Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Parsing The Duke Lacrosse Suit

Stuart Taylor Jr, co-author of Until Proven Innocent, commented on the recent filing of a Civil Lawsuit against the City of Durham, DNASI, and fourteen individuals. His full article was in The National Journal.com/TheGate

"I have no doubt that Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann will amply prove the heart of their claims, which are as follows:

The prosecution of the lacrosse players over the course of a full year was "one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial, and scientific
misconduct in modern American history."

As many as 10 Durham police officers and two hired DNA experts along with Nifong "knew that these charges were completely and utterly unsupported by probable cause, and a total fabrication by a mentally troubled, drug prone exotic dancer whose claims, time and time again, were contradicted by physical evidence, documentary evidence, other witnesses, and even the accuser herself. In their rush to accuse, Defendants willfully ignored and were deliberately indifferent to overwhelming evidence of Plaintiffs' actual innocence."

"Instead, Defendants used the accuser's inconsistent and demonstrably false allegations as fuel for a media campaign to obtain indictments and win a hotly-contested election at the expense of the three innocent Duke lacrosse players. With a community and a nation thus inflamed and clamoring for indictments of Duke lacrosse players, but with no evidence that any players had actually committed a crime, Defendants set about to fabricate such evidence [and] conspired to conceal... exculpatory evidence in order to charge and convict Plaintiffs on 'facts' they knew to be untrue."

Critics of the lawsuit ignore the mountain of evidence that is
already in the public record supporting each and every one of these
allegations."

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent article and I was glad he linked to the article with the crazy Sandy Ogburn comment... not a single penny ... parents don't want the evidence heard ... all we know is what the defense "parsed out." There for all the world to see, a former city council member still on the railroad express.

Anonymous said...

The very fact that so many Durham officials are saying they conducted themselves properly and did not wrong, that "something must have happened" even at this time proves the point that Durham needs a wakeup call and a very large award rendered against them.

Anonymous said...

That the majority of opinions we have heard from the Durham community since the pending lawsuit was announced last month (and now recently filed) is how greedy the lacrosse players are and / or a denial that what happened during the 13 months of the frame / hoax was not a big deal because no one went to jail and / or it is now time to "move on" rather than outrage and disgust at the actions of city leaders, police, local print media, out of control Duke faculty, spineless Duke administrators, and others who actively engaged in the frame / hoax is indicative of a moral decay that is outrageous and disgusting in its own right.

Channeling a couple of the potbangers' banners from March 2006:

Hey Durham ...

Get a conscience, not a lawyer

Regardless of what day of the week it is, it's time to confess

Here's hoping the Laxers exercise the "castrate" option by relieving you of millions and millions of dollars.

Anonymous said...

Posting here, rather than the previous posts, because the comments here have not gotten cluttered with the Brittanica yet:

Mayor Bell has said, about the recently uncovered timeline: "the purpose of this timeline was to make the facts public". This of course raises an obvious question: why was the very existence of this timeline, and several of the facts therein, unknown to the general public until after the initiation of the civil suit?

Of course, one cannot leap directly from the fact that the timeline and its contents were generally unknown to the conclusions that any person or persons were out to hide its existence. Sometimes information gets missed.

However, here's a more focused question whose answer may be more revealing: was the timeline given by the Mayor's office to the Special Prosecutors? I am fairly sure that when the Special Prosecutors started their investigation the first thing they did was ask all relevant parties, including the Mayor, to turn over any information they themselves had collected. If Bell's assertion that the timeline existed for the purpose of dissemination of what was known to the public, it is difficult to imagine a realistic scenario in which it would not be among the materials turned over to the Special Prosecutors.

Anonymous said...

"Critics of the lawsuit ignore the mountain of evidence that is already in the public record supporting each and every one of these allegations."

These same "critics" are fellows of the postmodern reconstructionist movement (e.g., the Group of 88), for whom truth is non-existent, and evidence says whatever they want it to say in order to advance their agenda. In
this case, the agenda is clear: CYA

Anonymous said...

I think Durham is beyond saving; I hope Duke is not. Let the games begin!

Anonymous said...

The prosecution of the lacrosse players over the course of a full year was "one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial, and scientific
misconduct in modern American history." {snip}

The corruption still exists, and nothing has changed accept for name changes on the DA's door. The mayor, governor, police chief and every other official still runs full steam ahead. There has yet to be a Federal Investigation, and should involve numerous inditements. Firing Nifong and giving him one day of jail is pathetic.

Thank God there are some of us who are not intimidated, and will continue to speak out and fight for justice.
Rhonda Fleming
Cleveland, Ohio

Anonymous said...

3:53

Your time would be better spent speaking out about the school shooting in Cleveland. Try helping the trouble white guys so they wouldn't go into a school & gun down innocent kids. There's some work for you!

Anonymous said...

"Your time would be better spent speaking out about the school shooting in Cleveland. Try helping the trouble white guys so they wouldn't go into a school & gun down innocent kids. There's some work for you!"

Hi, Connie. How many fish sandwiches did you sell at the courthouse cafeteria today?