The report did say a female Duke police officer tried to calm and reassure the accuser at the hospital where she was taken by police hours after the party. The woman, the Duke officer said, was "crying uncontrollably and visibly shaken ... shaking, crying and upset." That behavior, the report said, "doesn't suggest that the case was likely to just `go away."' The statements about the accuser's credibility were part of a major failure of communications between police and several members of Duke's administration, the report said.

What did the players sense from Nifong or the police dept. to make them change from cooperation with the police to suddenly lawyering up in the span of three days?

the charging party was not that important

Taking at face value the reported comments of Durham police officers (and perhaps others), and allowing their interpretations of credibility and seriousness to shape Duke's thinking, was a major mistake.

I would guess that a player or two told their parents about the DNA request and all hell broke loose. I'm sure at least one player has an attorney for a parent or at least knows one well.

Their report does not say who at the Durham Police Department cast doubt on the accuser's complaint. Defense attorneys have asked the court to consider her reliability, saying she previously made allegations of rape that did not lead to any charges.

The report has a 911 call at 12:41 a.m. What's up with that?

The report was commissioned by Duke's president and prepared by Julius Chambers, a former chancellor at North Carolina Central University, where the accuser is a student, and William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University who is now head of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The report does say that a Durham cop was told by the AV that she had been raped by 20 white men, right?

The usual rape protocol examination at Grant hospital revealed no semen and no vaginal trauma. The emergency room physician testified he rarely saw vaginal trauma in victims of sexual assault. He mentioned a study at a Detroit hospital that found vaginal trauma in only 7% of sexual assault victims. The study was not introduced into evidence and the defendant failed to object to the testimony.

"Mr. Nifong suggested we put together the mug shot type photographs into a group since we are under the impression the players at the party were members of the Duke Lacrosse Team and instead of doing a line up or photographic array, we could merely ask the victim to look at each picture and see if she recalled seeing the individuals at the party. If in fact she could recall, just let us know how she recalled seeing them from that night, what they were doing, and any type of interactions she may have had or observed with a particular individual."

Even the Duke Chronicle had, and has remainedpretty negative on the lacrosse team

The reports were presented by the Investigation of Men's Lacrosse Committee and the Examination of Student Judicial Process and Practices Committee.

Both noted, however, that similar misconduct and instances of alcohol abuse are common for many students at the University.

the community's, and possibilly his, resentment of Duke,

There is also a "revenge of the nerds" angle to the story.

I don't think this angle concretely applies to the DA, though there's certainly no love lost between him and Duke.

some of the games I see people like inmyhumbleopinion play with facts is seriously scary when you think about the fact that these boys are looking a 15+ yrs to life in prison.

I know, no one knows.

John Mann, I don't think that people discussing this case, here, has any effect on the a fair trial, and given our Constitution, I don't think it's going to change soon.

does this mean that the reason these defense attorneys support Nifong is not how good he is but how badly he does his job?

Please stop falsely regurgitating facts.

Recall that Nifong was a social worker before he went to law school. He was also apparently very lenient on poor defendants. In 2002, Nifong was doing traffic cases because of prostate cancer. It was this time that the av was able to plead down that joy ride/running down police charge to three weekends in jail. 27 years in the DA's office prosecuting these run-of-the-mill defendants is probably very boring. [snip] Add up Nifong's sense of social justice, his toil in apparent anonymity and boredom, the pressure of an election, the unfamiliar limelight and the community's, and possibilly his, resentment of Duke, his prosecutorial behavior can be understood.

It means that defense attorneys based in Durham sucked up to him after the election because it serves their professional self-interest to be on good terms with him. Note that defense lawyers based in Raleigh did not join in the fawning.

The "suspicious" email sent by one of the alleged rapists did not add up either. Folks do not send emails to friends joking nervously about torturing and killing a stripper unless something very upsetting did indeed take place. As the story unfolds, I predict we will find out that the stripper made a blackmail threat in the bathroom - something like - "you give me a lot of money or I will say you raped me".

Does it look like a publicity stunt to make a lot of money in a civil suit and book deal? Yes.

This is exactly what the University deserves for allowing feminists to run the campus in the first place.... Organized feminism is about women and trial lawyers using sex to make money from a pedestal of feigned Victorian purity.

Our stripper is a student at a North Carolina Central University. Colleges are famous for mandatory hyper-feminist coursework featuring lawyers and feminist activists that teach women how to use sex to take advantage of men and any institution that involves men.

My message to men and real women on college campuses everywhere: Stay away from feminists and strippers. The last thing you want to date is a girl who studies feminism. Be sure she believes in equal rights for men to be in the family. Make certain she rejects feminism before even asking her out on a date. Get to know her previous boyfriend to find out why they broke up. If she says he is a jerk but he isn't, you probably have a feminist on your hands.

You must be a truly disgusting human being to ascribe nafarious intentions to even this.

We really need to know what the AV was saying and to whom. Yesterday there was the story that the AV said that both dancers were crying, but there seems to be no evidence, photos or what Roberts said or what Bissey observed, that either woman was crying while they were at Buchanan. This would suggest, like the "20 rapists" yet another false report of fact by the AV in the morning of the 14th.

So they sucked up to him before he won. Your point is?

It means that defense attorneys based in Durham sucked up to him after the election because it serves their professional self-interest to be on good terms with him. Note that defense lawyers based in Raleigh did not join in the fawning.

her stripper license was revoked 3 times

This would suggest "yet another false report of fact"??? This is another example of you, in absence of evidence, suggesting the accuser falsely reported something.

I think everyone here including TL is used to usual and low quality of Orinoco to insult and attack people in that way.

I've observed that bob will sometimes purposely mischaracterize and misrepresent things to further his arguments, sometimes after being corrected. He needs to keep arguing with someone. He will even argue with himself. I admire your tireless efforts to keep correcting the facts, but I personally wouldn't do it.

Probably more damning - even my seventh grad English grammar teacher would have failed the writer of the quoted paragraph for being too obtuse and vague. The construction is terrible and the writer should be ashamed of themselves.

Probably more damning - even my seventh grad English grammar teacher would have failed the writer of the quoted paragraph for being too obtuse and vague. The construction is terrible and the writer should be ashamed of themselves.

I remember having read about the AV's license being revoked 3 times very early on in the investigation on either The Herald Sun or AP. I will try to find the source later.

According to the report, the Duke police also went to the house later that same night and no one was there. I hadn't read that before. I also didn't realize that the team was notified immediately by the administration. I can't understand when and if they cleaned the house, why did they keep those fingernails? All of her stuff except that shoe were still at the house. Where did that shoe go?

Their report said the accuser initially told Durham police that "she was raped and sexually assaulted by approximately 20 white members of a Duke team." The source of that information is unclear, and efforts Monday to reach Durham police officials were unsuccessful.

Pictures? No pictures show crying.

Pictures? No pictures show crying.

Bob is claiming he saw a story about both dancers crying on this site. Is this a figment of his imagination, or is there such a story? I didn't see that story, but maybe I missed it.

You may also recall that chew2, without a copy of the rape examination report, kept telling everyone here that it demonstrably proved a rape occurred.

I'm thinking the indictments were premature. Nifong should have taken more time. Assuming that the medical evidence is persuasive as to a rape having occurred (a big but necessary assumption_, the key issue is identification of the assailants. If the alleged victim was impaired due to alcohol or a date rape drug her ID will need some corroboration.

It does lend a lot of support to the claim that some sort of assault occurred that night, almost certainly at that house, and helps to explain Nifong's public statement that he believed a sexual assault occurred that night.

Kerry Sutton campaigned for him. She had a sign on her lawn, was wearing a Nifong T-shirt and was greeting voters on their way to the polling place. Butch Williams watched the election results with Nifong and gave him a hug when he was declared the winner.

So they sucked up to him before he won. Your point is?

I think even if the report is accurate it won't be hard to justify her initial confusion of communication with the police because of her being intoxicated and shock in the result of a brutal rape and beating. Plus nothing is far from the facts.

The administration could have unwittingly and with all the right intentions tainted the investigation by tipping off the players.

You misstated a fact. The papers reported at least three of the defense attorneys for lacrosse players contributed to his campaign fund. Williams supported him before the election.

To his credit, the Coach did have a reputation of trying to corral his players (without the support of his AD). The administration could have unwittingly and with all the right intentions tainted the investigation by tipping off the players.

*Your* point is?

If no pictures showed crying and no one else saw crying, including the neighbor and Roberts, this seems to indicate that there was no crying.

When the AV is at the hospital she is crying and says that both she and Roberts were crying.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but the passage is entirely in the passive voice. In every writing class I've ever taken they stressed writing in the active voice. But in legal writing they always tell you to present unfavorable facts in the passive voice. I wonder if it was intentional here.

For instance, "she was raped and sexually assaulted by approximately 20 white members of a Duke team" is softer than saying "approximately 20 white members of a Duke team raped and sexually assaulted her"

I'd appreciate it if you post the source if you find it. That's a piece of info I hadn't heard before. I did do a brief search of the Durham Municipal Code and could find no provisions licensing adult entertainers.

IMHO, So you are saying that the report attributed to the Durham police officer is heresay, and therefore must be false?

no way do I believe she said 20 men raped her in a bathroom

Oh please could you be any more sanctimonious? everyone who has followed this case knows where you stand and where Bob stands. you don't have any moral high ground. Although what would it take for you to believe that she may not have been completely truthful?

Someone's been drinking.

In 2002, Nifong was doing traffic cases because of prostate cancer. It was this time that the av was able to plead down that joy ride/running down police charge to three weekends in jail. 27 years in the DA's office prosecuting these run-of-the-mill defendants is probably very boring.

By June of 1979, he had worked his way up to Superior Court, where he amassed a record of more than three hundred felony jury trials (nearly a quarter of which involved homicides) over the next two decades. In the years since 1999, he has experienced a decrease in courtroom involvement and a corresponding increase in administrative responsibilities and policy development.

The insinuation that I deliberately withheld relevant info is specious.

Yet had it been cleaned, the police would not have found the AV's belongings--the makeup bag, cellphone and $160 scattered on the bathroom floor.

The Duke University police report is here.

nevermind, I'm stupid.

Teresa, what if there's no "good" evidence of rape? They'd all still be suspects in a way...of course, this conversation gets back to the unending "lasting taint" conversation of a few days ago...

It does not attribute the statement to the AV - it attributes the statement to the Duke PD.

Wow. That's a hell of an initial impression.