I have also found it a little peculiar that for a half-hour one guy was in front, one guy was in back, and Mister 90% only got scratched for all his criminality.

There are some men in their 50s that would be happy with five times!

I'm just not convinced that verbal threats against the AV would be adequate enough to convince Seligmann ahead of time that it was worth betting his own d*ck on it.

ammm, so drunk that he wouldn't care to protect his johnson from getting bitten off?! You must not have one...

Don't worry mine is safe I don't use it in rapes.

She already stated the reason. She was left breathless because he was strangling her. She scretched for her life.

uh oh. Male genetic material found in vaginal swab. Not good for accuser.

A little probability: if an individual is chosen randomly from a group of 46, and an individual is again chosen randomly from the same group of 46, the chance of the same individual being selected both times is: 1/46 X 1/46, or 1/2116.

Nothing in report about pubic hair.

Male "known to PD". name on report.

If Nifong indicted the three knowing that there was nonmatching male genetic material, then there's a big problem here.

There is nothing tying RS or CF to this false accuser other than her id.

Any of those combinations has a 1/46X46 chance of being selected, or 1 out of 2116.

We know now that the SANE report is useless. There is no case against RS or CF.

Her IDs will become even more probablematic if the Seligman ID doesn't hang together become of the time-line alibi. She was 100% on him.

If the defense has photos or testimony from credible witnesses that indicate that 90% guy did NOT have a mustache, then the ID isn't 90% - it's zero.

Teresa, did you hear in the beginning that the players "handed" (exact quote?) the nails to the cops?

Teresa, have you tried out any of these positions?

With the rigged identification process he was shooting fish in a barrel and it looks like she still missed the barrel. Not good.

No really, Teresa, I'm asking you: What do we have for a case? I want your respected opinion here.

Nifong would be in a position to know all of the above. If so much about her story is really falling apart, proceeding with an indictment of a third person would really smack of some kind of prosecutorial malfeasance.

Posted by SharonInJax May 12, 2006 11:21 AM

By the way, it bothers me that the search warrant affidavit misstates facts that the Durham police should have known by then: the AV did NOT report a rape, much less the details thereof, in the 911 call from the Kroger, as stated in the affidavit. According to the Durham City Manager, she did not give details until a day or so later. I suppose it is a small matter, but as I said, it bothers me.

If she continued to refuse to give a statement for another day you've got problems.

Pat posted:

For example, during the line-up, the AV stated the Finnerty used his penis to have vaginal and anal sex with her. It would seem that the next question that the investigator should have asked was, "did he wear a condom?"

Bob posted:

Police have people on their staffs especially trained to take rape assault statements.

PB, if the 100% identity leads to a false indictment, that's very problematic, especially for the indictee. She didn't say, "This guy looks like Seligmann." She said she was 100% sure that this guy was the one who forced her to give him oral sex. With the rigged identification process he was shooting fish in a barrel and it looks like she still missed the barrel. Not good.

Actually, I can't imagine guys cleaning anything up anywhere but play along here.

Cheshire said the testing did find some genetic material from several people on a plastic fingernail found in a bathroom trash can of the house where the team held the March 13 party. He said some of that material had the "same characteristics" -- a link short of a conclusive match -- to some of the players, but not the two who have been charged with rape, kidnapping and sexual assault.

Modelers with expert witness credentials willing support the defense attorneys position on how the players dna got on the accuser's fingernail would be wise to raise their rates tonight and send out their resumes.

The Duke-oisee will pay whatever is necessary for a good storyteller at this juncture.

I'm going to bed now. Somebody wake me if anything new happens.

I'm going to bed now. Somebody wake me if anything new happens.

The Duke-oisee will pay whatever is necessary for a good storyteller at this juncture.

THAT is an unethical statement.

Sure thing Bob. If you hear a knock on your door, it's me. :)

The "news" here is that more than one player's DNA has apparently been inconclusively linked to the accuser's fingernail. Obviously that is something the defense has an interest in underplaying.

For those of you who do not think it is possible to have inflamation, rawness and even bleeding from sex more than a day after sex, have not had.....well.....enough sex in your life.

I agree that once you diagram the sentence, she's not saying Seligmann assaulted her, just that he looks like the guy who did. In fact, she's 100% sure he looks like him. If that was enough to get Seligmann indicted, why didn't they also indict the other one that looks like his twin, Tony or whatever his name is?

I don't think anybody, Nifong included, imagines that the photo ID by itself could result in a conviction. It would have to be supplemented by either witness statements, forensics, or guilty knowledge statements by the accused to have any real purchase.

I'm guessing that none of the defendants or team captains will testify. There's something they are hiding and they can't afford to testify.

I find the most useful way to deal with the Flying Pig Squadron is to ignore them.

TL Personal Insult Please Delete

If the cap fits, wear it. Or did I miss an announcement that TL had appointed chew2 to police decorum here

I'll bet ya ten bucks that if it goes to trial the defense will put them on the stand and they'll say what they've said before: the AV wasn't raped in that house.

Cymro, What you've missed is two days of Orinoco tattling to Talk Left and Talk Left doing the right thing - ignoring him. chew2 was being facetious, Orinoco is not.

... it makes me sad the way it was leaked and the way it was reported by many people that there was a match in the second DNA test to one of the Duke lacrosse players. Those types of reports that go out all over this nation create a false impression about this particular case and makes it very difficult for these young man to receive a fair trial.

You've got it ass-backwards. If the fingernail DNA inconclusively "matches" more than one player, instead of pinpointing "Mr. X", Lora's arithmetic is out the window. Which is GOOD for the defense.

Question, could the semen belong to one of the party attendees who was not a team player?

People who've been in the military in the last five or ten years?

To say she scratched X may in fact be true, but it doesn't prove that she scratched him during a struggle while she was being raped.

Is it possible to ban someone for spurriously posting innacuracies and boorish innuendos?

Question, could the semen belong to one of the party attendees who was not a team player?

No. This is a non-starter since the Durham PD and Nifong know the identity of the individual, don't consider him a suspect and did not indict him. Cheshire stated that there was reason to "drag his name through the mud." Obviously, it was someone who did not attend the party, which means the AV had sex sometime prior to the party.

I know who you are, PB.

Folks, Grow up. A snide comment here and there, okay. Let's move on.

The defense will almost certainly argue that these new DNA results should not be permitted in court, because they are not a perfect match. In cases where DNA evidence is not a perfect match it is sometimes considered inadmissible as evidence.

"There is no conclusive match of DNA," attorney Joe Cheshire told CNN. He said semen obtained from the accuser did indicate that she had sex with a non-Duke student, whom he declined to identify."

imho, doesn't it seem that if the sex was very recent it would have shown up in the first test?

If Nifong gets an indictment Monday, I can't help but think that he has something else. If he doesn't get one, we'll know this case is over. If he gets an indictment with no more evidence than the media and defense lawyers say he has, he really is nuts.

perhaps lucky player X was the guy who tried to catch the AV when she stumbled and got his arm scratched

I also think at some point Nifong has an obligation to put some real cards on the table to show that he is not bluffing. If this is another Tawana Brawley case -- or is not -- then the public has the right to know one way or the other, and the sooner the better.

I could imagine a triable case being built on the accuser's ID of player x, an incomplete but compelling fingernail dna sample, and player x's denial of facts that can be demonstrated to be true to a moral certainty via other sources (guilty knowledge). Of course, Nifong may have way more than that... He's played the media as if he does.

Rape kit tests have detected semen up to fourteen days after intercourse.

I think they used both "boyfriend" and "non-Duke student" to try to head off any (blogging?) speculation about a possible "one-on-one" escort client.

Maybe the "bf" got caught up in the heat of passion, and just went for it bareback?

It will be interesting to see where the sample from that swab came from.

According to press conference it was a vaginal swab.

The good news could have been that they have a DNA profile from a vaginal swab.

Experts say that the absence of conclusive DNA evidence would not necessarily be a fatal blow to the prosecution's case. They cite a figure stating that 75 percent to 80 percent of rape prosecutions do not involve forensic evidence such as DNA.

"The truth is if you speak to crime lab directors, they will tell you that in only a relatively small number of cases is there any DNA evidence," said Peter Neufeld, co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA to free people wrongly imprisoned. "In rape cases, there is an expectation of DNA. But like many expectations, often it is misplaced."

When the defense decided that they weren't going to be answerable to him, he decided not to be answerable to the defense.

If RS's alibi holds that creates doubt about the ID of player X.

the case will still come back to the non-Duke, non-lacrosse player's semen and that will create more than enough reasonable doubt.

Maybe....but when a word as generic as boyfriend is in quotes (and not a direct quote of a specific person), it is a means of emphasizing that the word is not being used in the accepted meaning of the word. Thus, "boyfriend" calls into question the meaning of the AV's BF/GF relationship. I see no reason to use "non-Duke student", other than to show it is not a typical way of referring to an individual involved int he case.

Defense attorney Joe Chesire declined to identify the mystery man or his connection to the alleged victim, but ABC News' Law and Justice Unit has learned that the unnamed source of the DNA is the alleged victim's "boyfriend," according to her mother.

The idea that she slept with her boyfriend within 6-14 days of the incident is a complete non-issue to me. Of the many arguments aimed at falsifying the assault, some of which are pretty good, this one seems the weakest.

If any of the Duke students did what the AV said they did, I would have expected some of the semen from her previous encounter to end up on the towels in the bathroom.

I wish I knew more about the campaign before this case appeared.

I will admit my bias in this case, as both a Duke grad and the mother of a "privileged, white teenaged male athlete" who will be attending a "prestigious" university in the fall. I am well aware that that description of my son does not make it less likely that he, or someone like him demographically could have committed a rape. But neither does it, as Nifong seems to think, make it more likely.

Or do you really think the lacrosse team and their attorneys should have sat quietly by while he spun the story to his political advantage?

It may be hard for me to maintain my perspective, insofar as I could see my son attending a party like the one at that house when he goes to college next fall. And if a situation like this one arose, I could be the one trying to come up with a $400,000 bond for him, I could be the one seeing my son's face plastered all over the media as he was branded a rapist, I could be the one listening to the Wendy Murphy's of this world describe my son with disgust and disdain, convicting him on nothing more than the word of an accuser.

The Sports Illustrated article noted hazing "is firmly entrenched in an American sports culture that values tradition, team bonding, leadership hierarchies and assertiveness." Hank Nuwer, an assistant professor at Franklin College in Indiana who has authored four books about hazing, commented that the formal definition of hazing includes a wide array of behaviors. Hazing is seen as "any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers, regardless of that person's willingness to participate." Nuwer observed in the Sports Illustrated piece, "It's almost like we need different terms, like we have with manslaughter and murder. Having someone put on silly clothes is called hazing, and so is sodomy."

Thank you for being the ONLY columnist I have yet to find who states the simple truth in the Duke story:

"There will eventually be a trial of some sort, and there should be, because there was a crime committed. It was either the crime of rape or the crime of falsely accusing someone of a felony."

I truly hope that you are right, that there WILL be a trial, because there should be -- either way.

Nifong and Black filed their papers to run on the first and second day of the filing season, in what most expect to be a hard-fought race...

The idea that she slept with her boyfriend within 6-14 days of the incident is a complete non-issue to me. Of the many arguments aimed at falsifying the assault, some of which are pretty good, this one seems the weakest.

I'm thinking that the 1/2116 would apply, though. The chance of the AV picking the actual scratchee in a random guess, AND the DNA test pointing toward a single random player and getting the SAME match IS 1/2116.