The case of the Politically Incorrect DNA — Update
We told you a month ago about this, though the DA denied it at the time. Times change, perhaps as DA’s win primaries. Our analysis was confirmed today. Attorney Joseph Cheshire, via AP: “In other words, it appears this woman had sex with a male,” Cheshire said. “It also appears with certainty it wasn’t a Duke lacrosse player.” Not that this will stop the accuser and the DA, both of whom should be behind bars and suffer prolonged public humiliation.
UPDATE
Yet another month has passed in this cruel injustice by Nifong and the stripper. This is Newsweek’s account as of June 18 of the ridiculous and inconsistent accusations and biased investigation:
The following account is based on documents publicly available in court filings, and the defense, of course, is putting its own spin on the case. It is conceivable that Nifong is holding back some kind of smoking gun, but, given the rules and the publicity about the case, that does not seem likely.
When police called to the scene first found her in a parked car near a Kroger grocery store at about 1:30 a.m., the woman appeared to be passed-out drunk, though a police officer suspected that she was only pretending to be unconscious. She didn’t say she had been raped until she was taken to a mental-health and substance-abuse facility, where she was to be involuntarily committed. But then, after being released and taken to the hospital, she recanted to a police officer—saying that she had not been raped but rather “groped” by some of the players. She later changed her story and told nurses and doctors that she had been raped after all, though in one account she had been raped by 20 men, in another by two men, in another by three. Her tests showed some semen in her vagina—but none belonging to any of the Duke players, according to uncontradicted assertions by defense attorneys. It is difficult to imagine that if she had indeed been orally, anally and vaginally raped by the players, there wouldn’t be some trace of semen from at least one of them.
According to the medical reports quoted in court filings by defense lawyers, she told doctors that she had been raped, but did not say that she had been hit or choked. She claimed tenderness over her body, but the examining nurse-in-training found her head, neck, nose, throat, mouth, chest, breasts, abdomen and upper and lower extremities to be normal. She denied that her assailants had used condoms. The nurse-in-training found only that she had “diffuse edema of the vaginal walls” (swelling), which can be caused by normal sexual activity. She had had sexual intercourse with at least two men in the past week and told of “performing” for a couple by using a small vibrator.
Another stripper had accompanied the woman to the lacrosse party that night. The alleged victim told the nurse that the other dancer, Kim Roberts, had stolen her money and “assisted the players in their alleged sexual assault,” according to a defense lawyer’s affidavit. Interviewed by police, Roberts initially said her partner’s account of being raped was “a crock” and that the two women had been separated less than five minutes at the lacrosse players’ house. Later, Roberts changed her story and said that a rape might possibly have taken place. But that was after Nifong had helped her get favorable bail treatment for violating probation (she had pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges in another case). Roberts later contacted rap star Lil’ Kim’s publicist “for any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage.”
In an interview with NEWSWEEK in March, Nifong had hinted that the victim had been slipped a date-rape drug. Also interviewed by NEWSWEEK, Roberts seemed to support that suggestion. She said that the other dancer had been sober when she arrived at the lacrosse players’ house, but then drank a mixed drink given her by the players and was soon staggering. In her first detailed statement to police, Roberts said the woman spilled her drink after a few sips but didn’t mention, as she had to NEWSWEEK, that the accuser imbibed most of Roberts’s. The accuser told different stories to nurses and doctors at the hospital—in one account, that she had not been drinking that night, in another that she had consumed one alcoholic beverage and was taking a muscle relaxant. There was no toxicology report in her medical records handed over to the defense lawyers, though some sections of the medical report were missing.
It appears that Nifong had not actually seen the medical reports when he talked to reporters on March 29 about “my reading of the report of the emergency-room nurse.” The medical report was not turned over to the police for another week, on April 5…
[T]he defense is challenging Nifong’s highly irregular method of getting the victim to identify her alleged assailants. Under normal police procedures in Durham and elsewhere, victims pick their assailants out of a line-up that includes outsiders with no connection to the case. But the accuser chose from photos of the 46 white lacrosse players on the team—a multiple-choice test, as it were, with no wrong answers. She said that she was “100 percent” sure of Finnerty and Seligmann, but would have been sure of the third indicted player, David Evans, if he were wearing a mustache. Evans has never grown a mustache, says his lawyer, Joe Cheshire. In the material turned over by the prosecutor, defense lawyers found a note that the accuser had been unable to pick Evans out of an earlier photo display composed of Evans and several “fillers,” or strangers. Whether she was able to identify Seligmann or Finnerty out of other photo displays is unclear.
It is not certain that the accuser will go forward with the case. Ten years ago she claimed she had been raped three years earlier by three men, but her father told reporters that the rape never happened, and she never followed through with the authorities. The father has been supportive of her this time around, but he told yet another version of what happened—that the Duke players used a broom handle. Recently, he has said that his daughter is struggling with her “nerves” and may not be up to testifying in a trial. According to their lawyer, Mark Simeon, the accuser’s parents have not heard from their daughter for weeks and are very concerned.
A prominent Duke law professor, James Coleman, last week called on Nifong to remove himself from the case and appoint a special prosecutor. “Either he knew what the facts were and misstated them, or he was making them up,” Coleman told reporters. “Whether he acted knowing they were false, or if he was reckless, it doesn’t matter in the long run. This is the kind of stuff that causes the public to lose confidence in the justice system.”
Newsweek apparently put the three Duke students on its cover just after the accusations became famous and able to sell magazines. Will it put their pictures up again with “We Apologize” written below them?
UPDATE II
Nifong’s actions and case are even worse now (8/6/06) than previously reported. He got way out in front of the evidence and tailored the police investigation to fit his proposed case (via News and Observer):
A grand jury had charged two Duke University lacrosse players with gang-raping an escort service dancer. The players would be arrested at dawn the next day.
Nifong took the quotes on the DNA-test prices from Soucie and gave the officer further marching orders.
“Mike Nifong stated that: Also need documentation on escort service and how they do business,” she wrote in her notes. “Need to nail down what victim did on the day before arriving at 610 N. Buchanan so we can show that she did not receive trauma prior to the incident — with witnesses.”
Nifong had brought charges in the most publicized case in Durham County history. He had said repeatedly on national television that he was certain the dancer had been raped. Yet the prosecutor was still trying to rule out other explanations for the vaginal swelling a hospital noted in its examination of the accuser.
The words and actions of police and prosecutors had outpaced the facts in the file, and not for the first time. The case, which began at a college team party on a warm March evening, quickly drew national attention to Duke, Durham and to North Carolina’s justice system — even as the prosecutor’s version started to unravel.
In examining the files Nifong has produced in the case, The News & Observer found that the accuser gave at least five different versions of the alleged assault to different police and medical interviewers and made shaky identifications of suspects. To get warrants, police made statements that weren’t supported by information in their files.
UPDATE III
Did we mention that there was a phony police memo in this case? We have now.
UPDATE IV
This case just got even more disgusting, with the birth of a baby to this mentally and morally deficient woman, and the DNA getting even more politically incorrect:
A private laboratory hired by the prosecution in the Duke lacrosse case failed to report that it found DNA from multiple males in the accuser’s body and underwear, according to a defense motion filed today. The lab, DNA Security of Burlington, found that the DNA did not match the three defendants, their lacrosse teammates or anyone else who submitted their DNA to police, including the accuser’s boyfriend. The new evidence emerged in thousands of documents handed over to the defense in October.
“This is strong evidence of innocence in a case in which the accuser denied engaging in any sexual activity in the days before the alleged assault, told police she last had consensual sexual intercourse a week before the assault, and claimed that her attackers did not use condoms and ejaculated,” said the motion, which was signed by lawyers for all three defendants. “There is not a single mention of this obviously exculpatory evidence in the final DNA Security report.”
Three former players — Dave Evans, 23, of Bethesda, Md.; Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y.; and Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J. — are charged with rape, kidnapping and sexual offense. The three have said they are innocent. The accuser, an escort service worker, was one of two women hired to dance at a lacrosse team party in March. The accuser said she was gang-raped by three men in a bathroom over a 30-minute period. She told nurses that she was raped anally, orally and vaginally, that one or more of the men ejaculated, and that her assailants did not wear condoms.
Early on the morning of March 14, a few hours after the party, a doctor and nurse at Duke Hospital examined the woman and collected standard evidence for a rape kit: a pair of panties, hair and swabs of the woman’s orifices. On March 28, the lab at the State Bureau of Investigation tested the rape kit items and found no evidence of semen, blood or saliva, according to SBI records. On April 4, after meeting with District Attorney Mike Nifong, Durham police investigator Michele Soucie called DNA Security to ask whether the laboratory could do any additional testing of the evidence, according to Soucie’s handwritten notes.
Dr. Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security, said his lab could do Y-chromosome testing, which is more sensitive than the tests performed by the SBI lab. The tests isolate cells containing a Y chromosome from the sample, thereby analyzing only DNA contributed by males. The lab would test the swabs and panty stains for DNA and match any results to the 46 players, the accuser and any other DNA samples collected by police. Meehan told the investigator that he “can possibly adjust prices because they would really like to be involved in case,” Soucie’s notes say.
On April 8, 9 and 10, DNA Security found DNA from multiple males on the panties and rectal swab from the rape kit; none matched the lacrosse players. On April 10, Meehan met in his office with Nifong and the two lead investigators in the case, Sgt. Mark Gottlieb and Investigator Benjamin Himan. On April 18 and 19, DNA Security ran tests on pubic hair from rape kit; multiple male DNA was found that did not match the players or any other sample taken by police, the motion said. On April 20 or 21, Meehan again met with Nifong and the two investigators in his Burlington office. Meehan included none of these DNA results in his final report to Nifong on May 12.
The report violated DNA Security’s own policies, which state that reports shall include “results of every DNA test,” according to a copy of the policy filed with the motion. Citing the state’s open-file discovery law and the U.S. Supreme Court’s requirement for prosecutors to hand over all helpful evidence to the defense, the defense lawyers asked the judge to order Nifong and the lab to provide copies of all laboratory analyses, including those performed after May 12. Nifong did not immediately return calls for comment. Meehan said he could not comment on the case without first carefully reviewing his files.
Note that the term “escort service worker” has now apparently entered common usage. Nifong should be jailed simply for allowing that offense to the English language, let alone his other crimes in this case.