As for why they wouldn't talk to the police, it doesn't sound like the police want to talk to anyone. If they did all they would have to do is subpoena them to appear in front of the grand jury. As far as I have heard, the police have never requested to interview either Seligmann or Finnerty.

Nifong said today that the 46 members of the No. 2 ranked team are united in silence and refusing to talk with investigators probing the rape case. Duke University Provost Peter Lange said, "The students would be well-advised to come forward. They have chosen not to."

(Judge) Bayly said that if he concludes that the rape allegations Finnerty faces in Durham are true

He must hope he can pressure someone into making something up.

Uhhh, doesn't that take a trial, and not a conclusion/delusion by the judge!?

Not that I think these guys actually know anything, can't say, but it is too possible someone might make something up just to please the DA. If the DA is hoping someone will crack, how does he know that someone won't be the type to invent some testimony? It happens all the time.

Speaking to police without an attorney is STUPID. You are afforded the right to speak to an attorney and every person SHOULD do so. The last thing one needs is to have their words taken out of context, to be lied to "colin just confessed that you raped her" etc (which only causes people to make sh*t up about someone else to cover their own arse).

One should NOT have a black cloud over their head because they utilized their US given right to speak to the police only with an attorney present.

Look that Nifong still hasn't figured out who's at the party and who hasn't on that night.

It's much more important to have a video camera when talking to police than to have a lawyer. It also has alternate uses that are fun.

I personally don't think black clouds should arise over anyone's head when somebody takes the fifth. If there's a black cloud over these boy's heads today, it's because they are failing to disclose evidence where a crime has been alleged.

Playing hardball with people who are on probation or have been granted deferred adjudication, etc., is standard operating procedure for DAs, and to be outraged by it only belies a wish for these players to be treated differently on the basis of their social class.

But do you really believe Nifong hasn't spoken with the prosecutor in the Washington case and pushed the revocation?

The fact that all the players are hiding behind lawyers indicates knowledge of a crime.

there is this little thing called the Constitution, and it states no one can be compelled to speak against themselves ... [blah blah blah]... Let's call this move what it is: extortion meant to subvert the Constitution.

TL wouldn't such ex-parte contact be against ethical and court rules? Do you have something to back up that implied assertion?

If they are guilty of the crime, or of participating in a coverup after the crime (a crime in itself), then they shouldn't be compelled to testify.

Hey, if you're innocent of any misdeeds, why not agree to answer questions in the presence of your attorney without having to be subpeona'd to a grand jury?

I thought judges, as referees, weren't allowed to have those types of contacts. But Prosecutors? How weird would that be?

We can argue about whether its proper to make deals for testimony, but to compare these deals to the brutal techniques that the Founding Fathers were worried about when they designed the Constitution goes beyond hyperbole, doesn't it? Isn't it actually wrong?

Ask Martha Stewart how that "opening your mouth (despite attorney's advice) and issuing repeated denials" strategy worked out for her.

Contrast the protectionist talk in regards to the Duke Hooligans (past behavior is more than enough to justify this title - even if the rape allegation is excluded), ....

11 basketball national championships

Rita Cosby interview with the accuser's father: He said his daughter told him she was raped with a broom

If peeing in public (tree, bush, side of house, between cars, etc.) makes one a "Hooligan", then the "Duke Hooligans" are joined by probably 95% of men and a lot more women than you realize (especially the younger generations...I saw two girls peeing (and laughing) in a parking lot last weekend as I walked to my car).

Would the Founding Fathers object to this DA's tactic? There is no way to prove it, but I think they would.

There may be times when it is difficult to tell the difference between compulsion and persuasion, but Nifongs dealings with the players in this case is not one of them.

FILAN: Here's what she was charged with. She was charged with larceny, speeding to elude, assault on a government official, and driving while impaired and those are actually the four misdemeanors that she pled guilty to and went to jail for, is that right?

VANN: That's correct. She served six days in jail and then was placed on 24 months probation and was ordered to pay restitution, and she completed the six days in jail, completed the probation without incident, and paid her restitution exactly as she was ordered to do by the court. She fully complied.

imho, they are charged with first degree rape I believe.

As long we we are getting obsessed with leniency bargains, consider the following. About 18 months ago the alleged victim in this case confessed to stealing a taxicab (ie grand theft auto) and was allowed to plead to a mistermeaner (roughly equivalent to peeing in the bushes) and got probation. Since since she doesn't have the alleged class privileges of the Duke students, did she get special "plea bargain" treatment because she is a member of the strippers union?

First Degree Rape [GS 14-27.2(2), Class B1 felony] (SOR) Vaginal intercourse by force and without consent and (a) with use of a weapon, (b) inflicting serious injury, or (c) aided by others

Another version???

The victim stated she tried to leave and the three males (Adam, Bret, and Matt) forcefully held her legs and arms and sexually assaulted her anally, vaginally and orally.

The victim stated she tried to leave, but three males (Adam, Bret, and Matt) forcefully held her legs and arms and raped and sexually assaulted her anally, vaginally and orally.

So if Reade is oral and Collin is broomstick, there would be no first degree rape, right? I think that poor man is making up stuff as he goes along. I hope it doesn't run in the family.

She identified Reade Seligmann, 20, with 100-percent certainty as the man who forced her to perform oral sex on him. She also identified Collin Finnerty, 19, as the man who raped and sodomized her.

Teresa - please clarify - by your last post I read that you are implying that if Reade was receiving oral and Colllin was using a broomstick that rape did not occur. Am I misinterpreting your post?

Whoa! Defense is a reflective strategy. No Duke Lacrosse players had any attorneys until Nifong declared guilt before a Grand Jury had been convened, before DNA samples had been taken and without having interviewed a single accused individual.

March 14 In the early morning hours, a woman tells police three men raped her during a party inside a Buchanan Blvd. house owned by Duke University. Three Duke lacrosse players lived inside the house. March 16 Police execute a search warrant inside the house and interview the three residents. March 22 Durham police set up a meeting with Duke lacrosse players. Hours before it was supposed to happen, the meeting is called off. March 23 Police obtain a court order requiring 46 members of the lacrosse team to provide DNA samples. March 24-25 The story goes public. Duke calls of its scheduled game against Georgetown. Students begin protesting, but the university and lacrosse players remain silent.

Police investigators later spoke with the players' coach and asked him to set up a meeting with the players and investigators March 22, at which the players were to voluntarily answer questions and possibly submit to identification procedures, the release said. A few hours before the meeting was to take place, a lawyer called investigators and told them that the players would not attend and that legal counsel would be representing them. The District Attorney's Office then obtained an order from a judge that required 46 members of the team to provide DNA samples. The players did so March 23 at a police lab.

He said the broomstick would be sodomy.

In this interview he says he didn't know it was her and that he found out about it on the news. In other interviews he says he went to the hospital.

The father said Tuesday that early on the morning of March 14, he went to Duke Hospital with his son and waited more than two hours to see his daughter. Doctors wouldn't say why she was there, he said. The father went home and waited for word from his daughter. Later that morning, she came to her parents' house with her boyfriend. "After she came home, that's when I knew she had been beaten up," her father said.

So they are charged with 1st degree rape and also with assault (as well as kidnapping)?

Does the first degree rape not require vaginal penetration with a penis?

If so, I guess the father's broomstick remark doesn't eliminate there was also 1st degree rape but then we're back to why no DNA?

Sorry if I don't know what I'm talking about.

But he says after she came home I knew she was injured. Are you saying that he knew she was injured but thought it was from getting hurt dancing at a party and only found out later from the news that it was rape? When he told the Knight Ridder reporter that she didn't mention anything about it, he meant she didn't mention anything about being raped but did tell him that the injuries he saw were from getting hit while dancing at a party?

Taking someone's freedom is very serious. True, they have previous crimes and accepted the plea deal, but there was no way they could have predicted a DA would try to renege on that and use it in an attempt to "persuade" them to surrender their rights in a subsequent incident.

The father of the woman who said she was raped at a party near the Duke University campus says that when he saw her the day after the party, her eyes and face were swollen, her arms were scratched, and she was complaining about her leg. She told him she thought some part of her leg had slipped out of joint, he said. The woman told her father that she had been dancing at a party and that someone had hit her. It wasn't until the next day the woman told her father she had been raped, he said.

The father of the woman who has accused members of the Duke lacrosse team of sexually assaulting her said he didn't find out that his daughter was the reported victim -- and that she is an exotic dancer -- until a reporter visited his house. The retired trucker who lives in Durham said he saw his daughter the day after the reported attack, but she didn't say anything was wrong. She even left her car at the house for several days because he said she didn't want to drive it.

he didn't find out that his daughter was the reported victim -- and that she is an exotic dancer -- until a reporter visited his house.

The "blue wall of silence" etc. I believe darned near every person at the party submitted their dna for testing, enough of the silence BS.

I have challenged those of you who support the woman and believe the men are guilty to set up a fund for her recovery. Yet not one of ya has done so.

The father said Tuesday that early on the morning of March 14, he went to Duke Hospital with his son and waited more than two hours to see his daughter. Doctors wouldn't say why she was there, he said. The father went home and waited for word from his daughter. Later that morning, she came to her parents' house with her boyfriend. "After she came home, that's when I knew she had been beaten up," her father said.

The woman told her father that she had been dancing at a party and that someone had hit her. It wasn't until the next day the woman told her father she had been raped, he said.

"My father came to see me in the hospital," she said. "I knew if I didn't report it that he would have that hurt forever, knowing that someone hurt his baby and got away with it."

IMHO - If you haven't sent her any money, why not?

I have challenged those of you who support the woman and believe the men are guilty to set up a fund for her recovery. Yet not one of ya has done so.

IMHO - If you haven't sent her any money, why not?

I am not saying anyone has to STFU on the subject

so I'm surprised that no one has speculated on it before now.

Regarding the father's report of the assailants using a "foreign object" or more specifically a "broomstick". Was this quoted language from him, or Cosby's characterization of what he said? Just curious.

DO - the claim by the players, I believe, is that no sex of any kind occured.

I wouldn't discount the possibility that consensual sex becomes part of the story at some point, even if it seems like a remote possibility now.

If the story changed like this, I wouldn't trust another word out of the player's mouths.

I know it's pretty tortured, but technically it still works. From following the reporting of this story, I have found instances where the newpaper reporting is just plain wrong. The television programs are even worse.

Step up and help her, not so you can continue to take out your frustrations on spoiled rich whtie kids, but because the woman has a long road ahead of her and can really use the help.

Posted by Jlvngstn April 26, 2006 10:42 AM IMHO - If you haven't sent her any money, why not?

Although, somehow I missed a step here somehow -- what's an "AV?" Accusor/victim?

The discovery process will be interesting.

And of course IMHO - You have spent more than 90% of your postings on this thread committed to information supporting the alleged victim and only one post discussing her criminal past, why is that if you are not taking sides?

The crucial photo was taken, defense sources say, at approximately 12:41 a.m., and shows the accuser calmly being helped into a car to leave the party. Taken together with other time- stamped photos from earlier in the evening, it is crucial to the defense argument that there was not enough time that night for a rape to occur. In fact, prosecutors will argue, that photo actually shows the accuser being dropped off at the party, not leaving it, and that it was taken well before midnight. In that photo, the accuser is shown in a black or dark-colored car, which matches a description of the car defense and prosecution sources say dropped her off at the party. The person in the driver seat of that car is not Kim Roberts, whom prosecutors will argue drove the accuser away from the party after the alleged rape.

The revelation of a possible contradiction of the time-stamped photos has caused dissension within the ranks of the defense attorneys for the players. Leaking the photos was "a grevious strategic error that was not approved by any other member of the defense," an attorney for one of the players not yet charged in the case tells TIME. "The person who released them did not have the authority. The [attorneys] who are in the crosshairs would make that call. The person who released them is going to be looking at the bad end of a bar complaint after this is over," said the attorney.

The crucial photo was taken, defense sources say, at approximately 12:41 a.m., and shows the accuser calmly being helped into a car to leave the party.

Is the taxi driver actually correct and Kim lied on the 911 call so as not to identify herself in any way like she did about her reasons for being in front of the house?

Is everyone else ready to agree that a 30-minute rape seems too long for any timeline?

The security guard is standing right next to the car when she asks Kim the make, model and color of her car and relays the info to the 911 dispatcher. If the car was white the security guard would have noticed.

Am I dreaming that?

Several Duke lacrosse players who say they were at a team party the night of the alleged rape of a 27-year-old woman have told ESPN's George Smith that an argument over money and the amount of time two exotic dancers were expected to perform was at the center of a dispute that night. The players, who agreed to speak with ESPN on the condition their names not be used, also admitted that slurs and bad language were used by some players and the dancers during the argument.

"There may be DNA. In this first round of tests, they did find DNA under the woman's fingernails. But the tests, as to whose it was, were inconclusive," she said." There are new tests that are expected back," she adds, and these tests could lead to other conclusions. "

I can hear the accuser sobbing in the background of the call. The security guard must be standing right by the car.

So I guess the prosecutor's office per Time.com is wrong?

Then I get your response. In which you make a point of how you didn't bother to read my post and then ask me for the web address.

The security guard left the scene as police were questioning the alleged victim. According to police affidavits, the woman told police while she was in the Kroger parking lot that she had been sexually assaulted at a party.

The audio recording is of a conversation between a Durham police officer and police dispatcher the beginning at 12:58 a.m. March 14.

The audio recording begins when an officer responds to the scene of the party, a house on Buchanan Street. The officer tells the dispatcher that the alleged victim had apparently already left the scene. The recording resumes when the same officer responds to another 911 call from a Kroger grocery store security guard at about 1:30 a.m. The guard called to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else's car.

Defense attorneys had no comment on the ESPN story.

I'm confused about the car colors. Could one of the dancers have driven up in a white car, and the other in a dark car. They leave together in the white car. But they later switch to the other one's dark car (why I'm not sure), and wind up at the Kroger lot in the dark car. The father seems to state that his daughter drove herself to the team house. So there might have been two cars there

I hate to admit that I am going to watch Rita Cosby

Selective leaks to the press, but they wouldn't let the team members talk to the police when this prosecution could have been nipped in the bud.

"...the young women were back in the car in front, and one of the young men was leaning into the driver's side door, speaking with her. But at that point, the situation seemed to calm down a little bit, and they were able, I guess, to convince one of the girls to go back inside. And that's at the point where I overheard her talking about going back and getting her shoe. So the young ladies went back into the house, and at that point, nobody was out in the alley."

The women go out to the second stripper's car at about 12:20, but the accuser has left her purse behind; she goes back inside to get it, according to Ekstrand.

I don't have the slightest incentive to believe the timestamps are accurate. Does anyone else?

Teresa was right, it was about the white car the cab driver saw Kim get into. Pretty much what is covered in the Time article.

Posted by chew2 at April 26, 2006 12:11 PM GSDfan The sexual assault felony statute speaks of penetration by an "object". I read that not to include a part of the body like the hand or finger. So it looks like penetration by a finger would just be sexual battery, a misdemeanor.

I saw the Rita Crosby interview as well. that Wendy lady sure jumps to some serious conclusions in a hurry with conviction. I thouhgt the other guy made an interesting point: If a woman is violated by a foreign object (not a "live" penis) then under the law it is sodomy, not rape. The two players were charged with rape, not sodomy. He was clearly suggesting that she is changing her story to match the DNA results.