My Favorite Right Wing, Nick is AWOL. In his stead, a fellow named John is guest blogging, and has put in his two cents on the Duke rape case, in two installments. I reproduce them here for two reasons: First, I want to respond to them in depth; and B, If he wants to argue about it, we can do it here, because Nick told us not to burn the place down in his absence. Of course, anyone here who wants to go visit and expand on my points can find the stuff here.
John sez:
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong could learn a thing or two from the Reverend Al Sharpton. For the memory impaired among you; back in 1987 Tawana Brawley went missing. The a 15-year-old black girl was found four days later covered in dog feces and with racial slurs written on her body.
[Snip...retread of the Tawana Brawley Case. Would be inadmissable in a court of law].
Fast forward to April, 2006. Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is up for re-election in a racially mixed town. 46 college athletes (members of the Duke University Lacrosse team) are getting together to party. The athletes hired a stripper. The stripper later claims that three of the athletes raped her.
There is no physical evidence she was raped. The stripper claimed she scratched the attackers, but no DNA was found anywhere on her, including under her fingernails. A second stripper at the party has, according to defense attorneys, stated point blank that she does not believe the allegation. The defense claims they have time stamped photos showing typical proceedings of such an event, which shows a stripper doing her job, not being victimized. The police, later the same night, found the stripper passed out from being drunk, but in no immediate need of medical attention.
The defense makes LOTS of claims. That's their jobs. A claim is made above that the second stripper did not beleive the allegation; Please note below that he says the second stripper supports the allegation. In reality, the second stripper vehemently denies saying anything that the defense attorneys claimed she said.
It should be noted that although his next post on the subject contradicts the above assertion that there was no physical evidence that she was raped, he does not admit to being wrong about it.
The statement that no DNA was found on her is indicative of a gross misunderstanding of how evidence, and DNA evidence, works. First of all, DNA is implicit in human cells- to say she had no DNA is to say she isn't human(and we'll get to that implication later). The defense was trumpeting initially inconclusive DNA testing as exoneration, when it's just...inconclusive. Doesn't PROVE anything one way or the other.
Mike Nifong is pressing ahead with his rape case against these athletes. Does he have information not made public? Perhaps one of the athletes is ratting his pals out? Or, is Mike Nifong thinking of his career and his re-election? Is he really going to destroy the reputations and the bank accounts of these young men and their families on a “he said – she said” case?
Of course he has information not made public. He's the friggin DISTRICT ATTORNEY. Not only is he privy to the testimonies and to the victims and accused directly, it's actually, you know, HIS JOB to pursue this case. In addition, there's information available in locations besides Rush Limbaugh and Instaputrid. (Hey, if he can make a crack about the flea collar below, I can take a swipe at ol' Gay Glenn)
Future political career notwithstanding, is it impossible to comprehend that Mr. Nifong may be pursuing this case because he believes a CRIME occurred? You know, that's what you call it when someone breaks the law, even if they are white athletes whose daddies are big time Republicans.
In reality, he said/ she said is often what crime cases come down to. Just this morning, I listened to Joel McNally and Cassandra Cassandra discussing the Jude case, and they said the very same thing. The issue is in a trial, whose story is more believable and SUPPORTED BY FACTS. (Facts are those things that we are constantly obsessed by in the Reality-Based Community).
Mike Nifong had better win this walking away. If he doesn’t, he’ll be this generation’s version of that beloved democratic icon, Al Sharpton.
Someone get Mr. Nifong a flea collar, on standby.
He keeps bringing up Sharpton, trying to discredit the DA by association. Their only similarity? They're black. It's as if I claimed that because Republican Governor Ryan was sentenced to twenty years for corruption, that ALL Republicans are criminals and corrupt... Wait.
Later
:
Video of the indicted lacrosse athletes and their names were released today. Reade Seligmann, a sophomore from Essex Fells, N.J., and Collin Finnerty, a sophomore from Garden City, N.Y. are now at the mercy of the North Carolina justice system. Both athletes made $400,000 bail.
NBC’s Today Show showed three of the time-stamped photos that defense attorneys claim clear their clients of any wrongdoing in this rape case. The one photo of the stripper was pixilated so that her face was not discernable. Presumably this is to protect her identity. The NBC reporter claimed the stripper in the picture is smiling as she left the ‘scene of the crime’. He also claimed she had left once that night, and then returned to the house to retrieve a shoe she dropped.
What does Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong have? The stripper claims that she left the house after exchanging harsh words with some of the athletes, she was then lured back into the house, then taken to a bathroom and subjected to a brutal thirty minute rape by three of the athletes.
Unless you are party to the sealed indictment, you have no idea what the preliminary evidence shows, and neither do I. The DA does, and so does the judge who issued the indictment- I presume the defense attorneys do also.
Incidentally, Steve Gilliard reports that one of the defense lawyers is a high priced attorney, Bob Bennett. Of course, being paid for by someone's daddy (but being portrayed as defending Duke' “honor”). Goes without saying that the victim is not going to have such a highly regarded legal counsel. Yet another example of how this case is exposing the differences in class, gender, and race.
Steve G has much more (all culled from Google and the internet- astonishing how much info you can find outside of Righist squawkers) Here. It's worth looking through, if just to see how much is being left out of the news reports.
Which brings up the question: what physical evidence would such a thirty-minute ordeal leave on the woman’s body? Semen, obviously, but what about scratches, bruises, vaginal bruising and/or contusions?
No information of the stripper’s physical condition has been released. Could the young woman’s condition back up her claims? Is Nifong proceeding on physical evidence in his vigorous prosecution of this case?
Contrary to what you John states, at least part of the medical report has been reported. From a lengthy discussion at Pandagon: there is a medical repot that states “signs, symptoms, and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally,”
And really, what sort of woman would suffer a rape attack, and then return later to retrieve a lost shoe?
Obviously, my friend, a woman who wants her shoe back. Couple of thoughts: witnesses describe the strippers as leaving, then returning, and based on what I've read, THIS is when the assault occurred. So she went back for the shoe BEFORE the assault occurred. Also, the woman obviously was not as economically fortunate as some of us, maybe, just maybe she could ill afford to lose a shoe- stripper heels probably aren't cheap.
It is pretty well known among doctors and women's rights groups that reactions to sexual assault are extremely varied. Some women fall completely apart- some become very controlled and unemotional. I say, until you and I are raped, ,we don't have much authority to claim that a woman is exhibiting the proper post-assault behavior. I think you've got the ORDER of events wrong, in any case.
Stay tuned.
Oh, we will John, we will. And can I be assured that should the case turn out to be true, that you will issue a heartfelt
mea culpa?what is it about this case that so instantly raises the hackles of RightBloggers? I mean, almost instantly comparisons to the Brawley case were oozing out. Why? Because the victim is black, and the alleged attackers white? Is it that there have been no rape cases in the last fifteen years, or just that there have been so few fraudulent cases? Why the sudden desire to portray the white boys as victims?
Is it that the accused are white, or that they're rich? Do we see the same rabid defense when a black athlete is accused of rape? I don't recall it. Actually, my recollection is more of a dog pile, with vermin like Rush talking about 'these people' and otherwise employing their favorite coded language to imply that you can't expect anything else, that blacks are little better than animals. Same old Southern strategy.
So why the rush to claim the woman is lying and the athletes are being falsely accused? Yes, yes, I know, innocent until proven guilty, but that refers to court proceedings, and to get to that point, someone has to be accused and tried in a court of law. Hence, indictments and arrests.
At least initially, there seems to be good reasons to suspect several of the guys involved. Neighbors report constant, ongoing problems with drunkenness and behavior associated with the house and the lacrosse team. A couple of the guys have had other brushes with the law, including assault. Also, conspicuously absent from John's outline above is an email one of the captains wrote, stating that he wanted to get a couple of strippers to the party and kill and eat them. Witnesses support that racially charged insults were being yelled from the house.
Incidentally, one of JJ's points in his rehash of the Brawley case was the cost to the unjustly accused to defend himself. In this case, the two initial indictments had bail set at $400,000 (also by the by: when a judge sets high bail, part of the reason is that he finds credible preliminary evidence of guilt), which they promptly paid. As they point out at Pandagon, this means Mommy and Daddy had no problem pulling at least $40,000 each out of thin air to help Juniors not spend a night in lockup. Personally, if it was my kid, I'd say ask your dick for bail cuz it got you into this, and until it can get you out, you can damn well spend your time in jail. But I digress- my point here is that the suspects come from very well to do families, which DOES make this crime at last partially about class and entitlement.
Yes, they might not be guilty. And they might. That's for the court case and jury to decide.
Incidentally, I was a juror for a rape case several years ago. In fact, I was Chairperson. I was a bit taken aback at how thoroughly people had internalized the standard arguments against a rape case. “She was asking for it” “He couldn't control himself” “She didn't seem to be too upset about it.”
In our case, the victim was thirteen years old at the time of the crime (although she was nearly eighteen when the court case happened) and her assailant was nearly thirty. during the trial, it seemed that the prosecution did not have a plethora of information, and it also seemed that the judge was a bit biased against the defense attorney. Nevertheless, after a bit of deliberation, we managed to disregard these issues to evaluate the evidence we were given. It did, indeed, very nearly boil down to he said/she said.
We returned a guilty verdict. Afterward, the judge asked us to remain in the jury room for a bit; he came in afterward. We found out that the girl was so much older because the rapist had developed into a bit of jailhouse lawyer and had had his case brought to trial four times previously, this was the fifth. This also explained the young woman's composure- she had been through it enough to have been composed on the stand (and don't think some jurors didn't hold that composure against her). The rapist couldn't find an attorney willing to take the case one more time, so the judge actually asked a favor of a personal friend to be defense attorney, thus the apparent bias in the form of unwillingness to entertain bs from the attorney. And finally, he knew that although the rapist had been successful in having much of the evidence against him (More than we were allowed to see) not allowed, he congratulated us and thanked us for being able to still discern guilt.
What I'm saying is that the truth will not be decided by Rush and InstaPuck, no matter how much they whinge. And although they are trying to deflect the attention to the DA and the woman (she's a stripper! How shameful!), it is by the very nature of its participants, going to be about class, and race, and sexism, and entitlement. In fact, regardless of the outcome, it can be a place to start discussing these things.
