Now we know the name of the taxi driver, but what is the name of Seligmann’s buddy who was in the taxi? If I were the defense lawyer, I’d have the buddy on TV corroborating the alibi.

nice job on that one, Mr Lawrence.

JH, it’s called feeding the media beast. One morsel at a time. That is what they hired Mr Bennett to do…and are doing it nearly flawlessly to date

Here’s an interesting quote from Finnerty’s attorney:

“I don’t think there is any chance in hell that there will be a guilty plea,” attorney Bill Cotter said. “I can’t tell you about (everybody), but my client’s case is either going to be dismissed by the D.A. or go to trial.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192404,00.html

Now, this is interesting for one reason: in the past, all the lawyers have stuck to the line that nothing happened, hence no reason for a plea deal. Finnerty’s attorney seems to be suggesting that a crime may have occurred, only it wasn’t his client (otherwise, why open the possibility that other players could conceivably plead guilty, if no underlying crime occurred?). Could this be a subtle hint that Finnerty’s defense will not insist that no crime occurred? Of course, if Finnerty wasn’t even at the party, he wouldn’t know if a crime indeed occurred, so this makes sense as a strategy. But I do find it interesting that a new wrinkle may be emerging: “hey, it was some other guy, not my client.”

I’ve gone back and forth shaking my head with the information and misinformation that has arisen with this case, always giving the victim the benefit of the doubt that something happened, but that she wasn’t remembering correctly. Yesterday, even after Seligman’s alibi came to light, I still believed something happened, but that a misidentification had occurred. This quote from the linked article seems to confirm that fact:
__________________________________________________
In an interview on MSNBC, Mostafa said he returned to the house later to pick up another customer. He said he remembered that person “said in a loud voice, ‘She just a stripper.’”

Asked whether the second fare was complaining about the stripper or whether it appeared something bad had happened to her, Mostafa initially said he didn’t “have any information about what was going on in the house.”

“When I look back, he look like he mad at the stripper. Or the stripper, she going to call the police and she just a stripper. ... It look to me like somebody get hurt. But what kind of harm, ... I have no idea.”
__________________________________________________

To me, that seems to confirm that something happened, although it seems unlikely that Seligmann was involved. After all, why was the unidentified party worried that the stripper was going to call the police. So, considering that something may have happened, these men are covering for someone.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=472301&BCCode=BNSPORTS&newsdate=4/20/2006

Just remember that what seems to be a bad fact out of context can be neutralized with context. For instance, perhaps this was the context: maybe one player was mad that another player called the stripper a slew of racial slurs, because such behavior is demeaning and despicable. The offending player may have justified his conduct to the first player by claiming, “She’s just a stripper”—in other words, it’s one thing to call a stripper a racial slur during a fight over money, but quite another thing to call, say, a lawyer or professor or investment banker a racial slur. That is to say, the player may have been asserting that it’s ok to demean a stripper with names—they don’t count as people deserving kind treatment. Not exactly something to be proud of if so, but it’s far better than a rape on the scale of evils. It’s always good to suspend judgment until all the facts are known, and not to make a determination hinge on a single, out-of-context fact.

This out-of-context-fact might only be interpreted as just the fear of the stripper calling the police (about what? the racial slur? Or about something more?), but when added to the medical report that states injuries consistent with a rape (lacerations maybe, injured cervix, which would hurt like hell?), the out-of-context comment lends some credence to the probability that something more than racial slurs happened in that house.

Arguments can be made for either side; there’s evidence that refutes some parts of both stories. I’m skeptical about the members’ story (30 minutes painting her nails in the bathroom?) just as I’m skeptical about the timeline she remembers, esp. if there is indication she was intoxicated or under the influence. My skepticism doesn’t contradict a nagging feeling that something happened.

I just couldn’t think of any reason why the two indicted would continue to cover someone up when they already paid $400000 bond (unrefundable?) and are facing 16 years of jail time if convicted?

It sounds that people would like to learn the identity of two persons now, Seligmann’s fellow passenger and the passenger on the second trip. I don’t believe that their name will come to light until the third suspect is charged. I don’t know whether Nifong is imcompetent or smart not to have the third suspect indicted now.

I actually feel that Finnerty’s lawyer should be commended for not talking until the court date.

The fact that Finnerty’s attorney has remained silent is neither to be commended nor disdained. He’s simply doing what he believes is in his client’s best interest. He’s probably simply waiting until Finnerty’s alibi can be verified by indepdnent witnesses/evidence. Then he will talk to the press.

My own view is that if the players are innocent they should continue to try the case in the media as much as possible. This helps to discredit the accuser’s story in the eyes of the public and clear their names. I know if I were accused of this sort of crime and if I were innocent, I’d want my lawyer and everyone else I know to come forward and defend me.

Bonds are by definition refundable; if the money was posted by a bail bondsman, there would usually be a non-refundable fee of 10% of the bail amount – however, given the family situations, the family has probably posted the money.

They do however face an even more horrifying fate. I believe that ARAMARK has the catering contract for Butner. And it’s outside the Cosmic and Satisfactions delivery area.

Sharon, the real question is are those injuries consistent ONLY with rape. Otherwise there’s a real false-positive problem here. If past consensual sex could also cause the injuries, then the injuries prove little, other than the accuser had sexual intercourse.

But I agree the 30 minutes in the bathroom painting nails is just truly bizarre and unsatisfying. Obviously, the prosecution has the burden of proof, and the burden in a criminal case is very high, but having a defense narrative that has a major implausibility in it regarding the critical episode does NOT help.

I agree that very significant questions remain about what happened to the dancer on the night in question. But I’m also very dubious that Seligmann’s the right guy, regardless of whether a rape took place or not. It really sounds like his alibi is solid.

My gut tells me the ID procedure used by the investigators was largely deficient in major ways, though this is speculation at this point. There are so many reasons in this case that ID could go wrong… intoxicated victim, cross-racial ID, probably highly dubious ID methodology used by investigators, contamination of the victim’s memory through press-reports and photographs in media (N&O “wanted poster”, reports on Finnerty’s arrest), repeated exposures to lacrosse player’s photos during ID sessions, pressure from community/prosecutors to make an ID (heck, it sounds like the 3rd lacrosse player to be arrested will be arrested as soon as the alleged victim settles on another photo… talk about putting on some pressure for a match), the list goes on and on and on.

Skeptical, I agree with you 100% on the ID procedure. That had me questioning the DA’s competence. Witness ID is faulty at best when the alleged victim is LUCID; since there are so many reports that she was either intoxicated or under the influence, and also, the point of cross-racial IDng, I would have sought for something else to go forth. Reports say that she ID’ed the guys through pics of scratches on their bodies. Again, just a faulty way of IDng anyone, especially since these are men who play a rough sport and those scratches could mean anything.

By going forth with faulty evidence, the DA may have irreparably damaged the case. And if she was indeed raped, she will get no justice b/c there’s too much reasonable doubt in this case.

I also agree the community pressure on the DA did more harm than good, forcing him to make rush decisions to appease. I’m black and I know there is often a rush to judgment and jailing with black suspects. But I also want to see the right ones jailed, not just be appeased b/c of prosecutorial inequity. Sometimes, getting to the truth TAKES TIME. Hell, I would have said wait months if need be to make sure you got the RIGHT ones.

Muddywater: “It sounds that people would like to learn the identity of two persons now, Seligmann’s fellow passenger and the passenger on the second trip.”

Well, it’s possible that Seligmann’s lawyer didn’t know that the cab driver had picked someone else up later on, though you’d think he’d have told the lawyer about that when he was interviewed for his statement.

S-H (on someone else being indicted for something): Well, if Finnerty wasn’t at the party, he can’t say what happened or didn’t happen—so it is entirely possible (from the perspectives of Finnerty and his lawyer) that someone was raped or otherwise assaulted. For that matter, Finnerty’s lawyer could be referring to other charges like public intoxication, underage drinking, etc., which could be asserted against other players even if the evidence for rape is insufficient to sustain convictions.

The dialogue between Skeptical-Hog and Sharon is one of the better, more reasoned ones that I’ve seen since this story broke.

Sharon, the only point I disagree with you on is your statement concerning your willingness to wait months for the issue to be resolved. If the alleged victim has already ID’d the suspects, then either they should be charged or the case dropped. As months pass, I don’t see how her recollection of events are going to improve. Meanwhile, a cloud of suspicion would hang over all these players until the DA indicted someone.

I wouldn’t been suprised if the players invoke their right to a speedy trial to get this behind them (if that’s even possible).

Skeptical, do we know that it was 30 min in the bathroom? Just because there are no pictures during that time, it doesn’t mean she was there for 30 min. MAybe 20, or 10. Maybe there were two of them there. After all, 30 min in the bathroom for two women to do whatevre they do there is not too long. :)

Igor, I’m not sure on the timing. All I know is (well, what I suspect, at least, is) that it’s extremely hard to paint nails while severely intoxicated…

Chris, since you mentioned muggings, I wonder is there any crime statistics involving Duke students as victims? I am asking that because it appears there are some 20 murders and 80 rapes in Durham a year. IS Durham one of the most dangerous cities in NC? Now I would suspect that most are commited by blacks. And how many Duke students are victims?

It is ironic in a way that this case was presented in the media (and percieved by blacks ) as an example of priviliged racist whites terrorising local blacks, but in fact the opposite is true – there must be a pattern of attacks and all sorts of crime directed at university students (mostly whites) by local blacks. It is something that is happening on many university campuses located in old East Coast towns whose population turned black after white flight in the last century.

Chris, do you know if there was a search warrant served on the Urban St. house?

The defense does not want the people with alibis to become known. It would be much easier for the victim to be able to identify a victim, if she knew who was not there.

Ferdinand, I meant waiting for better evidence before anyone was ever charged. Nifong should have waited for the second DNA tests to come back, put in some more hours of investigation. But I think he rushed to judgment for what seems to be a political reason. Did I read somewhere that this is his first time facing election? How was he initially installed then?

Now, since the guys have been charged, they do have a right to a speedy trial. And seemingly Nifong is still investigating them trying to bolster the indictment, but it’s too late; that is something he should have done beforehand before jumping the gun.

Because of his impatience (and community impatience), there has been a misidentification that is going to hurt his case, so in the end, he still loses.

Sharon, Nifong was appointed to replace Jim Hardin, the former Durham DA of Mike Peterson trial fame (check out the documentary “The Staircase” for a fascinating, though biased, look at the case, mostly from the defense perspective), who was himself appointed as a special superior or district court judge (not sure the details). So this is Nifong’s first election, and he’s running against Freda Black, Hardin’s co-counsel in the Peterson case, whose famous phrase during closing was “Pure-T Filth” (apparently a Southern phrase of some sort!). Nifong and Black may have had some sort of bad blood between them, apparently, and one of the first things to happen when Nifong was appointed was the departure of Black from the DA’s office. So this election has all sorts of a back-story to it….

Skeptical-Hog-
FYI, yep, “Pure T” is a long standing Southern phrase. It describes an even higher level of purity than “Pure” itself ;-).

Thanks Skeptical for the backstory. I think I caught a few minutes of the documentary on the Sundance channel or some indie channel.

Regarding the picures and timeline as presented by the defense.

At this time, much of the defense’s case in the court of public opinion rests on timelines and facts established by these pictures. There have been a few parts of those pictures which are available on various news channel sites.

I, for one, am waiting for credible scrutiny of the defense’s evidence. DJ is right, Bennett is doing a masterful job of feeding the media beast.

Here’s questions I have:
Was the camera a digital camera, or film? (leads to credibility of time stamp, which is easily manipulated on digital cameras)

Was there more than one camera?

Do we have all the pictures?

If it was a digital camera – given that there was ample time to fiddle with time stamps, you have to throw out all assertations about timelines established by them.

So far as I can tell by what I can see:
There was a party – Seligman was there – Dancer was there – a shoe was there (why do people care about this?) – Dancer was on back patio (why back patio instead of front porch?) – someone was wearing a watch and there is no way you can tell what time his watch indicates.

By leaking these pictues to the hungry and uncredible/iincredible press, the court of public opinion has created a whole set of speculative assertations that need further scrutiny.

debann: As far as I know, the Urban St house was never searched, but it could have been another double-secret sealed warrant (i.e. where the judge never filed the warrant with the clerk’s office) like the first Edens search.

azbballfan: you could digitally enhance the photo to find out what time is on the watch, assuming it’s an analog watch—and assuming that the online picture of the guy’s wrist with a watch on it is the only photo that shows a watch. There may be a clearer picture.

I think the 21 digital camera pictures shown to the media (of which parts of 7 were shown on TV by Abrams) are all the ones from the particular camera, but I suspect there are more photos from a different camera and possibly—maybe even probably—video, because Kim (Dancer 2) has complained about someone videoing the events. I virtually guarantee you there are more photos, and they’re just waiting for the alleged victim, Kim, or Nifong to alter the timeline yet again to fill in that gap.

I doubt anyone under 25 these days who isn’t a professional photographer uses a film camera that isn’t disposable, so the pictures are almost certainly digital (where the images are harder to manipulate without creating artifacts, but timestamps could be altered although I think detailed forensics could tell if the flash memory on the picture card was rewritten after its first writing). A disposable camera probably wouldn’t have any timestamps.

“why back patio instead of front porch?” Buchanan Blvd is a 35mph through street; if I were running around in my underwear, I wouldn’t be doing it on Buchanan in full view of passers-by.

Here’s a hint on the Seligmann and Finnerty searches: Nifong lacked probable cause for a warrant before the arrests, because if he had probable cause to show they had commited a crime he could have indicted (by getting an arrest warrant from a judge) without going through the grand jury. Dollars to donuts say the GJ indictment is what gave him probable cause for the warrants.

Similarly, I doubt he had PC for a search of 1103 Urban. Maybe if he gets the May 1 GJ to indict someone who lives (lived?) there he can get a warrant… but any incriminating evidence there is sitting in the Durham County landfill, or at the bottom of the Eno, by now.

Chris:

Thanks for the added info. I may get a lot of heat for taking this position, but I’ve got a couple of teenage daughters in high school who are good enough with Photoshop to have easily added timestamps to the photos. Have you seen some of the stuff put out by college students?

This gives more credibility for the DA to refuse receipt of any physical photos and demand copies of the original media upon which they were stored.

I find it interesting that while we have almost second, by second photos released when the gal was on the back porch, there is a huge gap in the timestamp photo evidence (around 20–30 minutes).

The defense will use the photos as evidence to evade requests for other warrants. Playing the role of the DA, at this time – after there is so much opportunity to taint the evidence, I’d ask the court to ignore it.

Chris, you’re first assuming that computer forensic folks can’t possibly differentiate between altered digital photos and authentic ones… and that timestamping is easily manipulated by laypersons. Yes, there are some obvious authenticity issues from an evidence standpoint, but that’s a jury question under these facts, and expert testimony will go far in showing a jury how these photos could or couldn’t have been altered. No way in Hades these photos are going to be excluded.

Sorry, my last post was addressed to azbballfan, not Chris. My mistake!

Altering the digital timestamps is pretty easy; you would alter the modification time in the FAT filesystem table (under Unix or OS X, using touch) and then edit the timestamps in the EXIF metadata that is recorded by the camera using a hex editor or a utility. Voilà, forged timestamps.

If you altered the image (i.e. to modify the time shown on the watch), however, you’d have obvious [to a trained eye] recompression artifacts in the JPEG unless you modified it at the DCT level. That isn’t easy—JPEG basically turns your picture into a formula that describes something like the picture; as you decompress and recompress, this description becomes more and more unlike the original image.

The DA will certainly get the original media—memory stick or however the camera stored the photos. Regardless of whatever evidence it is, you always want the original if you can get it. I’m curious if these are McFayden’s photos—I believe the search warrant for his room stated the police gathered one, if not two (?), digital cameras? I guess it could be anyone’s camera, but thought that might be how this evidence came to light.

Regardles, I agree with S-H here, if you can alter it, you can trace the alteration. Moreover, they will certainly have the original media which, stored as memory, will be almost impossible to alter unless they altered the timestap PRIOR to taking the photos. Talk about a conspiracy!

Ok, just read Chris’s post and, although I’m not sure if it was in English, must mean that it’s easy to change timestamps. :)

Chris, uh, I think you sorta proved my point there! :-)

Steve,

To answer one of your questions, the photos in question were submitted to the press in a tortuously Bennetesque manner: First, defense lawyers tell a tale of proven timelines and facts supported by pictures they have. (flurry of news stories) Second, they allow select media to look at the pictures which reporters state seem to support the timelines reported by defense attorneys. (second flurry of news stories). Cut to this week: defense attorneys allow portions of select pictures to be presented in the national media spotlight which supports the reporters previous statements about the pictures. (third flurry of news stories)

So now, we’ve had daily stories about pictures presented to the media and recurring reports about a timeline established by the defense attorneys. After a while, through shoddy regurgitative reporting, the public begins to accept this timeline.

Skeptical Hog:
You are right that computer forensic folk might be able to differentiate between altered and authentic digital photos. Chris seems to have pointed at least a few ways they can (which are way over my head).

I hoped to point out that the defense team is artfully testing this case in the court of public opinion – keeping it in the press – which makes it tougher for the prosecution to do their job.

I just wanted to caution others to take all the discussion about evidence in the photos with a big grain of salt (okay, a salt lick) until some forensic folk report on them. I’m just suggesting that we’re jumping the gun a bit.

And I still want to know where all the other pictures are. Certainly there are more. The warrant for Finnerty’s residence shows they didn’t seize any electronic media at all – which seems a bit strange – wouldn’t he have a computer in his room?

Weren’t both women missing for the 20–30 minutes? Per the prosecution version, where was the second dancer while the first was being assaulted?

And if she was performing, why no photos? (Obvious answer – the defense hardly benefits from photos showing the second dancer performing solo).

Tom, that’s the $64,000 question. Kim’s current story is she spent that time searching a 4-room, 1400 square foot house for the accuser and didn’t try the bathroom door, or hear any assault, during all that time. A previous version of events was that she was waylaid outside by other players.

I think it is a great leap to state the pictures were altered to dictate the timeline before the indictments were made. It would also be devastating if this was ever verified. If you are altering photographs then everyone in the world is going to presume guilt. The person with the expertise to aletr the phots immediately throws himself into the crime. Nifong’s indictments were very secret. This all would have been done prior to his indictments.

Chris,

What is the source of the claim that the second dancer was searcher the house or was waylaid outside?

The waylaid account comes from the accuser’s story to the paper and the original warrants—the two women were “separated,” with the second dancer being (allegedly) kept away from the accuser.

The searching the house version is what she (or her lawyer) said to the local TV station in her interview. I can’t find anything online, but I think I heard it on a local newscast (I’ll see if I can track it down).

Here’s the “accuser” version:

On March 14, the accuser told police that she and another woman were sent the previous evening by escort services to dance at a party. She said that just after the women began performing, the men became aggressive and threatening; that the women left the house and became separated; and that she went back into the house, was pulled into a bathroom and was assaulted by three men.

This account suggests “Kim” didn’t go back in the house. Maybe she went to 1103 Urban, or went back in after the alleged victim did.

From the N&O interview with the accuser:

This was the first time she had been hired to dance provocatively for a group, she said. There was no security to protect her, and as the men became aggressive, the two women started to leave. After some of the men apologized for the behavior, the women went back inside, according to police. That’s when the woman was pulled into a bathroom and raped and sodomized, police said.

This account suggests that Kim did go back inside, but they were separated once inside the house.

I think the “searching the house” thing came from the MSNBC interview… I will look some more.

Oddly enough, a lot of the news stories seem to refer to the accuser as the dancer’s “friend,” yet they allegedly hadn’t even met before the night of the party. Weird.