was Nifong Right?

Durham County's new "minister of justice," Tracey Cline, continues to display an utter indifference to pursuit of truth or ethical responsibility in office. In an interview with ABC-11's Tamara Gibbs, Cline boasted of her decision to invite to her inauguration a figure disbarred by the State Bar and deemed a "rogue prosecutor" by the state Attorney General. Said she, "I invited everybody and I know the focus is going to be on Mr. Nifong." [emphasis added]

Cline's promised approach almost directly echoed the reasoning offered by Nifong in going forward with an evidence-free case against the falsely accused lacrosse players: "Whether people like it or not, you do what's right and then you don't have to explain what you've done because it's the right thing and that's the bottom line as a prosecutor."

And, incredibly, Cline refused to endorse the Attorney General's report on the lacrosse case. According to Gibbs, "We also asked Cline about the Duke Lacrosse case. We wanted to know if she believed the woman who accused the Duke players of raping her and her thoughts on how her former boss handled the case. Cline declined to comment."

[update, 1-9, 12.05pm]: Liestoppers posts this photo of a proud Nifong, looking on as his protégé took the oath of office, while John in Carolina explains why Cline invited Nifong but not former DPD officers Mark Gottlieb and Ben Himan to her swearing-in ceremony:

News

Two pieces of news:

The Herald-Sun reports that taxi driver Moezeldin Elmostafa has settled his civil suit against the department store chain whose bogus allegations of shoplifting were used by Mike Nifong and the DPD to pressure Elmostafa to change his story in the lacrosse case.

And Durham County’s new “minister of justice,” Tracey Cline, e-mails to dispute my characterization of her as indifferent to ethics. “To seek justice,” writes she, “must be done ethically or else it is not justice.”

So that’s the message she wanted to communicate by inviting Mike Nifong as a special guest to her swearing-in ceremony.

Cline: Symbolism and Prosecutorial Ethics

Newly inaugurated Durham County district attorney Tracey Cline--fresh off a campaign in which she at best misled and at worst lied to Durham voters regarding her position on the lacrosse case--sent a powerful message about the role that ethics will (or, in this case, will not) play in her office.

From Anne Blythe's article in the N&O:

Nifong, who was stripped of his law license for prosecutorial misconduct in the Duke lacrosse case, attended the ceremony at Cline's request [emphasis added]. He stood in the back of the courtroom and at the end hugged and shook hands with many of his former colleagues.

At least now we know why Cline didn't list upholding ethics as one of her desired qualifications for Durham County assistant district attorneys.

Tracey Cline: Purge Ahead?

Employees of the Durham County district attorney’s office received a letter recently from the county’s soon-to-be “minister of justice,” Tracey Cline:

A few items to keep in mind:

1.) It is nothing short of laughable to believe that Cline—a figure who at best misled Durham voters about her role in the case and at worst outright lied about it—can evaluate anyone on the basis of their commitment to “justice.”

2.) Cline’s demand that all current employees of the D.A.’s office re-apply for their position, with a subsequent evaluation on the basis of their dedication “to the success of our team,” seems like nothing more than an ill-concealed rationalization for cronyism.

3.) Notably absent in Cline’s list of qualifications: a commitment to prosecutorial ethics. This oversight is unsurprising coming from Nifong’s key deputy, although for public relations reasons, Cline might have at least paid lip service to ethics. The omission speaks volumes of the direction in which Cline intends to lead the office. I emailed Ms. Cline to ask her why she declined to list a commitment to ethics as among her desired qualifications; she has not replied.

4.) Given Cline’s non-existent transparency (she still hasn’t provided an accounting of her role in the lacrosse case), it seems unlikely that Cline will provide public reasons for her demotions, promotions, and dismissals as the basis of her new standards.

5.) Two interim district attorneys, Jim Hardin and David Saacks, have presided over the office since Mike Nifong resigned. Neither conducted an office purge, although, based on her performance in the lacrosse case, Tracey Cline would have been an obvious candidate for dismissal. Neither required all members of the office to reapply for their positions, either.

6.) Why didn’t Cline reveal her plan during the primary contest?

Ten Questions for Rev. Barber

Perhaps I’m naïve, but I think that most people expect ministers to tell the truth. But the head of the North Carolina NAACP, Rev. William Barber, seems to have a lot of trouble with that qualification.

In a WRAL on-line forum, Barber was recently called to task for his organization’s guilt-presuming approach to the lacrosse case. Here is the question, and his response, in its entirety. My discussion is below.

The NAACP and other civil rights organizations and leaders were very outspoken in support of Crystal G. Magnum during the Duke Lacrosse rape investigation. When it became apparent that her allegations were not supported by the evidence, why didn't these same organizations/leaders offer apologies to the wrongly accused? – Roger Williams, Fayetteville

I’m sorry that you have been misinformed about our position. I know, however, that is easy especially in a time when so many can say through the Internet what they think you stand for without truly hearing or reading what you actually said. Below is a copy of our position.

Also, remember we supported the attorney general having a special investigation and prosecutor. The uniqueness of the NAACP is that we have been there when black girls/women have been raped and there were no consequences and when black boys/men have been accused of rape when they were innocent. With that history in mind, we have always called for fairness.

The following was our official public position that very few media outlets chose to print in its entirety:

1. We must denounce any code of silence, which seeks to inhibit ascertaining the facts.

2. We must have deep compassion and concern for the survivor and challenge any attempts to demean or destroy her rather than to seek and ascertain the truth.

3. We must ensure the D.A.’s investigation is completed thoroughly and promptly and that serious consequences be meted out if the allegations are proven. These allegations include: sexual violence/gang rape, racial slandering/hate crimes, underage alcohol use, and any prior history of racial bigotry and intimidation must be fully investigated. We do not want a rush to judgment or a delay of justice. Duke should be conducting its own thorough investigation. Who was at the party? Who violated Duke’s Code that night? How many times had they violated the law or Duke’s Codes before?

4. We must monitor the legal process to insure justice is carried out in this investigation without special privilege or treatment to anyone. Our position as an organization interested in civil rights and community justice, is that the investigation of allegations are fair, meticulous, comprehensive, aggressive, and thorough.

5. Those who are calling for justice and fairness in the investigation must not be wrongly described as a “lynch mob” no matter how zealous [sic] one seeks to defend their client.

6. Those who want to ensure justice must insist there are no short cuts to justice. We demand that the alleged perpetrators have rights to be protected. We must also be prayerful if the allegations are true and for whoever committed these acts because they are suffering from a great sickness of the spirit and hatred for humanity.

7. We must face this investigation when all of the facts are in.

8. We must face the truth and the justice that the truth demands.

9. We must consider in the wake of all that has and will occur, how we repent, repair, restore, and move forward. We must not engage in retaliatory violence. Our faith must insist that hope can still be rise out of hurt, what is meant for evil can yet be turned to good, and out of tragedy can still come triumph.

10. We must recognize that in a moment like this moment we need the guidance of God and a moral compass, which keeps us focused on the fact that only the truth can set us free.

Two obvious questions:

1.Which of these 10 “principles” guided the NAACP’s decision to post on its website an 82-point memorandum of law that not only presumed guilt but also was riddled with outright factual errors that made it appear as if a crime could have occurred?

2.And why has an organization that claims to seek “the guidance of God and a moral compass, which keeps us focused on the fact that only the truth can set us free” not publicly apologized for this document, which the head of is legal redress committee produced?

Barber’s commentary raises other uncomfortable questions, to wit:

3. The reverend asks people to “remember we supported the attorney general having a special investigation and prosecutor.” By omitting a qualifying clause, Barber produced a misleading statement. An accurate statement from Barber would have asked people to “remember we supported the attorney general having a special investigation and prosecutor after Mike Nifong recused himself from the case.” Before that point, of course, the NAACP had never made such a demand, and the special advisor it appointed for the case, Irving Joyner, had consistently defended Nifong’s behavior.

4. If the NAACP believed it “must face this investigation when all of the facts are in,” why did the organization essentially reject the results of the AG’s report and call for a new investigation (which it would dominate)? That’s not facing the facts, it’s denying them.

5. In principle number two, the NAACP described Mangum as “the survivor”—a term used by “rape victim” groups to describe a victim of rape. Yet at the time when Barber outlined his “principles” in spring 2006, defense attorneys were adamantly denying that any attack occurred. So, by describing Mangum as “the survivor,” did not the state NAACP’s own principles presume guilt?

6. Barber’s “principles” contain the following two contradictor items: “We demand that the alleged perpetrators have rights to be protected” and “we must denounce any code of silence.” Even the most limited view of civil liberties would hold that the “rights” of “alleged perpetrators” include not speaking to police outside the presence of their attorneys. Yet at the time when Barber announced his “principles,” the “code of silence” claim had a specific meaning—that, as Nifong and his enablers had charged, the lacrosse players had enacted a “code of silence” and refused to speak with police. (Of course this was untrue: they had only postponed a meeting with police until they could consult with counsel.) So could Barber explain how his organization was “upholding its demand that the alleged perpetrators have rights to be protected” by “denounc[ing] any code of silence”?

7. Barber’s “principles” contain another clear contradiction: “We do not want a rush to judgment” and “those who are calling for justice and fairness in the investigation must not be wrongly described as a ‘lynch mob’ no matter how zealous [sic] one seeks to defend their client.” The potbangers—who, the reverend told us, can’t be referred to as a “lynch mob”—claimed their goal was “justice and fairness.” How was their behavior consistent with the NAACP’s stated opposition to a rush to judgment?

8. In light of NAACP “principle” number 8, when will the organization “face the truth” about its record in the lacrosse case?

9. Barber asserted, “Our position as an organization interested in civil rights and community justice, is that the investigation of allegations are fair, meticulous, comprehensive, aggressive, and thorough.” Before his recusal, no one from the state NAACP ever denounced Mike Nifong’s myriad ethical improprieties, and Joyner appeared to give a pass to the rigged lineup. How was that behavior consistent with the organization’s interest in civil rights and commitment to a “fair” investigation?

10. And, finally, Barber’s “principles” held, “We must face the truth and the justice that the truth demands.” How could Barber’s misleading response to WRAL be deemed consistent with that principle?

Asking Questions

Two figures whose performance in the lacrosse case left much to be desired are taking on-line questions:

• New York Times sports page editor Tom Jolly (the person who supervised Duff Wilson);

• NAACP head William Barber (the person whose organization posted the guilt-presuming 82-point "memorandum of law").

I invite DIW readers to submit questions at the links provided above. Jolly previously provided one, vague, comment on the lacrosse case:

As far as our coverage of the case itself, if the essence of your question is whether I feel good about it, the answer is that I very much regret my failure to recognize that we were dealing with a rogue prosecutor and that the university had compounded his bravado by overreacting to the initial reports about the case. I don't recall another instance of a university canceling the season of a team that was a contender for a national championship. Nor do I recall a similar example of a prosecutor launching such an aggressively wrongheaded investigation.

But the bottom line is that I'd do some things differently, and that knowledge gained by hindsight has informed our approach to other stories since then.

Jolly has never revealed what he would have done "differently," nor what specific changes resulted from the "knowledge gained."

Durham: "State Law Can't Touch Us"

In its most recent filing, the city of Durham claims absolute immunity for the portions of the civil suit dealing with North Carolina law.

In some intriguing legal reasoning, Durham’s attorneys concede:

A city may waive its governmental immunity under North Carolina law by purchasing liability insurance or participating in a local government risk pool that covers losses arising from tort claims for which a city would otherwise be immune.

And they note that

The City maintains three consecutive annual excess liability policies that may potentially be implicated by the time period of conduct alleged in the Amended Complaint.

But, they maintain,

By the express terms of each policy, the excess coverage is not triggered until the City has exhausted a self-insured retention that it is “legally obligated to pay.” Because the City cannot be “legally obligated to pay” losses arising from claims for which it has immunity, it cannot exhaust its self-insured retention with those losses. Thus, the excess coverage is not triggered, and the City’s immunity remains intact.

In other words, cities can purchase liability insurance whenever they desire to do so, and fall back on a claim that they still have absolute immunity because that liability insurance never should be allowed to kick in.

---------

On another matter, two significant North Carolina results from last Tuesday’s election.

First, in the Attorney General’s race, Roy Cooper not only won reelection, but topped the ticket, capturing 61.1 percent of the vote. The margin of victory came despite the last-minute retribution from the Wilmington Journal, which urged North Carolina voters to punish Cooper for failing to sustain charges against demonstrably innocent people.

Second, in the U.S. Senate race, North Carolina voters ousted GOP senator Elizabeth Dole. That’s the same Elizabeth Dole who not only refused to demand a DOJ investigation of Mike Nifong’s misconduct, but preposterously asserted ten weeks after Cooper exonerated the falsely accused players that the lacrosse case was still “an ongoing criminal investigation and pending judicial proceeding.”

Dole, by the way, stayed classy right to the end, closing her campaign with an ad leaving the false impression that her opponent, Kay Hagan, had cried out, “There is no God!”

The Least Surprising Endorsement

In January 2007, just after Mike Nifong turned the case over to Roy Cooper, the Wilmington Journal (the paper best known for pushing the bizarre theories of "Cousin Jakki," a/k/a Clyde Yancey) published an op-ed on the case. The column contained a thinly veiled threat--that if the Attorney General wanted the votes of North Carolina blacks, he needed to push forward with Crystal Mangum's fantastic lies.

Cooper, to his eternal credit, refused to bow to such crude tactics. His office investigated the case thoroughly, and then let the facts speak for themselves: the charges not only were dismissed, but the falsely accused players were factually innocent.

In its pre-election endorsement editorial, the Wilmington Journal exacted its revenge:

Per another office, NC Attorney General, this newspaper has endorsed challenger Robert Crumley over long time incumbent Roy Cooper, though there really is not much new about attorney Crumley positions beyond that he would be a better AG.

In our opinion, Mr. Cooper lost our vote, and our respect, when he refused to allow a trial to go forth in the Duke Lacrosse rape case, and then declared the three white suspects who allegedly raped a young black female ''innocent.''

Sorry, Mr. Cooper. Attorney Crumley now gets our support.

Disgraceful. And a reminder to all North Carolina readers of DIW to vote for Roy Cooper next Tuesday.

Attorney McSurely

In the lacrosse case "hall of infamy," few figures are more worthy of inclusion than state NAACP attorney Al McSurely. This is, after all, the man who authored the August 2006 guilt-presuming, error-laden 82-point "memorandum of law," [scroll down] which stood as the NAACP's legal "analysis" of the case.

Among its whoppers:

• “The only Black [lacrosse] player, a freshman, left the party before the dancers arrived.” [This statement was untrue; even Nifong had never made such a claim.]
• “The lacrosse team member asked the women to dance and simulate sex acts between them, similarly to scenes from a book and movie that several of the Lacrosse team members enjoyed reading and talking about—American Psycho.” [No evidence for either part of this assertion existed; even Kim Roberts never made such a claim.]
• “After about three minutes of dancing . . . there were racial remarks made.” [This statement was untrue; indeed, Kim Roberts expressly denied the claim.]
• “Other men noticed Ms. M seemed quite vulnerable after drinking the clear liquid.” [No evidence exists that “Ms. M” drank any “clear liquid”—the statements of both Roberts and the captains held that “Ms. M” drank a rum and coke, which is not clear; and, of course, the tox screen on “Ms. M” was negative.]
• “Around 12:20, some men who saw the vulnerable Ms. M returning to the house called their friends who had taken cabs and gone to get some cash from an ATM. Some returned. Sometime between approximately 12:21 and 12:53, Ms. M has stated she was kidnapped into the bathroom, beaten, robbed, choked, and vaginally and anally raped.” [The memo, alas, was based on a timeline and theory of the crime that Nifong abandoned; the purpose of this item seemed to be to suggest that Reade Seligmann could be something other than demonstrably innocent.]
• “The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) at Duke Hospital confirmed [the accuser’s] injuries matched her reports when she was examined about 2 hours later.” [As Nifong himself eventually conceded, this assertion was wholly false, since neither physical nor forensic evidence exists of rape.]

Well, McSurely is back on the case. The registered agent for the outfit publishing Crystal Mangum's tell-all memoir? None other than Al McSurely.

Hat tip: B.A.