Herald-Sun: Date-rape drug test negative in lacrosse case (Duke)

[pnwmom]

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-765602.html

Attorney: Date-rape drug test negative in lacrosse case


BY WILLIAM F. WEST : The Herald-Sun
[e-mail]
Aug 30, 2006 : 10:12 pm ET

DURHAM -- A date-rape drug test reportedly involving a hair sample of the alleged Duke lacrosse victim has turned up negative, one of the defense attorneys said Wednesday.

According to Kirk Osborn, he and fellow defense lawyers learned the result from Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong at a meeting last week with Judge Osmond Smith about the case, in which three lacrosse players are under indictment on charges of sexually assaulting an exotic dancer at an off-campus party in March.

Attempts to obtain comment from Nifong's office were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Osborn told The Herald-Sun he wasn't surprised at the outcome of the test.

"We knew that was going to happen," he said. "It certainly eliminates whatever Mr. Nifong hinted to Newsweek magazine that they slipped her a date-rape drug."

SNIP


And, from the Houston Chronicle, more news. Nifong's attempt at witness intimidation has failed. The cabbie/alibi witness has been found not guilty in his trial for supposedly helping a shoplifter. (If he had been found guilty, there was a possibility that his testimony could have been disallowed.)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4150514.html

"DURHAM, N.C. — A cab driver who has supported an alibi offered by one of the three Duke lacrosse players charged with rape was acquitted Tuesday of a three-year-old shoplifting charge.

"Moezeldin Elmostafa was arrested in May after he surfaced as a potential witness for Reade Seligmann, one of the players charged with raping a woman at an off-campus party in March.

"Prosecutors said the warrant for Elmostafa's arrest was discovered in a routine background check of witnesses in the lacrosse case. Defense lawyers in the lacrosse case have said Elmostafa was charged because he is a favorable witness for Seligmann.

"The 2003 warrant accused Elmostafa of stealing five purses worth about $250 from a Durham department store. He denied the charge, and has said he helped store security locate a woman after he picked her up from the store and drove her home. The woman later pleaded guilty to larceny."

[greyl]

1. The evidence keeps coming in that

Nifong is a ding-dong.

[jety2k]

2. Why?

Why is Nifong so desperate to bury these guys?

[pnwmom]

4. Welcome to DU, jety2k! I think the answer

is that he's desperate to save his reputation -- and possibly his job, since he's facing an election in November. If enough people vote for his opponent -- a man who says he won't actually accept the position if he wins it -- then the Governor will have to appoint his replacement.

Back in March, he was grandstanding about this case in order to get media attention during his primary run for reelection to his D.A. position. It worked -- he came from behind to beat out his two opponents. And he managed to get more votes from African American voters than his more well-known African American opponent.

[patricia92243]

5. Save his reputation? He is making himself look like a fool. n/t

[951-Riverside]

3. ...Tawana Brawley (Maryam Muhammad) all over again n/t

[robcon]

6. I don't think Nifong can abandon the case until after November.

I think he'll abandon the case (or let a judge dismiss it for lack of evidence that a crime was committed) after he's re-elected in November. He's only facing a write-in candidate, and his re-election is assured unless he REALLY screws up in the meantime.

[oblivious]

7. looooooooong New York Times article

Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details but No Answers
August 25, 2006

...By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.

Crucial to that portrait of the case are Sergeant Gottlieb’s 33 pages of typed notes and 3 pages of handwritten notes, which have not previously been revealed. His file was delivered to the defense on July 17, making it the last of three batches of investigators’ notes, medical reports, statements and other evidence shared with the defense under North Carolina’s pretrial discovery rules.

In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense: ....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/us/25duke.html?_r=3&ref=sports&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[pnwmom]

8. SLATE's response to deceptive NYT article

http://www.slate.com/id/2148546

". . . Like the headline, the piece cultivates a meretricious appearance of balance. But its flaws are so glaring that it was shredded by bloggers within hours after it hit my doorstep. They were led by a Durham group called Liestoppers and by KC Johnson, an obscure but brilliant New York City history professor of centrist political views. Johnson alone has produced more insightful (if sometimes one-sided) analysis and commentary on the Duke case—about 60,000 words—than all the nation's newspapers combined.

The Wilson-Glater piece highlights every superficially incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence, and reports hotly disputed statements by not-very-credible police officers and the mentally unstable accuser as if they were established facts. With comical credulity, it features as its centerpiece a leaked, transparently contrived, 33-page police sergeant's memo that seeks to paper over some of the most obvious holes in the prosecution's evidence.

This memo was concocted from memory, nearly four months after the underlying witness interviews, by Durham police Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the lead investigator. Gottlieb says he took no contemporaneous notes, an inexplicable and indefensible police practice. Gottlieb had drawn fire before the alleged Duke rape—perhaps unbeknownst to the Times—as a Dukie-basher who reveled in throwing kids into jail for petty drinking infractions, noise violations, and the like, sometimes with violent criminals as cellmates.

Gottlieb's memo is contradicted on critical points by the contemporaneous notes of other police officers, as well as by hospital records seeming to show that the accuser did not have the injuries Gottlieb claims to have observed. The Times blandly mentions these contradictions while avoiding the obvious inference that the Gottlieb memo is thus unworthy of belief. . . . "

[mzteris]

10. I don't think using defense atty's

"news releases" to make a judgement about this is wise. Of course they're only going to "leak" that which is "favorable" to their client.

People are getting a one-sided account. There's a much bigger picture here.

[Triana]

9. I read elsewhere recently that she had taken a drug herself...

...painkiller or some such and then had some beer and that this is why she seemed drunk.