"If they're innocent, they will not go to jail," she said. But, she [Ms. Roberts, the second dancer] added, "If the truth is on their side, why are they supporting it with so many lies?"

"I was not in the bathroom when it happened, so I can't say a rape occurred _ and I never will,"

since the defense lawyers seem to concede the racial slurs,

The "lies" she refers to are the claims that she (initially) didn't think the other girl was raped, and that she (Ms. Roberts) may be changing her story due to preferential treatment by the DA.

that she (Ms. Roberts) may be changing her story due to preferential treatment by the DA.

But Roberts acknowledges she doesn't know if the accuser was raped.

Another defense attorney, Kerry Sutton, said that numerous e-mails written in the hours after the woman said she was attacked support the players' claims that nothing happened that night.

Gawker reports this dancer's (ahem) "seeking representation" from public relations firms. If she wanted to preserve her credibility, she should have done that before piping up.

Roberts, 31, was arrested on March 22 eight days after the party on a probation violation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company in Durham where she was a payroll specialist, according to documents obtained by the AP. On Monday, the same day a grand jury indicted lacrosse players Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, a judge agreed to a change so that Roberts would no longer have to pay a 15 percent fee to a bonding agent. District Attorney Mike Nifong signed a document saying he would not oppose the change.

Also Thursday, 5W Public Relations, a New York firm that specializes in "crisis communication," distributed an e-mail signed "The 2nd Dancer," and Roberts confirmed she sent it after learning the AP knew her identity. "I've found myself in the center of one of the biggest stories in the country," she wrote. "I'm worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage."

Roberts, like the accuser a divorced single mother who is black, took umbrage at the notion that she should not try to make something out of her experience. She's worried that once her name and criminal record are public, no one will want to hire her. "Why shouldn't I profit from it?" she asked. "I didn't ask to be in this position ... I would like to feed my daughter."

Put a fork in her, she's done.

This is the 2nd dancer at Duke who reached out to 5W Public Relations.

You sure you don't want to skin her first.

Peaches - No one needs to; she skinned herself.

It seems the second dancer is reaching out to pr firms like 5W Public Relations to "spin this to her advantage."

"that she (Ms. Roberts) may be changing her story due to preferential treatment by the." DA

Well there can be no doubt of this - she certainly is.

Usually someone in her case gets chewed up and spit out while the MSM cash register goes ding ding ding.

SUPA THey forgot to tell you. Links to fox news won't work here.

Posted by Jlvngstn April 21, 2006 01:21 PM sounds like both sides have some unsavory backgrounds. I wish Rodney King were here to tell them all to just get along......

her motive is a joke.

"Why shouldn't I profit from it?" she asked. "I didn't ask to be in this position ... I would like to feed my daughter."

Automatically jumping to her defense just because she's a black woman doesn't make you compassionate or progressive.

Luckily, I withhold my specualtions or announce when I am speculating

One thing she must think they are lying about is the claim that the two strippers locked themselves in the bathroom and the players were sliding bills under the door trying to get them to come out.

One thing she must think they are lying about is

"I was not in the bathroom when it happened, so I can't say a rape occurred _ and I never will,"

"We believe ... her story has been motivated by her own self-interest," said attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the uncharged players. "I think that a jury will ultimately have to decide the question of her credibility."

I am guessing she is implying that the two were never in the bathroom together.

(1) 610 Buchanan is a small house. I wouldn't say it is bigger than 1400 square feet. Where could she be and what was she doing in the house but not hearing or noticing anything wrong when the alleged rape and struggle took place?

(2) Kim said in her interview that she looked at Finnerty right into his eyes and remembered him as "the little skinny one." Just curious what she meant by that. Finnerty looks like a giant to me, even though his face appears smaller than Seligmann's in the mugshot.

I think Nifong engineered this news-making in response to the report on Seligmann's alibi. Now Kim could testify that Finnerty was there. It would be interesting to see what will happen if Finnerty could come up with an alibi.

Finnerty looks like a giant

Come on. This is not admirable. Automatically jumping to her defense just because she's a black woman doesn't make you compassionate or progressive.

I got the total opposite impression from the photos. I didn't know they made lacrosse players that small. Maybe Finnerty has a Napoleon complex, judging by his prior violent incident in DC.

Peaches, there have been several cases over the past year of strippers with black athletes in a similar situation, do you recall any coverage of those cases?

That said, why weren't the MSM all over those?

just feel like the race factor is playing a larger role here than it should

Race has nothing to do with the national attention this is receiving. It's the number of guys involved in the story-nearly the whole team was there.

But she's a stripper. Plus, she's black.

She doesn't even hide the money motive.

Come on. This is not admirable. Automatically jumping to her defense just because she's a black woman doesn't make you compassionate or progressive.

Telling a lie to hide the fact that you are an escort is understandable, and wouldn't necessarily undercut her credibility. Just like the lacrosse team captain telling a lie to the escort agency to hide his identity may also have been understandable.

I think what grabbed the media attention was the "Blue Wall" angle

She was beautiful, she was incredibly articulate, and she seemed well-trained for the task.

She impressed me more than any of the other players in this drama, including Nifong and all the lawyers.

hmmmm, last time i checked, and i'm sure the real and tv lawyers will correct me, speculation isn't admissable in court. which is what most of ms. roberts' comments, vis a vie the alledged rape, are. she admittedly saw nothing, and wasn't in the bathroom, when the alleged acts allegedly occured.

how any of this is helpful to the prosecution is a mystery to me.

Basic principle: (1) this is an adversary system of justice.

The students who had nothing to do with this yet do not come forward are violating that dancer's right to a fair trial,

i'll put money that ms. roberts never sees a witness chair, she'd be low hanging fruit for the defense, on cross.

When I think of principles, I think of the principles of the people who created the system of laws, not the opportunists whose main interest is to work them.

very nice, but useless, especially since her timeline has already been contradicted by the cabbie. a cabbie who has contemporaneous, written records to support his story.

The students who had nothing to do with this yet do not come forward are violating that dancer's right to a fair trial,

I don't care about all the lectures you've heard, pounded into everyone's head starting in kindergarden and in the movies and all that, the unifying theme of which is "the policeman is your friend". Get it straight: He isn't.

So, getting back to the Duke case, these young men were smart enough to (a) get into Duke and (b) know that cooperating with a county prosecutor up for re-election and his cops had nothing good to offer those young men. In other words, they knew enough to know the cops were their adversaries and there's no benefit in educating your adversary.

But that's not the time matters. The one that matters is the first pick up, and that has the player's phone log, Sprint Billing Record, ATM log, ATM video, and Duke dorm access records to back it up. The cabi's log is just icing on the cake.

How condescending. The young Indian woman is the best friend of Spiegelmann's girlfreind.

Unless I'm very confused, PB, it's the Duke students that are on trial.

Prosecutors and police officers can be the very opportunists you are describing. That was the point of scribe's post. You are annoyingly incredulous of this fact.

Unless I'm very confused, PB, it's the Duke students that are on trial.

Prosecutors and police officers can be the very opportunists you are describing. That was the point of scribe's post. You are annoyingly incredulous of this fact.

Her false allegation of rape is the what is responsible for all those things happening. Without it the coach is still coaching, McFayden is still at school (and really, for an elite University to suspend a kid over something that was obviously a Bret Easton Ellis spoof is almost beyond belief), and Duke is readying itself for the playoffs.

I was waiting for Collin's gay friend to show up to counteract the rest of if.

The prosecutors I know don't have to go begging for work. They have plenty of cases to be prosecuted without having to railroad innocent citizens to fill their dockets. The cops also have no shortage of prosecutable clientele without reaching into the bowels of society to arrest innocent people.

The idea that we should all have a general policy of being paranoid of police, and that this paranoia trumps any duty we have to serve as faithful witnesses when a crime has been reported I regard as "gutter ethics." That's all.

You have a point except for the fact that this is a very high profile case.

So while they may have been racial comments, there is no indication that there was any racist sentiment behind them.

cops and prosecutors are begging for easy convictions to improve their job performance evaluations.I would think convicting guily people is easier than comvicting innocent people, but what do I know?

I would think it is the low profile cases where you would try to get away with shoving through a few wrongful convictions to pad your numbers. In a case like this, there's too much scrutiny.

They did talk to the police. This is one of the most common misconceptions out there. In the early hours they even offered to take polygrahps, which was rebuffed by the DA. They so called "wall of silence" only came about when the DA refused to believe their story and went on a national press tour calling the team a bunch of racist, violent, rapists.

Who would the police be out to get in this specific case? A black stripper or some respected white preppy college kids? ... In this case, the question (was) was there even a crime committed. Why would the police be out to get the college kids? Why would the DA believe the word of a "drunk black stripper" over that of some respected upper class white college boys who claimed that no crime had been committed?

To suggest that he could not benefit from this politically is ludicrous.

They so called "wall of silence" only came about when the DA refused to believe their story and went on a national press tour calling the team a bunch of racist, violent, rapists.

Don't you think that maybe the answer to all your questions depends on who elects the DA and who pays the salary of the police?

Nope. If he decided not to prosecute this case never would have made it to the press.

It made the press because of the decision to investigate further than the search warrant and interviewing the three captain

My argument has only been that the accuser has a right to a fair trial, and that it is a witnesses duty to come forward in defense of that.

1st: Wall of silence by team members other than the 3. 2nd: DA goes public

You missed my point earlier. The complaining witness (I assume that's what you mean when you say accuser) and/or alleged victim(s) are not guaranteed anything. If this case comes to trial, it is the defendants who are guaranteed a fair trial.

The turning point seemed to come when all of the defense attorneys were going on TV claiming no sex whatsoever occured and that the DNA was going to exonerate them. If a rape really occured, they nevether would have taken such a position.

What's saddest is the amount of damage this case will do to real rape victims.

The dna tests had the potential to exonerate the accused, but didn't. Had the dna of other individuals been found, the two accused people might well have been off the hook. The testing did not solve the riddle of how this woman came to suffer vaginal and anal injuries without dna being left. Maybe a trial won't solve that mystery either.

The dna tests had the potential to exonerate the accused, but didn't. Had the dna of other individuals been found, the two accused people might well have been off the hook. The testing did not solve the riddle of how this woman came to suffer vaginal and anal injuries without dna being left. Maybe a trial won't solve that mystery either.

If this case is prosecuted as a criminal case, however, her rights are given under Article I, Section 37, and do not include the right to a trial where her accusations are made in open court.

it is not the responsibility of the defense to indetify who left the trace evidence behind, it's up to the prosecution to explain how these guys could have allegedly assaulted the dancer without leaving any trace DNA behind.

If, however, the defense can show that there was no DNA evidence linking these students to the dancer, and if there was DNA trace evidence recovered from the dancer, then the prosecution has an uphill fight. There was, apparently, something collected from the alleged victim which didn't match DNA tests performed by the defense attornies, or the statement that there was no match makes no sense. DNA trace evidence is not, after all, limited to semen--almost any cellular material (pubic hair, skin, blood, etc) left behind on the alleged victim would be sufficient for testing. It is extremely difficult to keep this from happening, even if the rapist uses condoms.

There would have been no black outrage to "force" him to prosecute. Plus, only 44% of Durham is black and I'm guessing even less are registered voters.