Monday’s Herald-Sun, which seems to have more of a pulse on the defense than its Raleigh-based competitor, gives us the players’ attorneys’ perspective heading into Grand Jury Monday:

In what the defense team believes was another effort to get ready for the grand jury, police detectives went to a Duke dorm Thursday night to question lacrosse players. According to the defense lawyers, the officers wanted to know who was and wasn’t at the North Buchanan Boulevard party the night of March 13–14.

The effort to question the players, the lawyers say, proved authorities lack confidence in the dancer’s visual identification of her alleged attackers, which reportedly was made from photographs.

One of the lawyers, Kerry Sutton of Durham, described the interrogation over the weekend as a “hail Mary pass at the last moment.” ...

Jason Alexander Bissey, a neighbor to the house where the woman allegedly was raped, provided a written statement to defense attorneys that they shared with The Herald-Sun over the weekend.

Bissey said he saw the “skimpily dressed” accuser leave the house between 12:20 and 12:30 a.m., but then heard her say she was going back inside to retrieve a missing shoe.

According to defense lawyers, Bissey’s observation had to be after the time the woman allegedly was raped in the house, since she never actually re-entered it.

But if she had been raped and sodomized for 30 minutes, as she claimed, would she really have been so worried about a lost shoe that she would dare to face her attackers again, attorneys Ekstrand, Thomas and others are asking.

Meanwhile, NBC17 has an exclusive interview with the second dancer, who it (unusally, as she is not believed to be a victim of a sex crime) declines to name, although it is believed her first name is “Kim” and she is either black or Hispanic:

[The second dancer] refuted claims made in recent days by defense attorneys that the accuser was intoxicated and injured when she arrived at the party.

“She looked absolutely fine,” the second dancer said, noting that the accuser’s demeanor changed dramatically after they left the party.

“She was definitely a totally different woman than when I first met her. She definitely was under some sort of substance,” the woman said.

A source close to the official investigation of the case has told NBC17 that the accuser might have been drugged at the party.

The second dancer declined to discuss specifics of what happened at the party.

“If I could see the future and would have known what that night would’ve brought, I would have paid more attention. I wish I had paid more attention to everything that happened around me,” she said.

The woman admitted calling 911 to report racial epithets yelled at her and the accuser as they left the party. But she said the details of the incident became jumbled in her call because she was trying to hide the fact that she had been performing at the party.

The woman said her parents don’t know she makes a living as an exotic dancer, and she was afraid the information would be made public if she had been upfront with the 911 dispatcher.

Nothing much (yet?) from the somewhat more accuser-friendly confines of the News & Observer, although there is a FAQ on how grand juries work and a report on how the controversy is affecting recruitment of prospective students.

On Grand Jury Eve, TalkLeft’s Jeralynn Merritt reports:

One of the defense attorneys was on the same tv segment I was on earlier today and said the defense team has been told by the prosecutor that two players’ names will be submitted to the grand jury. Despite offers of all team members to surrender if they are charged, the DA refuses to identify the two players. This sounds to me like the DA is anxious to do an on-camera perp walk.

WRAL says Mike Nifong doesn’t need any steenking excuplatory evidence:

Defense attorneys said they had offered to show the pictures to District Attorney Mike Nifong, but he declined to see them.

“As I understand the exchange, as it was reported to me, the DA is not interested in a discussion about our evidence,” said defense attorney Bob Ekstrand. ...

Just as defense attorneys have said Nifong has not seen their evidence, they don’t know what happened after police drove the accuser away.

“Something happened in the interim to cause her to be admitted into the hospital later that morning,” Ekstrand said. “And we should be very interested to know what it was.”

Finally, NYU education prof Jonathan Zimmerman writes a Newsday op-ed in which he opines that athletic scholarships are a form of affirmative action for whitey. He obviously hasn’t seen most college football and basketball teams…

This week’s Newsweek has an account of the defense version of the timeline with a few different details that what’s been previously discussed; clearing up one question, the alleged victim arrived around 11:45 and was dropped off by someone else. There is also some debate over the second dancer’s story and how helpful it will be to the defense:

The second woman supports the partygoers’ story, says Thomas, who says he has seen a summary of an interview with her conducted by a member of the defense team. “Their versions are basically identical,” he says. But Mark Simeon, an attorney for the second dancer, tells NEWSWEEK that Thomas’s claim is not accurate. “She rejects the notion that she agrees with their timeline. I’ve shown their story line to my client, and she says there’s a lot that’s wrong with it. From the beginning, she has been cooperating fully with [Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong] and the police, and she looks forward to testifying truthfully at the trial.” Thomas replies, “She has given us several statements, so I don’t see any room for her to change her story now simply because she has a lawyer speaking for her.” Nifong could not be reached for comment.

Two vaguely interesting pieces in Sunday’s News & Observer: a lengthy article on the background of the accuser that is perhaps more intriguing for what it doesn’t tell us than what it does, and the second is another public editor column. Like I said—vaguely interesting.

Monday may be a bit more exciting; the rumor mill over-under on the number of people Nifong can get the grand jury to indict is around 2. I already have Ryan McFadyen down for getting one—sending an obscene email has got to violate at least one law in North Carolina, and Nifong’s got to walk away with at least one conviction out of this whole thing just to keep some self-respect.

Who else does he go after? Maybe he goes for some penny-ante stuff to tide everyone over; he’s probably got photos that will let him go to bat on some underage alcohol consumption charges against the under-21s and illegal distribution of alcohol to minors for the rest. Maybe he figures he can use that stuff as leverage to find out more, since even though this stuff normally gets pled out to a fine, in this environment he can go to a Townie jury and get max sentencing on these charges. Maybe the pressure of potentially spending a year in the Durham County Jail gets someone to flip, although unless they have beer bottles (and not just Dixie cups) in their hands in the photos it’s going to be a tough conviction.

Beyond that, who knows? He probably can get a rape indictment if the grand jury doesn’t ask any tough questions. We have no clue what he’s got, and he doesn’t have to tell anyone what the grand jury sees—although out of 18 people on that grand jury, I think it’s a safe bet we will get a leak or six. So, we shall see. I expect a good preview leak out of the prosecution camp (or maybe some expectations management by defense attorneys) to surface in one of the papers for Monday’s editions, so clarity may be here sooner than you’d think.

From NBC 17:

An unnamed source close to the investigation of a reported rape near the Duke University campus has told NBC 17 News that someone might have drugged the accuser the night she claims three lacrosse members raped her.

“She may have been slipped a date-rape drug in a mixed drink she was given by one of the lacrosse players shortly after she arrived,” the source told NBC 17 late Friday.

“Her condition is said to have changed dramatically in a short period of time, from being completely sober on arrival to passing out on the floor in a short period of time.”

Elsewhere, the News & Observer looks at the backgrounds of the three co-captains who held the lease on the party house, who “are the only players known to have talked to police” in the case, while WRAL reports on Jesse Jackson’s attempt to inject himself into the case.

Saturday’s Herald-Sun has a detailed account of the party photos that players’ attorneys have asserted are exculpatory; their reporting also fits it into the timeline of the case. Perhaps the most interesting stuff is at the end of the article:

A police dispatch log then indicates that the dancer showed up at the Duke emergency room at 2:31 a.m. and entered Duke Hospital at 2:45 a.m.

[Defense attorney Bill] Thomas said the second dancer described her as being highly intoxicated. In addition, the woman never complained about being raped as the two dancers drove away from North Buchanan Boulevard, Thomas quoted the co-dancer as saying.

It remains unclear where the accuser was between being taken away by police to the “drunk tank” from Kroger at approximately 1:30 until her appearance at the Duke Hospital ER an hour later. However, with this new information it may be opportune to come up with a new integrated timeline.

The account also indicates that, in the first photo of the dancers at the party, taken at midnight, ”[b]ruises are clearly visible on the legs and thighs of the alleged victim.”

Also of interest is this snippet of a report at the NBC 17 website; the most interesting part is bolded:

Defense attorneys said two police investigators got into Edens Residence Hall at about 7 p.m. Thursday by grabbing a door as it closed behind a student that had just entered. The dormitory doors are usually secured and require a swipe card to open.

The attorneys said the investigators acted friendly toward the players and inquired who was at the party. The defense contends that police are trying to nail down a suspect after District Attorney Mike Nifong said this week that the woman positively identified one of her attackers from a photo lineup last week.

But attorneys also noted that three people at the party aren’t on the lacrosse team, and none of them have submitted DNA samples to authorities for testing.

Make of that what you will… but this is the first clear statement by anyone that non-players were at the party.

I noticed on Friday’s SportsCenter that ESPN has swapped out reporters for the Duke lacrosse scandal, replacing some black guy whose name I never learned with SN fave Rachel Nichols. Suddenly I feel the need to start hanging out behind the Bryan Center… nothing against the other reporter (who may or may not be named George Smith; Google is no use), just that he was so non-descript I am pretty sure I walked right past him yesterday without really being sure it was him.

I’m waiting to go on-air for a CNN interview that should air on their “On The Story” program over the weekend… assuming the birthday party over at my neighbors’ isn’t so loud they kick me off the program. In the meantime, more minor tidbits:

• The News & Observer reports that players’ lawyers are annoyed by the police attempting to interview players without their attorneys present and carries a story on the traffic on the Trinity Park email lists; they also report that the father of attorney Joe Cheshire passed away today at the age of 88.
• A leaflet on my car says that Sunday at 3:30 pm, there will be a “Prayer Rally for Healing Righteousness & Justice” at the 610 N. Buchanan house. Not sure how all three will happen at once, but stranger things have happened I suppose… According to Google the phone number on the leaflet belongs to the Church of the Apostolic Revival on East Main in Durham.

In lieu of content, have some free bullet points:

• In today’s Chronicle op-ed columnist Boston Cote goes after English and African-American Studies prof Houston Baker again; it’s really a sight to behold. Good thing for her that, unlike some places, the faculty at Duke don’t get to vote on granting degrees…
• I have no independent link to this, but MSNBC’s Dan Abrams apparently has a copy of the defense photos from the house timestamped between 12:00 and 12:41 on the night of the party; they are consistent with what the defense has said about them in the past.
• An athlete (not a lacrosse player) in one of my classes today indicated, apparently on the authority of the campus grapevine, that at least part of the reason why the players were angry at the female dancers is that they were not expecting two minority women to be sent by the escort service. This doesn’t square with other accounts that an escort service would only send minorities by special request, although I guess it’s possible that the low-end services they made use of don’t represent any white performers.
• Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Tom Maguire wasn’t much of a lacrosse fan to begin with, while TalkLeft notes the (apparent) new searches Thursday evening and SSquirrel tries on a conspiracy theory for size, although I expect you could probably find Democratic ties to some of the players’ parents too if you tried hard enough; nor does that really explain why CNN and MSNBC would be hitting the case as hard as Fox. (Incidentally, I disagree with the last poster’s choice to reveal the names of players who, as of this point, have not been accused of a crime.)

From the AP:

Police attempted to search the dorm rooms of Duke University lacrosse players amid an investigation into the alleged rape of an exotic dancer at a team party, the school’s president said Friday.

President Richard Brodhead said he was just learning about the Thursday night search attempts and didn’t have many details, including whether investigators had search warrants and if they actually entered any rooms.

“I am aware that police attempted to enter those rooms, and I am now about to leave this news conference to learn the whole story,” Brodhead said.

There were no warrants for any dorm rooms at Duke among those returned to the Durham County magistrate’s office Friday morning, although police have 48 hours after executing a warrant to return it. The court clerk’s office was closed for the Good Friday holiday. Police said they would not release any information Friday.

Defense attorney Joe Cheshire, who represents one of the team’s captains, said he didn’t know anything about the searches, but called them a waste of time.

“Now, whether there are other issues as to it relates to issues like drinking and partying and those things, I’ve got no clue,” Cheshire said. “But if it relates to sexual assault, they can search ‘til the cows come home.”

WRAL further indicates that “police were trying to question some players Thursday, but that there was no warrant for a search of players’ rooms” according to defense attorneys.

At present, it is unclear what police were looking for, although one could speculate that they are trying to find copies of the photos the defense has claimed are exculpatory (but has not shown or released to the public); presumably any incriminating evidence would have been removed or destroyed in the month since the party.

It may also be another dimension of what some have believed is an effort to intimidate the lacrosse team members; Thursday’s edition of The Abrams Report on MSNBC reported that an email was sent to about half of the lacrosse team that appeared to be from one of the other players who claimed he was going to police. The email was believed to be a forgery because it was dated April 14th (today) and the player in question was apparently in class at the time it was sent, according to his attorney.

Finally, if you thought the Tawana Bradley comparisons were premature, the news that a key figure in that case may be paying Durham a visit might change your views somewhat:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York City-based civil-rights activist, may visit Durham in the next few days to speak out on allegations that a black woman was raped last month by members of Duke University’s lacrosse team.

As of Thursday afternoon, Sharpton hadn’t scheduled a visit. But he had been invited to make the trip by “local community members and pastors,” said Rachel Noerdlinger, the minister’s spokeswoman.

Noerdlinger said Sharpton’s travel plans “are just being shaped” and that the proposed trip to Durham was “under strong consideration.”

Update: John in Carolina is none too thrilled that Sharpton may be headed to the Bull City.

I’ve had a little bit of fun with Ruth Sheehan in the past, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of her News & Observer column from today. I’m not sure if it’d be worse if the allegations were untrue, but I do think it would be quite disturbing. That said, I think we all hope and pray that this woman really wasn’t assaulted, much less that she was assaulted by people that are part of our community—in particular, the possibility that I may have taught one of the assailants is almost too horrible to contemplate.

The catchphrase of Greg House is “everybody lies.” As a professor, I probably get lied to at least once a day; there’s the occasional whopper, like the student I had at Millsaps who fabricated a whole conversation with me to get out of a co-curricular commitment she made, but most are rather more mundane. The whoppers are rare, but they do happen. I really don’t know whether to hope this is one of those or not.

Tim Whitmire of the AP reports that the one of the responding officers to the Kroger 911 call found the alleged victim to be highly intoxicated:

A woman who claims she was raped by members of Duke University’s lacrosse team was described as “just passed-out drunk” by one of the first police officers to see her, according to a recording of radio traffic released Thursday.

The conversation between the officer and a police dispatcher took place about 1:30 a.m. March 14, about five minutes after a grocery store security guard called 911 to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else’s car.

The officer gave the dispatcher the police code for an intoxicated person. When asked whether the woman needed medical help, the officer said: “She’s breathing and appears to be fine. She’s not in distress. She’s just passed out drunk.”

Meanwhile, different attorneys for different lacrosse players have reached different conclusions as to whether DA Mike Nifong will seek an indictment at the grand jury on Monday; the grand jury will also meet in two weeks, on May 1, the day before the Democratic primary which likely will decide the Durham County DA’s race. Speaking of the DA, some people actually want him to briefly come out of hiding to say something substantive about the case:

Outside of a forum at North Carolina Central University and a district attorney’s candidate forum Wednesday night, Nifong has not spoken publicly about the case. He has not granted a substantive interview in more than a week, even declining to clarify remarks he made at the N.C. Central forum that left Ekstrand and others confused about where the case stands.

For example, Nifong said at the forum “there was no identification of any member of that lacrosse team until last week.” But it wasn’t clear if he was referring to a positive identification made by the alleged victim, or the release of a court document that included an e-mail sent by a lacrosse player, who was identified in the document.

Later in the forum, Nifong told a questioner who asserted the victim had positively identified her three attackers that her information was wrong.

“I think everything the prosecution has said in this case had been unreliable,” Ekstrand said Thursday.

Finally, ABC 11 reports that grafitti was found near the NC Central Campus using “a racial slur” and the term “Duke #1.”

Silly me thought the media circus was gone—until I wandered over to the Bryan Center to mail some Easter cards and found four satellite trucks parked in the vistors’ parking lot, in addition to Dan Abrams and (I think) that ESPN guy whose name I haven’t learned yet (George something or other, I think). I hope Duke is charging them all $2/hour per parking slot, like we peons would have to pay, but somehow I doubt it.

The walking embarrassment that is our current district attorney let out another whopper at tonight’s DA candidate forum:

“The reason that I took this case is because this case says something about Durham that I’m not going to let be said,” said Nifong. “I’m not going to allow Durham’s view in the minds of the world to be a bunch of lacrosse players at Duke raping a black girl from Durham.”

Leaving aside that this statement fails to make logical sense, I think it would also be a fair statement that if the world’s view of Durham is “a bunch of lacrosse players at Duke raping a black girl” then that view was largely created by Nifong’s hyperbolic claims and irresponsible behavior during the investigation—which, of course, this statement is another instance of. Even the alleged victim only claims there were three rapists, which is well short of “a bunch,” and she couldn’t even identify any of them (no doubt by sheer coincidence) until their photos had been plastered across the front page of the News & Observer three weeks after the incident.

The bottom line in this case is that if it is ever proved in a court of law that a rape did occur at the hands of young men present at the party at 610 North Buchanan, something that is certainly within the realm of possibility even given the apparent absence of DNA evidence, reliable testimony by the alleged victim, or credible corroborating witnesses, it will largely be in spite of—not due to—the efforts of Mike Nifong.

It’s been a relatively slow news day, but there are still a few developments worth noting in the Duke lacrosse rape investigation:

• Both of DA Mike Nifong’s opponents in his May 2 Democratic primary contest took shots at the prosecutor at an election forum this evening in Durham.
• Local attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the men’s lacrosse players, expects at least one player to be indicted by the grand jury.
• The News & Observer talks about the second round of DNA tests—apparently not being conducted by the state crime lab—and reports skepticism from defense attorneys on Nifong’s statement that the the alleged victim has identified a suspect in the case.
• Last, but not least, the hiring of Bob Bennett as the spokesman for a newly-formed group called the “Committee for Fairness to Duke Families” has raised a few eyebrows.

ESPN.com reports details from an anonymous “source” at the Duke University Hospital emergency room—see the sidebar:

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, was present at the hospital on the night of the alleged incident and says the woman was “beat up” but would not immediately divulge to anyone the identity of her alleged assailants.

“She was hysterical,” the source said. “She was crying, she was pretty banged up. She said she was sexually assaulted, but she didn’t say by whom.”

The source says the woman entered the hospital well after midnight March 13 wearing a red nightgown and nothing on her feet. She was walking on her own, but there were bruises on her face, neck, and arms. ...

According to the source, the woman did not immediately inform either the police or the hospital staff who inflicted the injuries to her.

“She never said one thing about Duke, any athlete or anything,” the source said. “She just kept hollering and screaming. She never said who did it.”

The woman was discharged after approximately five hours.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Margaret Soltan has put together some thoughts on the case that are worth reading.

Finally, if you feel the need to discuss the Duke lacrosse rape allegations in all their detail, go to the CourtTV website where they have a whole forum where the minutae of the case are being dissected.

Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong is channeling Celine Dion (or perhaps Don Quixote) today, promising that “this case is not going away” at a forum on the rape allegations this morning at NC Central University that he parachuted into at the last minute (see also WRAL). The Herald-Sun account shares the following gems from Nifong:

Nifong said further DNA tests are being conducted and that the woman making the allegations has identified at least one lacrosse player as an attacker.

“I hope you will understand by my presence here this morning that the case is not going away,” Nifong said. DNA results can be helpful, but DNA evidence is absent in 75 to 80 percent of cases, he said. They also can clear the innocent, which remains an important consideration, after the March 13 team party at which team members admit hiring two exotic dancers. One of them told police three men took her into a bathroom of the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., where they beat and raped her.

“Until we identify all three of those people, that means some of these young men are going to be walking around under a cloud,” Nifong said.

But, he said later, in response to a comment in a question-and-answer that police and prosecutors arrest black suspects more quickly than whites in such cases: “There was no identification of any member of the lacrosse team until last week” and that identification of an attacker in this case will be a question for a jury to decide.

“There was no identification of any member of the lacrosse team until last week.” I am beyond speechless. Either Nifong is letting a guy who he knows has been identified as a rapist just run around free (way to ensure the safety of the community!), or he’s completely full of shit.

The good news is that in three weeks this idiot will be out of our collective misery, when the voters of Durham County run his ass out of town on a rail. The bad news is that until then we get three more weeks of this idiot in our collective misery.

Here’s your conspiracy theory/rumor/gospel truth of what really went down at the party courtesy of LiveJournal; your mileage may vary:

Going home, I got on the bus to East campus and sat in the back, like I always do so I can be facing forward, and a young lady sat down next to me commenting, “maybe this isn’t the safest place on the bus.” I agreed and then told her about the rumor I’d heard saying the [bus] fire was arson, which was untrue, and then about the letter to the editor I read.

She replied that one of her friend’s boyfriend is on the team and he says only a few lacrosse players were at that party, that it was “mostly frat boys”, and none of the team had anything to do with the rape.

Link via here, which I found out because of an inbound link complaining about one of Igor’s comments. Gotta love Technorati.

The News & Observer reports that Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong hasn’t quite thrown in the towel on making rape charges against the players at the party:

Nifong said the DNA results do not end anything.

“I’m not saying it’s over. If that’s what they expect, they will be sadly disappointed,” Nifong said at a candidate forum Monday night. “They can say anything they want, but I’m still in the middle of my investigation. … I believe a sexual assault took place.”

Neither Nifong nor the defense lawyers would release the results.

The Herald-Sun’s account indicates that Nifong may have some difficulty in making the case in the absence of DNA evidence:

Stan Goldman, who teaches criminal law, evidence and criminal procedure at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the DNA results don’t mean that Nifong can’t go forward with the case—but the test results make a successful prosecution much harder.

“Isn’t the absence of DNA evidence, given the way the victim has described the crime, in and of itself almost enough to raise a reasonable doubt?” he said. “That’s all the defense has to do.”

And, of course, people will continue to believe what they want to believe anyway…

On a related note, I sat down for an interview with freelance writer and Duke alum Dana Vachon, who’s working on a story for Salon (and possibly another story for Men’s Vogue) on the rape allegations, this evening at the Joyce; I think you’ll find his story quite interesting when it comes out, if the tidbits I heard this evening are any indication. As for what I had to say… we shall see.

Opinions are like assholes—everyone has one:

Wendy Murphy, a former Massachusetts prosecutor and adjunct professor at Boston’s New England School of Law who teaches a seminar on sexual violence, said releasing details of the photos was a sign that lawyers were worried the DNA testing would produce a match with some of the players.

“If the DNA isn’t going to match, they wouldn’t need to do this,” she said. “It’s almost comical that they think a photograph is proof positive that a rape didn’t happen. It’s not a smoking gun. It’s a muddying of the waters.”

Bad timing, it’s a wonderful thing.

Laura of Survival Theory reports, and the AP confirms, that the state crime lab has forwarded the results of the DNA tests in the Duke lacrosse rape case to the Durham County DA’s office, where “copies were being made Monday afternoon for defense attorneys.” And so the waiting game begins.

Update: The players’ attorneys released the DNA evidence this afternoon—no matches. One third of Craig Newmark’s predictions thus have become true.

The Chronicle’s account has some more details, for the morbidly curious; two players’ DNA was found in the bathroom, but it was their house and they shared the bathroom. Also from the account:

"No DNA material from any young man tested was present on the body of this complaining woman," lawyer Wade Smith said. "Not present in the body, not present on the surface of her body, belonginigs or materials she had on her, including her clothing."

There was no DNA of the alleged victim found in the bathroom of 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. residence, added Joe Cheshire, a lawyer representing senior captain Dave Evans and resident of the Buchanan house.

Today’s Duke Chronicle editorial calls for the firing of AD Joe Alleva as a response to the culmination of scandals involving both the men’s lacrosse and baseball programs. They also go with the photos story, despite (again) not having seen the photos themselves, and report on a protest across from the 610 house by members of a local church, which explains why I saw a camera crew setting up there during my Sunday afternoon walk.

In not-entirely-unrelated news, one of Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong’s opponents in the May 2 primary has been subpeonaed in an appeal of a decade-old murder case:

Former Assistant District Attorney Freda Black has been subpoenaed to explain in court today why she allegedly broke a promise to a murder suspect years ago, and also to answer allegations that she checked another homicide defendant out of the county jail, drove him around town and treated him to chicken and pizza.

The allegations are contained in court paperwork filed by convicted killer Gregory Wayne Bagley, who is serving a life prison sentence and now contends he deserves a new trial.

Bagley says he was convicted in 1994 not because he was guilty, but “due to devious, deceptive, malicious acts” and trickery by Black. He implies that her kindness toward the other homicide suspect, Alton Antonio Bell, was an attempt by Black to sweet-talk Bell into testifying against him.

Considering that Nifong will be lucky to get any votes in the primary at this point—the black community and the Righteous Townie set don’t think he’s done enough (going into hiding for the last week probably wasn’t the best election strategy), and the innocent-until-proven-guilty crowd thinks he’s a grandstanding fool—I guess we can just go ahead and give this thing to African-American attorney Keith Bishop. The winner of the primary is unopposed in the general election; you’ve gotta love the one party South.

In my previous post, I speculated that Duke’s men’s lacrosse program will go the way of the dodo, stating the following reasoning:

It is not particularly popular in the region; it doesn’t recruit a very ethnically diverse pool of athletes; and it loses money. Getting rid of the program would also help Duke improve its Title IX situation and save the headache of searching for a new coach.

The first three points are self-evident; I need not belabor them. The Title IX issue is worth some discussion; the NCAA has recently adopted a rule modeled on that of the SEC requiring Division I institutions to have two more womens’ sports than mens’ sports, and while the NCAA has said that cutting mens’ sports is not a desirable approach to achieving this standard, in practice mens’ sports have been cut to help achieve it.

When you combine that fact with the need to find a new coach, and the negative publicity that will dog the team for the coming years—even if the rape charges are proved beyond any shadow of a doubt to be fabrications, the other repellent behavior by team members is embarrassing enough—cutting the university’s losses may simply be the prudent course of action, not as punishment but just to save money and foster better community relations.

At some point—perhaps in a few days, perhaps in a few months—the Duke lacrosse rape allegations will be resolved, at least in terms of the criminal issues. The question arises as to what Duke should do then. Dealing with the players is the easy stuff (these expectations are my predictions and are not normative):

• Any players charged with battery, assault, or the like will almost certainly be expelled from the university (or suspended indefinitely, with expulsion to follow upon conviction). Even if acquitted, I doubt they would be welcome to return to the university.
• Other players present at the party probably won’t be expelled; I would expect any players with past disciplinary issues to be suspended from the university for a semester or year, and others to receive some probationary sanction. If no charges for violent offenses are filed against any players, I would expect any player present at the party to be subject to these sanctions.
• Ryan McFadyen will probably be allowed to return to the university if no rape or battery charges are filed against anyone. My guess is that he probably will choose not to return, though.

What is to be done about the men’s lacrosse program and athletics in general? Assume, for the sake of argument, that it is decided there has been a lack of institutional control over student-athletes’ behavior—which probably is a fair assessment. If that is the case, I think a number of solutions present themselves:

• I expect that Duke will abandon running a men’s lacrosse program. It is not particularly popular in the region; it doesn’t recruit a very ethnically diverse pool of athletes; and it loses money. Getting rid of the program would also help Duke improve its Title IX situation and save the headache of searching for a new coach. I expect this decision to be made soon; in fact, I suspect it has already been decided, probably as a condition of AD Joe Alleva keeping his job.
• I expect that student athletes will be required to live on campus for four years starting in August 2007. If this requires letting other students out of the six-semester obligation in order to have sufficient housing over the short term, so be it.
• Student-athletes will probably also be housed across campus and not allowed to be concentrated in particular quads. They might even be barred from living on Central, which might require letting non-athlete sophomores live on Central.

I also expect that many suggestions for “consciousness raising,” “encouraging substance-free living,” and “diversity awareness” will be made, and accepted, by the committees studying these issues. No doubt these proponents will overlook the fact that the men’s lacrosse team was, if anything, exposed more to these things than most students—and they proved completely ineffective in curbing their abhorrent behavior.

Over the long term, I expect that the six-semester requirement to live on campus will be replaced by an eight-semester requirement for all students, which will finally snuff out the “unofficial fraternities.” This, of course, will require additional housing space, but the university has plenty of empty land on West and East (if necessary) to construct the additional needed beds, in addition to the net addition of beds already planned for Central. If this means that Pratt has to forgo increasing enrollment for now, they’ll survive.

The end result: a Duke that has retreated further within its walls as a protective measure to ensure that these problems don’t recur. Is that a good thing? I don’t know; I think a bit more interaction between Duke’s students and the wider community would be, on average, a good thing, even if the students who the community encounters in their neighborhoods haven’t always been the best ambassadors the university has to offer. But I think a bit of disengagement from the neighborhoods around East may be an important first step in reducing the enmity between Duke and the wider community—and if that hurts the 9th Street Merchants’ Association, so be it.

Today’s News & Observer breathlessly reports that under ex-coach Bill Hillier, the Duke baseball team “had trouble with heavy drinking, rowdiness and academic problems.” Reporter Ned Bennett goes on to say that, after canning Hillier,

the university did not undertake the kind of sweeping assessment of its athletic culture that has been triggered by the lacrosse team. Had it done so, it might have uncovered conditions similar to what led to the lacrosse incident. The baseball players, too, had a practice of bringing strippers to team parties.

“We always had parties at the baseball house,” said DeMarco, now a graduate student at Fairfield University. “The thing to do was to get strippers.”

At a party he attended, DeMarco said, the dancer brought an imposing male bodyguard.

“I remember that night with the stripper,” he said. “There were video cameras, some big, tough guy there guarding her. It was pretty shady.”

Is this evidence of a lack of institutional control, or just part of an effort by the N&O to further poison (if that’s even possible at this point) town-gown relations?