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Remaining charges in Duke lacrosse rape case to be dropped

Posted by: Sister Toldjah on April 11, 2007 at 3:06 pm

**Bumping to the top**

Huge news from ABC:

April 10, 2007 — The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case.

[...]

Special prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office took over the case after Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong recused himself in January, citing charges of unethical conduct filed against him by the North Carolina Bar. Since then, Jim Coman and Mary Winstead have examined the case from scratch, interviewing key witnesses and working through reams of evidence.

The reasons that will be cited for the dismissal are not yet known, though the case has been riddled with criticism and colored by controversy since its early months. Defense attorneys released documents showing the accuser changed key details of her story in the weeks and months after the alleged assault.

Legal analysts and forensic experts have criticized what they call a critically flawed photo identification lineup — a lineup that led to the identification and indictment of Evans, Finnerty, Seligmann. No DNA evidence was found matching any lacrosse players with samples from the rape kit, while DNA from unidentified men was found on the accuser’s body and clothing.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General confirmed to ABC News that his office had completed its investigation into the Duke lacrosse case. A press conference on the outcome of their inquiry is widely expected sometime this week, though members of that office have not yet revealed a date and time.

La Shawn Barber:

I hope Crystal Gail Mangum, the now-named stripper who lied/cried rape, pays for what she’s done. And gets some help.

Yep, and I’m hoping that the three accused players will sue the state and/or Mike Nifong for the hardships they’ve suffered since being falsely accused and made out to be guilty by Nifong himself in the early days of the ‘investigation.’ Because it’s my feeling that in this case, justice has not been served – for the real victims here: the three lacrosse players, whose names were dragged through the mud thanks to a lying stripper and a deceptive attorney who wanted to get re-elected even if it meant ruining three young lives in the process.

And speaking of Nifong, KC Johnson brings us up to speed on his ethics problems, those who naively stood by him, and some commentary from the family of one of the accused.

More: According to the gents at Powerline, the three accused have only raised money to pay for about 1/3rd of their $3 million in legal fees. If you’d like to help out, click here to find out how you can.

Update: Multiple news outlets are reporting that the NC Attorney General has announced he will hold a presser at 2:30 today.

PM Update I: The presser is ongoing now. Roy Cooper (the NC AG) says the state is dropping charges, and is condemning Nifong, saying there is no proof that a crime was committed. “Case shows consequences of enormous overreach by a prosecutor” …

Next week a ‘fact summary’ sheet will be listed detailing the contradictions in the accuser’s story and Nifong’s statements, essentially explaining in detail why the charges were dropped.

It’s hard for me to hear him right now on the MSNBC feed, but I think Cooper has proposed a new law that would allow an attorney to be removed from a case if it’s determined he/she have overstepped their bounds.

Cooper says that some of the attorneys who have worked on the case think that Mangum may actually really believe her various stories about what she alleges happened the night of the alleged ‘attack.’

Stand by from video of the presser from Hot Air.

—-

Here’s the official statement issued by the NC AG.

Here’s a profile of the accuser, Crystal Mangum, and more on her via The Smoking Gun.

PM Update II: KC Johnson has posted the statements of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty.

(Originally posted at 8:21 a.m.)

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  • The World According To Carl trackbacked with Duke Lacrosse Players: North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper Proclaims Them Innocent And Drops ALL Charges
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  • The Duke Lacrosse Case: An Idelogical Critique

    • 43 Responses to “Remaining charges in Duke lacrosse rape case to be dropped”

    Comments

    1. sanity says:
      April 12, 2007 at 4:54 pm

      Patty states:

      Race is not really the issue here, but it’s here once again. The real issue is that a woman was violated. We’ll agree to disagree. It was a little more than just “circumstantial evidence.”

      Your right Patty, there was little more than “circumstantial evidence” – there was nothing of these boys DNA on her at all.

      You say race is not really the issue, then tell that to the race baiters Sharpton and Jackson.

      Tell me this, woudl the uproar have been this much, would the media circus been this great, would Nifong done the same things, if it was a white girl claiming this against a group of black boys?

      You say it has nothing to do with race, but how this was covered; how this grandstanded through the media; how this was escalated; speculated on; and essentially guilty until proven innocent….was all about race and class.

      Even today, that is what people are saying:

      “It’s interesting that it comes at the time of the Duke rape case. The boys are off because the girl lied and she didn’t- wasn’t raped. However, it’s interesting to me that a little white boy’s club was in effect in the Duke University situation too. You have a bunch of white boys sitting around with black girls, coming in and stripping. Alright, they didn’t rape them, but-”
      - Behar from the View

      If it isn’t about race, then why the emphasis on white boy and black girl?

      Alright, they didn’t rape them, but-”

      I was waiting for the …but they are still guilty..

      See Behar can’t help make statements about race:

      BEHAR: Old white guys sitting around making comments about women.

      When talking about Imus also. Link

      Hi my name is Behar and I am a hypocrite:
      BEHAR: It doesn’t matter. It’s still a stripper. I don’t care about color. [crosstalk] Those are white boys. That’s a white boys club.

      So even though they have been proven innocent, even their idiot guest can;t help but feel, just because they were falsely accused, they were probably bad boys and done stuff like this before:

      Ah, but this is rich irony:

      BEHAR: You know what’s great about this show? You can hold two thoughts that are antithetical at the same time.

      McGOWAN: I actually hold both of those thoughts. It’s one or the other. I’ve argued with myself about it.

      They can hold 2 thoughts and argue with themselves.

      *rolls eyes*

      This is what American Culture has been reduced to.

    2. Bruce says:
      April 12, 2007 at 9:26 pm

      Message to young men out there….Don’t hire strippers for your private parties…..

    3. Great White Rat says:
      April 13, 2007 at 12:28 am

      BEHAR: You know what’s great about this show? You can hold two thoughts that are antithetical at the same time.

      Which apparently is much easier than having a brain and thinking the issue through. At least in her case.

      You’ve got it right, sanity…American culture is being reduced to the celebration of mindlessness (exhibit A: the View) and preprogrammed reaction to certain stimuli (as in the Imus case).

      As for Patty, she’s completely lost it, I’m afraid. If this woman was ‘violated’, why didn’t she file charges against the people whose DNA was found in her? It’s not like there would be any shortage of candidates.

      No, the total lack of evidence and the constantly shifting stories lead me to believe she saw this as a quick payday: file charges, get the usual racial scam artists out to garner some publicity, and eventually get the accused to offer to buy her off just to make the whole thing go away. What she didn’t count on was (1) the case was so flimsy it didn’t stand up under even the most casual scrutiny, and (2) the defendants weren’t intimidated by the usual collection of liberal politicians, Marxist academics, and race-hustling charlatans.

    4. KYJurisDoctor says:
      April 13, 2007 at 1:12 pm

      There’s a difference between the two cases, so go here and find out.

    5. forest hunter says:
      April 14, 2007 at 12:01 am

      NC: Hope the Patty wagon has GPS.

    6. Sum Yung Gai says:
      April 19, 2007 at 12:12 pm

      Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson may have been race-baiting, but the mainstream media wasn’t. They were *feminist*-bating, which is actually what Patty was doing, too (”Race is not really the issue here, but it’s here once again. The real issue is that a woman was violated. We’ll agree to disagree. It was a little more than just “circumstantial evidence.”).

      I remember a false rape accusation by a white woman against a white man, both young university students, at my own alma mater. It was my first year there. She prints a story in the school newspaper talking about how he “date raped” her. The young man was immediately kicked out of the university, the police were hounding him and his family, the local news made a HUGE deal out of it, but that’s not all. Women’s groups pasted a “WANTED:” flyer, with his picture on it, on virtually every telephone pole, every billboard, in at least a five-mile radius from the university.

      Well, three weeks later, the white woman prints a retraction. Turns out that their entire meeting consisted of a 90-second “hi, how do you do, nice to meet you” encounter at a well-attended evening social function at the university. THAT’S IT. So, what were her reasons for printing the lie three weeks prior? I quote her: “to focus attention to the reality of date rape.”

      Meanwhile, this poor dude’s life was ruined. The university only *grudingly* re-admitted him, the local news media got suddenly silent (as did the women’s groups), and furthermore, the women’s groups didn’t even bother to take down their “WANTED:” flyers that they’d posted all around the city. I don’t know if the young man ever sued her or the university, as I transferred elsewhere after that.

      WHERE WERE YOU THEN, GLORIA STEINEM? ANITA HILL? HILLARY CLINTON? ELIZABETH DOLE? WHERE ARE YOU NOW FOR THESE DUKE UNIVERSITY LACROSSE PLAYERS?

      These days, I don’t date Americans. I tend to date foreigners; they don’t seem to be so hostile to men.

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