Duke Case Liability Situation

wait a minute gungadick, when this started you said the real villains were the Duke faculty.... make up your mind....

There is still a possiblity that there was a massive right wing conspiracy to cover up the crimes committed by those elitist Duke players. After all. The Reverend Jackson would not offer a scholarship to someone who was "unworthy", would he?

Finn dAbuzz
Finn dAbuzz, you are trying to be cute again. What's got you in such a snit again.

As a female who was raped by two men when she was four years old, and assulted by two men in her teenage years, I speak from experience. What's your excuse?

BBB

No one with any sensitivity would make any statement about the falsity of "rape" charges. It is well known that in a sexist society like ours, women have been reperatedly mistreated without any recourse.

Why hasn't Jackson and Sharpton apologized yet?

This case is an example of why I think the practice of the public electing District Attorneys is a bad idea. To avoid personal political prosecutions, DAs should be appointed. My practice of looking for the motivations convinces me that the frequent cases of DA prosecutions aimed at helping them get relected has to stop!---BBB

Durham DA Heads to Trial Over Duke Case
AARON BEARD
June 10, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C.

Mike Nifong spent nearly three decades building a reputation as an honest prosecutor. Yet he is seen today as a bane to peers, many of whom feel tarnished by his mistakes in the now-infamous Duke lacrosse rape case.

His colleagues at the courthouse in Durham remain at a loss to explain how it happened.

"It's still kind of difficult for me to see how we got here," said Woody Vann, a lawyer in Durham. "It is kind of a tragedy. He reached a certain height and ... he got presented with a matter that was just more than he could handle."

On Tuesday _ more than a year after he took the lead in investigating claims three men raped a stripper at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's highly ranked lacrosse team _ the Durham County district attorney will stand trial on ethics charges ranging from lying to the court to withholding potentially exculpatory evidence.

Gone are the days when Nifong railed against the lacrosse team to every reporter and TV camera within earshot. Mocked in the press and by the public for his handling of the collapsed case, Nifong is keeping a low profile as he prepares for a fight that could end with his disbarment.

"On one hand, he's very anxious to go ahead and have the hearing so he can present the evidence about the allegations against him," said David Freedman, one of Nifong's two attorneys. "On the other hand, it's an extremely stressful situation for any lawyer to go through, especially at this level and profile."

If Nifong is acquitted, the case will have still taken a devastating toll on the career public servant who joined the Durham County prosecutor's office as a volunteer in 1978 after graduating from law school. He is all but assured to be remembered for pursuing a deeply flawed case with unyielding vigor while portraying himself as a crusader against privilege and racism at an elite private university.

Nifong confidently trumpeted he would not allow Durham to become known best for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl." He thundered away at the Duke players in numerous interviews, calling them "hooligans" and decrying a "blue wall of silence" when claiming they weren't cooperating with police. In fact, they largely were.

He traded barbs with defense attorneys in testy courtroom exchanges and pressed ahead even when it became clear his only evidence was the accuser's myriad accounts of an attack that state prosecutors would later conclude never occurred.

It wasn't until the North Carolina State Bar accused Nifong of violating several rules of professional conduct, including making misleading and inflammatory comments about the athletes under suspicion, that he turned the case over to state prosecutors.

More ethics charges followed, include allegations he withheld details of DNA evidence from the defense that showed several men's genetic material was found on the accuser _ though none from a lacrosse player.

A few months later, State Attorney General Roy Cooper minced no words when he dismissed the indictments Nifong won against the three lacrosse players, calling Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans "innocent" victims of a rogue prosecutor's "tragic rush to accuse."

"This case reverberates in every courtroom in Durham County," said Bill Thomas, a longtime Durham defense attorney who said he had a "healthy mutual respect" for Nifong until he took on an uncharged Duke lacrosse player as a client last year and became an outspoken critic.

"There is a tremendous sense of distrust, not only among the lawyers but also I think among the judges as a result of the behavior that has been demonstrated in the lacrosse case," Thomas said.

The effects are becoming evident. In February, a federal appeals court cited Nifong by name when commenting on what it considered to be misdeeds by government prosecutors.

On the Internet, Nifong's name had entered the lexicon as a verb meaning "to be railroaded" and as a noun synonymous for "unethical prosecutor." Dozens of prosecutors from across North Carolina showed up at the state Capitol to urge lawmakers not to cut funding to their offices because of Nifong's actions.

"It is affecting everybody," said Peg Dorer, director of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys.

Nifong remains quietly defiant. He declined several requests for interviews in recent months, allowing his attorney to deny rumors that Nifong planned to resign. Nifong's last public comment on the lacrosse case came in a one-page statement released the day the case collapsed. In it, he apologized, but only "to the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect."

His silence will end at the trial, where Nifong is expected to testify in his own defense.

Depending on the outcome, criminal charges could follow. A request remains pending in the Durham County court to remove him from office, on which the judge said he'll start a hearing shortly after the ethics trial.

The judge who oversaw part of the case has also reminded Nifong he could still impose a punishment.

That's all to come. But Nifong's reputation, some say, is already beyond redemption.

"It's how he's going to be remembered," Vann said. "Nobody knows anything about the previous 28 years. The cases he's tried and won, and the cases he's tried well and won. They're just not (going to be remembered)."

Hate to disillusion anybody, but appointing DAs is not going to fix anything. The job still involves gigantic powers and little or nothing resembling accountability.

Moreover, it isn't even clear that Fong is any more than a relatively minor villain in a whole cast of villains in this story, the most major of which appear to be rogue elements of the admin and faculty of the school. Look for billion-dollar lawsuits against Duke University and the city of Durham and a hundred or so million-dollar suits against individuals. I suspect the families of the three accused players are waiting to see what happens in Fong's ethics hearing this week before starting the legal firework show.

gunga it's obvious to me that either your grades weren't good enough or your parents couldn't afford to send you to Duke. Grow up. Let go. Move on. Nothing wrong with community college.

Let's see:

The Duke players have been pronounced "innocent," (not just "not-guilty').

Nifong has been disbarred and has resigned his position as DA.

Did American justice prevail?

Thomas Sowell's take on the situation, which is interesting:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/unfinished_business.html

Duke has apparently settled with the three families and since the settlement includes any potential liability of the 88 super clowns/losers on the faculty who signed that abominable "listening" letter, you have to assume the settlement was more like 20 - 50 million than like the 6 - 10 it would have taken just to cover legal costs.

You also have to assume that the school's board of trustees is not happy with the 88 clowns.

If I were one of the players or a father of one of them, I think I would be requiringn as a condition of settlement, the Duke vigilantes to take out a full page ad admitting they were wrong and apologizing -- in the same papers in which they published their attacks.

The NY Times proves, yet again, that it is shameless as respects its undeniable bias.

Does anyone know if the fired Coach sued or settled with Duke?

Settled. Lots of money....

The rogue faculty and admin elements have cost Duke a ton of money at this point, and you have to assume the board of trustees has taken notice. The faculty elements including the 88 super clowns amount to all the useless programs in the school, PC hate studies and the like and, until now, they've tended to dominate faculty politics and that is a normal situation in universities today.

I am not so sanguine as you about the Duke board of trustees. Clearly they have expressed an ideological bent over the years that has led to this scenario.

Just as the NY Times is not about to admit they effed up coverage of this story, so will the "88 super clowns" refuse to acknowledge they got it wrong. Sowan's article points to a crazed activist who assailed the family of one of the players during the NC Bar's review of Nifong, because she still believes the kids are guilty. You can smack these people in the face with the 2 X 4 of truth and they will be unfazed.

I'd like to think this travesty will have an important impact on the way things are done at Duke and other universities in America, but I won't hold my breath.

The show isn't over. The settlement with Duke only covers the worst case, i.e. the legal exposure of Duke itself wrt the three accused students.

There is still the question of the forty some other lax players and any claims they might have against the school, claims against the city of Durham and/or its DA office and/or police department, possible claims against the state of NC, claims against the NY Times and/or any other media entities, etc. etc. etc.

Duke alums are maximally pissed, with many if not most withholding further donations until Broadhead and the rogue faculty and admin elements are gone.

Further, there is a good likelihood of whoever manages the schools liability insurance reading riot acts to the board of trustees for not managing a tighter ship than what we observe. At some point regardless of political leanings, bot members have to concern themselves with their own reputations.

Then again, there is the question of that 95% black vote which returned Fong to office so late as last November, after the basic reality the story was very well known to the entire world, which is inexcusable. There is the very real question of whether any parent in his right mind and particularly any WHITE parent in his right mind would send a kid to school in such a place or even within 40 miles of such a place.