There’s been a lot of talk lately about the white, upper-class “preppy” origins of the Duke lacrosse athletes—heck, I’ve contributed somewhat to it myself—but I think there’s also an “athlete’s privilege.” People who excel at things can get away with things that the mediocre cannot—I know in my high school days I got away with a lot of stuff because I was smarter than the average student, and a similar (but magnified) privilege works for athletes. Allen Iverson would never have been allowed to set foot on Georgetown’s campus—they’d have called security on his ass, and rightly so given his criminal history—if he couldn’t dunk a basketball. Shelden Williams faced rape allegations before he came to Duke—you think he’d be here if he wasn’t an athlete? This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to athletes—Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and George Bush all got away with stuff because of political ties or family clout—but I dare say it’s more prevalent among athletes than anyone else.

Anyway, I found this related post in Google’s blog search and thought it was worth singling out.

Laura Collins of Survival Theory links a WRAL story that quotes Joe Cheshire, an attorney for Dave Evans, one of the Duke men’s lacrosse team captains, giving the partygoers’ side of the story:

Cheshire… said members of the highly ranked lacrosse team hired two dancers for a party on March 13 and paid the women $800 for their services, but that they did not provide the services they promised.

“These two girls were paid a tremendous amount of money to dance for two hours,” Cheshire said. “We can show, and will show if we have to, that they danced for only three minutes and decided to take all that money with them.”

The alleged victim told police she became fearful that night when the players became aggressive, and that is why she left. She told investigators that the men convinced her and the other dancer to go back inside the house, and that was when she was assaulted.

Cheshire said the men at the party were frustrated and angry, and points to an e-mail message recovered from [Ryan McFadyen]’s computer that was contained in a search warrant released Wednesday.

The message, Cheshire felt, was written out of frustration for an evening that did not live up to expectations. The e-mail, he said, shows nothing more.

“Some of the boys felt ripped off and angry,” Cheshire said. “And so they were angry. Were the words spoken inappropriate? Yes. Did any rape happen? No.”

Police also took other e-mails that also talked about the party, but not in an offensive manner, Cheshire said.

Cheshire also says ”[w]e’re absolutely positive that the [first 911] caller was not the accuser, but the other young lady there.”

Collins says:

So the attorney says that the woman danced for three minutes, took the $800, and lied and said she was raped. I could see someone claiming they were raped so they wouldn’t have to give up the money. Then again I can see it being easier to just take the money and go. If the men told the police that she stole their money, she could just say no. She could have just hidden it. Claiming rape when no rape occurred is a crime. If she’s lying she’s facing jail time. Wouldn’t you think any woman would know that? She would also have to consider all the publicity and the pain of having to go to court.

Damn peculiar. The “three minutes” claim doesn’t square with the public timeline of the case, although it’s more plausible if we buy that the “nosy neighbor” is imputing times from media accounts (primarily the 911 call times) rather than a reliable timekeeper. If we buy Cheshire’s timeline, and ignore the neighbor, we have something like this for March 13th/14th; times in bold are established by police:

• 11:30: women show up at house. (This may be the booking time, in which case we could treat it as more-or-less known.)
• 11:35ish: women start dancing, quickly get pissed off (broomstick?), and stop.
• 11:38ish: women leave; one is sweet-talked into returning into house.
• 11:38–12:08ish: woman 1 is allegedly raped, woman 2 cools heels in car.
• 12:08ish: woman 1 leaves, one player yells cotton shirt comment, women leave
• 12:10ish: players skedaddle from house (Player emails start soon?)
• 12:53: first 911 call from mystery woman, probably woman 1
• 12:55: police show up at house, find evidence of party, nobody around
• 1:06: police depart
• 1:22: second 911 call from Kroger security guard on Hillsborough Rd
• 1:58: Ryan McFadyen sends sick, depraved email from dorm room on campus

That leaves us somewhere from 45 to 75 minutes roughly unaccounted for. On the other hand, it’s more plausible than the women dancing for an additional 45 minutes and then deciding that the crowd is too rowdy. Still, I don’t buy this timeline; the women had to be there longer, or had to show up later, or something—McFadyen’s email is too irrational to have been sent over two hours after the end of the party; I’d think he’d have calmed down by then, although maybe meatheads remain angry longer than most people.

WRAL also reports that the alleged victim has a criminal record of her own that’s more substantial than previously revealed:

New information about the victim has been divulged, concerning charges arising from an incident that occurred several years ago. According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man’s car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County.

Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.

Additional information notes that her blood-alcohol level registered at more than twice the legal limit. ...

[Her former attorney Woody] Vann also said that the allegations that that his former client was trying to hit the sheriff’s deputy were in error, and that she was merely trying to turn around. The case was resolved when she admitted she made a mistake, paid restitution and served probation and some jail time.

This revelation doesn’t exactly square with the News & Observer’s front-page interview from March 25th with the alleged victim, in which it is strongly implied that she had only worked in the adult entertainment business for two months.

Partially inspired by UD’s post that notes Mr. McFadyen’s quotable presence at the “Take Back the Night” rally, here are my rough thoughts on the accusations against him, originally drafted in the form of a comment to her post—so go read that, then come back here. (I’m also violating my “don’t talk about students” rule, but he’s an ex-parrot at this point and I’ve never taught him myself and probably never will. Not to mention that I reserve the right to make exceptions.)

I think using the term “planned” (as Margaret did in her post) implies he intended to do what the email says. If he did plan to do kill and skin a pair of strippers, I doubt he’d have wanted who knows how many witnesses and incriminating emails. Nor would he do it in a dorm.

This reads like an email from a kid who thinks he got screwed (figuratively, not literally) by a stripper. Not to say he didn’t deserve to be punished—and I think the combination of his presence at the party, just given the established facts about he party, that two women were hired to “perform” in some way and that he engaged in underage drinking, and this dopey email (which doubtless violates the campus appropriate use policy) justifies some sort of punishment—and not to say that it’s some dispositive evidence that he knew nothing about the attack, but I think the idea he actually intended to kill anyone is risable. The email does prove he’s a meatheaded dipshit who has no business on a university campus again until he gets some serious therapy, though.

Incidentally, whatever lacrosse player (and, let’s be honest here, McFadyen only sent it other laxers, otherwise he would have signed it with something other than his jersey number) gave that email to the police did the right thing. I suspect there is much more cooperation with the authorities than Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong and the players’ attorneys would like to let on at this point. More, please.

Commenter Igor provided a link to this article in Tuesday’s St. Petersburg Times that looks at the efforts of NCCU Campus Echo reporter Kristiana Bennett to get local residents to go on record with “unflattering things about the accuser… that defense attorneys hire[] private investigators to find.” Another Echo reporter talked with local escort services and found that it is unusual for adult entertainers to work without bodyguards or bouncers.

Ralph Luker links a NBC 17 story from last Friday that includes some quotes from an attorney representing one of the leaseholders on the 610 house that I hadn’t seen before (most interesting part bolded):

Meanwhile, defense attorneys continued on Friday to question the allegations of wrongdoing, including a 911 call made shortly before the alleged rape was reported.

In that call, a distraught woman said men in the house where the lacrosse team party was being held shouted racial slurs at her outside. Attorneys pointed out some discrepancies in the caller’s version of the incident and in the timing of the call.

“I listened to that first call, and I thought, ‘You called 911 because someone said something offensive to you?’ That’s just weird,” said Kerry Sutton, who represents lacrosse team member Matt Evans.

Evans is one of three captains of the team and lives at the Buchanan Boulevard house where the party was held. Sutton said Evans cleared out the house and locked it up when the party got too raucous.

“I believe my client. He says he didn’t do anything, and he believes nobody else did anything,” Sutton said. “No matter how this turns out, it’s a terrible thing for somebody.”

That explains why everyone disappeared from the house, although it doesn’t explain why nobody (including the nosy neighbor) seems to have witnessed it.

This raises the need to better pin down the timeline. Team member Ryan McFadyen’s email is apparently one of many sent in the period after the alleged rape went down, but the only one we have evidence of to this point. Duke’s email system records timestamps on every message passed through it, and all emails sent or received via the Duke email system require a username and password—so where’s the subpeona for all these records? Is it hiding somewhere under seal along with the search of McFadyen’s room, which only came to light because a student witnessed Durham police entering Edens 2C?

There were laptops and wireless cards siezed at the party—were there emails sent before, during, and after the entertainment? Not to mention timestamps on digital camera photos and call records and GPS locations of players’ cellphones—the latter of which would at least be able to show who (or whose phones) were there.

I’m not asking for a lot of Charlie Epps rocket science here… just the basics. Use the technology help to figure out what the hell actually was going on here, and cut out the nonsense.

Today’s Herald-Sun, er, today: reports on the unsealed email sent by Ryan McFadyen and the resignation of Mike Pressler, both with all the quotes and reportage one might want to read about the case. They also report a statement by NCCU Chancellor James Ammons, in which he asks that Central students kindly refrain from beating on Cameron Crazies.

Related to this reporting is a brewing controversy about the timing of the unsealing of the warrant, during a period of self-imposed incommunicado by Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong; the dukeobsrvr thinks the decision to unseal the warrant was driven by Nifong lacking confidence in his case, while the Herald-Sun attributes the release to pending legal action by the paper’s attorney.

Duke student Allison Clarke thinks there’s one thing everyone, no matter their views on the Duke lacrosse situation, can get behind:

Within the maelstrom of guilt and blame and recrimination, there is a rock. I think it’s safe to say that everyone at Duke and in Durham believes in this one fundamental principle:

Mike Nifong is an asshat.

I sincerely believe that there is not a single living soul left in Durham County who has confidence in the DA. The reasons for this lack of confidence differ, but include the following:

The taking of DNA evidence en masse from team members before charges were filed violates their civil rights (bullshit);
By talking smack about the case all up and down the media Nifong is seriously reducing the probability of anyone getting a fair trial here, plus I think there’s something in his job description about not really talking to the press all that much, right?;
Nifong’s imminent re-election is of far more importance to him than the ultimate well-being of this woman;
Announcing the results of the DNA evidence would be released this week, no, last week, no, next week, no, this week, isn’t helping anyone to cope with any of this in a helpful way;
If he doesn’t keep his flipping mouth shut starting yesterday, the Very Expensive Defense Attorneys are going to find something they can latch onto to use against him and the woman will be denied justice for what will happen to her;
and last, YOU‘RE GOING TO GET SOMEONE HURT, DIPFUCK.

Meanwhile, President Brodhead has spoken, and there shall be a plethora of committees, and they shall go forth and multiply across the land. The bureaucratic impulse to apply the default mode of operation—for academics, the convening of committees—to any new problem strikes again. We shall have sanctimonious statements, lamentations about institutional culture, and all that fun jazz. All I can say is, thank God I’m leaving.