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.

To the extent I care about University of Memphis basketball—i.e. absolutely zero—I am happy that John Calipari will not be moving to Raleigh to coach the N.C. State Wolfpack. At least it means that there’s still a slim chance I’ll see a celebrity at mom’s church next time I go.

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.

An interesting post that just showed up in Google Reader is this lengthy reaction by Jacob Levy to Walt and Mearsheimer’s piece on the Israel lobby; I think here’s the meat of Levy’s argument:

They proceed to address this puzzle [of favorable U.S. policy towards Israel] with a slippery—I do not say sloppy—ambiguity between explanatory and evaluative claims.

The mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest to bring it about.

This is, I think, the worst paragraph of political science I’ve read in many years. The best, most-justified policies don’t automatically spring into being at the end of the policy-making process. An all-things-considered judgment that X is the best policy is essentially irrelevant to one’s ability to predict whether or not X will be adopted. Political and policy-making actors aren’t, indeed couldn’t possibly be, such purely disinterested promoters of the public good that they could promote it all the time without any organized support—even assuming that they all agreed with each other, and with M&W, about what the public good consisted of. They often need organizational and material support from interest groups even to do [what they take to be] the right thing. ... From the fact that a policy needed a lobby to support it, one can infer nothing about the policy’s justifiability.

Not to mention that the authors missed a good opportunity to use the subjunctive voice. What writer on earth would pass that up?

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.

Joseph Neff of the News & Observer reports additional details on the photos the lacrosse players’ attorneys claim are exculpatory based on an account by attorney Joe Cheshire. There are definitely more details than previous accounts, and not all of them are all that flattering to the team:

The lacrosse players line the room, drinking out of beer cans and plastic cups, and one photo shows a player unconscious on the floor, his shorts pulled down and his underwear wet.

And we have an echo of scandals past:

Cheshire said the time-stamped photos have a 27-minute gap between when the two women stopped dancing and when the accuser was photographed outside the house. During that period, the dancers locked themselves in a bathroom and then went outside, he said.

I suppose I’m baffled that the media would run with a story based on a few attorneys’ descriptions of photographs; given the photos’ content, however, I suppose the lawyers don’t want to make them public unless absolutely necessary, but my suspicion is that they’ll have to come out at some point unless Nifong drops the case.

This 27-minute gap in the photos seems just a wee bit weird, as well. I’ll leave the Nixon jokes to others… but there are certainly ways to tell if photos were deleted from the camera’s memory cards, and perhaps even recover deleted pictures. (On the other hand, if you were forging timestamps on pictures, you would probably make the 27-minute gap shrink and “discredit” the accuser’s story by “showing” she was only in the bathroom for 3–5 minutes.) Color me skeptical on the verbal accounts of these photos until they’re shown to someone more impartial.

Cheshire’s account does, however, make more sense than the accuser’s in at least one regard; as I’ve noted before, the two dancers arrived separately, yet left together. The accuser’s account fails to explain why the second dancer (who didn’t even know her) would wait around for 30 minutes outside the house while she was still inside; the defense story indicates that both women left around the same time.

If the timestamps on the photos are valid—a big “if,” mind you—it would also confirm the timeline as being closer to my speculative timeline, because it has the women gone from the house by 12:15 or so, putting them who-knows-where for the next hour and change until they show up at Kroger. The timestamps also would turn the nosy neighbor’s account of the times he saw/heard things into complete garbage.

The other question—where did the guys go? Assume they broke up the party by 12:30; Ryan McFadyen doesn’t send his idiotic email for another 90 minutes, give or take. Some probably went home. Did some of them go to their reputed hangout, Charlie’s, just a few blocks to the west? Witnesses?

I went shopping today at Southpoint, and outside Barnes and Noble a street performer called “Juggleboy” was, um, juggling, with some Eurotrash rock in the background. I was 99% tempted to shout “it’s not a trick, it’s an ILLUSION!” at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t want to be evicted from the property. Plus, nobody would have gotten it anyway…

Thanks to Silflay Hraka and John in Carolina for their kind words and links; both have interesting posts of their own on the Duke lacrosse rape allegations (which I linked earlier this sentence) that are worth reading.

Steven Taylor and Bryan S. take different sides on the issue of leaks; I think Bryan has the better argument:

“Unnamed Sources” damage the credibility of journalists, who often use such sources on stories that have absolutely no real need for such anonymous sourcing. From a political perspective, leaking is not so problematic. From the journalism perspective, it is a cancer on the Washington press corps, which has shown itself craven by not refusing such charades.

On the lighter side, Joy went to see Death Cab and Franz Ferdinand on Saturday night and has reactions to the evening. Now if I can just get tickets for Jimmy Eat World’s next tour my belated transformation into an emo kid will be complete.

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?

An interesting passage from this week’s Newsweek article on the case:

Two sources close to the team, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that the e-mail was a reference to a movie called “American Psycho.” In the movie, which the sources described as a cult favorite that had been viewed by a number of players on the team, a Wall Street banker goes crazy and kills several women, though possibly only in his dreams. After seeing the e-mail, sent on McFadyen’s e-mail account, one of the team members remarked, “I’ll bring the Phil Collins music,” the sources said. In “American Psycho,” the killer delivers a tribute to the music of pop singer Collins as he cavorts with intended victims.

The sources suggested that the e-mail was intended as an ironic joke. If so, that may say something about the humor of Duke lacrosse players. College students, and not just athletes, can be astonishingly raunchy and degraded in their recreational behavior. Interestingly, McFadyen was seen at a Take Back the Night rally held by Duke students protesting sexual violence and the alleged rape itself two weeks after the incident.

Advantage, SN.

Sunday’s Herald-Sun reports that attorneys for players accused in the Duke lacrosse rape case have photos taken at the party that contradict the victim’s account of events:

The photos show the woman attempting to get back inside the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. where the attack allegedly occurred on the night of March 13–14, said attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the lacrosse players.

“She had a big smile on her face,” Thomas said.

Then the woman fell down at the back door of the house and lay on the ground “for quite some time” as if she were intoxicated or asleep, Thomas added.

In addition, the time-stamped photos indicate the woman was severely bruised on her legs and face, and had cuts on her legs, knees and feet when she arrived at the home—and before the rape allegedly occurred—Thomas said.

One wonders if the photos siezed by the police in their two searches are consistent with—or contradict—these. Without some serious forensic investigation of the source media, forging the timestamps on pictures to make them look like they were taken at a time other than when they actually were is almost trivial. And even if the woman did arrive at the party with visible bruising and cuts, that doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t raped at the party.

Another story looks at the trial-by-media atmosphere surrounding the case.

At the Herald-Sun’s competitor, in the silence of Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong, the News & Observer tries its hand at a bit of jury tampering of its own:

But taken as a body of work, the charges track the noisy passage of a championship lacrosse team with a reputation for a swaggering sense of entitlement and privilege. They underscore the hard-drinking image of the Duke lacrosse team—which some residents say is a super-sized version of the university’s elitist, party-hearty ethos.

“There is a culture at Duke of an entitlement to be drunk in the evenings and on the weekends,” said Robert Panoff, a former Notre Dame club lacrosse player who has lived for more than a decade in Trinity Park, the neighborhood on the edge of Duke’s east campus where the lacrosse team captains lived.

“That’s the attitude that pervades the Duke campus, and it’s not just the lacrosse team,” said Panoff, founder and executive director of a nonprofit research and education organization. “There is a particular swagger at Duke. Is there a particular machismo and variation of that swagger on the lacrosse team? Absolutely.”

Panoff is quick to point out that lacrosse is not a monolithic culture. But for other Durham residents, the lacrosse imbroglio has raised racial tensions.

Although it’s not a huge deal at this point, WRAL has confirmed defense claims that the woman responsible for the first 911 call (allegedly from passersby complaining about people at the house at 610 Buchanan using the “n-word” in reference to them) is the same woman identified as “Kim” heard in the background of the second 911 call from the Kroger security guard. WRAL also indicates that police have interviewed “Kim,” but no specifics from the interview have been divulged, although presumably the timeline of events in the two search warrants are based on the accounts of Kim and the alleged victim.

This clarifies one question I received today from a reader, who wondered why the police or DA had not made a specific appeal for the first 911 caller to come forward, even though having an additional eyewitness to the party would have been helpful.

It also raises a second question that’s been swirling around in my head. This account, like all others, says she “only met the victim that night at 610 North Buchanan.” They worked for separate agencies, and presumably didn’t know that the other was going to be there. Yet both women left in “Kim’s” car—this seems indisputable; in fact, it’s about the only thing everyone agrees on besides the existence of the party. How did the victim get to 610 North Buchanan at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday night? DATA? Taxi? Did she drive herself, or get a ride? The warrants are of no help; neither lists “car keys” as an item to be located, and while the first warrant included a “purse” as an item to be searched for, none was located.

Just another of those little puzzle pieces that’s bothering me… and it’s probably insignificant.

Tonight’s concert featuring Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab for Cutie was great, and well worth the 25 bucks, even if I think I was about the oldest person in my section—and I’m even not that old. It was particularly nice to see Duke undergraduates behaving like the vast, vast majority of Duke undergrads do when they’re not hitting the books—having a good time with their friends while behaving like responsible young men and women. Normally I wouldn’t comment on such things, but after the last few weeks it bears noting.

If you’re new to the blog, all of the posts related to the Duke lacrosse investigation are here. Please also read below the fold for a few groundrules.

I recommend the CourtTV discussion board for this case if you want to discuss the intricacies of the evidence.