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.

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?

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.

The boss just suggested a new tagline for the blog: “All lacrosse dicks, all the time.” I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty catchy.

I’m hoping, though, that I’ll soon be able to return to sane, normal stuff like mocking Chronicle articles on freshman student dining and inane student op-eds. Somehow, though, I suspect that Mike Nifong won’t let me off the hook that easily.

Boston Cote today proves that you can get a Duke education and turn out to be more intelligent than at least one of the college’s tenured faculty members:

On MSNBC, Rita Cosby pressed [professor of English and African-American Studies Houston] Baker for a practical solution in begging the question “what should be done?” Given his chance to finally say something constructive, Baker simply replied that we need “a restoration of confidence” in our institution.

I’m sorry, but that is not a practical solution. That’s not even an appropriate response to the question at hand. A “restoration of confidence” is not an action that “should be done.” A “restoration of confidence” is a consequence of what can be done. And unlike Brodhead, nowhere in his open letter or in his many media appearances did Baker offer a sensible proposal for how the University can help restore confidence in its intellectual or academic mission without resorting to the eradication of athletic programs.

Individuals and groups that feel slighted by the University’s moderate response to the allegations ought to be more proactive in their criticisms. It is shamelessly insufficient to claim: “The University has not done enough! Enough steps have not been taken!” Protesters ought to be drafting recommendations-not asking pointless rhetorical questions and answering them with more pointless rhetorical questions. Because frankly: You. Aren’t. Helping.

The rest of today’s Chronicle coverage is pretty meh; go and read it if you like, I don’t care. In big media, the situation is worse; the Herald-Sun at least is continuing to cover the story, but a look at the front page of the News & Observer website would leave you wondering if there were anything going on at Duke at all.

Well, well, well—it turns out that Durham’s going to have to shoulder at least some of the blame for the “out of control” student population in the neighborhoods around East; most egregious paragraph in bold:

[Council member Thomas] Stith’s point about a crackdown addressed neighborhood complaints that lax [not lacrosse – ed.] code enforcement by the city has contributed to a party atmosphere on the edge of campus.

In addition to police, who deal with overt disturbances of the peace, the job of enforcing Durham’s regulations belongs to the City/County Planning Department and the city Department of Housing and Community Development. The planning office handles zoning matters, while the housing department probes violations of Durham’s minimum housing code.

City/County Planning Director Frank Duke said Thursday that his department hadn’t received or investigated any complaints about 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in the past four years, and had handled only two complaints targeting houses anywhere on North Buchanan Boulevard in that time.

Both those complaints targeted homes on the 700 block. One alleged that a house had too many occupants, but was dismissed because the landlord proved he was entitled to an exception because the practice was entrenched long before the city established a maximum number of occupants, Duke said.

The other alleged that Duke students living in a house had posted commercial beer signs on the building. Inspectors upheld the complaint and made the students remove the signs, Duke said.

A similar accounting was not forthcoming Thursday from the housing department.

Its director, Mike Barros, said he’d forwarded an inquiry from The Herald-Sun e-mailed to him on Tuesday to his assistant director, Constance Stancil, and that she was looking into the matter.

So, we have private property owners and leaseholders of legal contract age, and yet the university gets the blame for the rowdy behavior that goes on outside its jurisdiction. A pox on all my neighbors, student and Townie alike.

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.

This just in to SN: the Herald-Sun reports that men’s lacrosse coach Mike Pressler has resigned and that the administration has decided to cancel the remainder of the lacrosse season, presumably in light of the latest developments in the case. The implication is also that Ryan McFadyen has been suspended from school on an interim basis, although apparently a direct statement of that action would violate FERPA.

More from the Chronicle here; brief statements from President Richard Brodhead and AD Joe Alleva are also online.

Brendan Nyhan points out a Charlotte Observer story that says that the alleged victim’s father went on Rita Cosby on Monday night and claimed that she had conclusively identified all three attackers. Brendan asks why 43 other players were asked to give DNA samples, but my question’s a little more fundamental: if three guys have really been picked out by the victim, why on earth aren’t they in jail? Then again, the father could be wrong.

Well, now we know what that search in Edens 2C was all about:

Police obtained an e-mail from a confidential source sent from [Ryan] McFadyen’s Duke e-mail address March 14 at 1:58 a.m., right after the party.

“After tonight’s show, i’ve decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c,” the writer of the e-mail wrote, noting, however, there would be no nudity. “i plan on killing the [bitches] as soon as [they] walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while [ejaculating] in my duke issue spandex.” [I slightly unredacted the Chronicle version of the quote here.]

Lovely. On the bright side, at least there would have been no nudity. And what’s up with the spandex reference?

The News & Observer provides their version of the story, which reports the defense angle on things:

Joe Cheshire, a lawyer representing one of the team captains, said the e-mail helps support the team's story. Team members told police, according to Cheshire, that they hired women to dance and those women left the party early.

"This e-mail, while the wording of it is, at best, unfortunate, if you read this e-mail and you also are aware of other e-mails that exist contemporaneous with these events, it's quite clear that no rape happened in that house," Cheshire said. "These boys were frustrated because they, as is already been reported, they thought these women had come and taken a bunch of money and started dancing and just decided to leave."…

Cheshire and other defense lawyers involved in the case have been critical of Nifong's public statements. He said the unsealing of the warrant today shows desperation on the part of investigators.

"If you see this case with things the police have not released, you see this case in a different light than the prosecutor going out there and saying, ‘they're guilty,'" Cheshire said. "Is it a horrible e-mail? Yes. Does it make the writer look good as a human being? Are there all kinds of moral and social issues that can be discussed about what went on that night? This e-mail does not in any way shape or form show that there was a violent sexual act that went on in that house. I would tell you that it in fact shows the opposite."

Sure, Joe, whatever…

Perhaps of more interest: the warrant for this search has more details on the allegations and the list of items siezed, including $60 cash and “piece of paper in vehicle — suckie suckie $5.00.” It also includes the full text of McFadyen’s email on page 7 of the warrant (I've adjusted the blockquote above accordingly).

Update: Aquaman writes:

I don't think this e-mail's author raped anyone. But the damage he's done to himself is just staggering. Think about it -- any future employer will Google him and find this. …

The author went to the prestigious Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, before moving on to Duke. Both schools are probably in the process of removing all web mentions of him right now.

The lesson? Save your insane ramblings and scary threats for the phone.

Update 2: There is some speculation here that the quote is a riff on something from either American Psycho or Fight Club; having seen neither, I cannot judge, but it certainly wouldn’t have been out of place based on these quotes from American Psycho. Not really sure that helps McFadyen’s case all that much, though.

Update 3: A commenter at Through a Glass Darkly says that the “suckie suckie $5.00” reference is from South Park.

UD points to today’s New York Times, which finds that one of the Duke lacrosse players physically assaulted a man in Georgetown last fall and is currently in a diversionary sentencing program. Now, if only Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong could figure out some way to use this information to help him investigate the case (he allegedly went to law school—so hopefully he can figure this one out on his own), we might finally get somewhere.

Elsewhere, DukeObsrvr moves into new digs, the Chronicle editorial board takes shots at Nifong (stealing my schtick), a theme echoed in the letters to the editor, and the state NAACP president valiantly tries to make his organization relevant for the first time in a decade or so.

NCAA stooge Myles Brand, who may now become a leading contender for Captain Obvious, reacts to the Duke lacrosse rape allegations thusly:

NCAA president Myles Brand said behavior at a Duke men’s lacrosse party last month was inappropriate, regardless of whether the alleged assault of an exotic dancer results in criminal charges.

Meanwhile, people are joining together in support of the alleged victim and feeling the love over at NC Central:

“There’s a lot of potential violence once Central students really grab hold of this,” said Jami Hyman, a freshman from Winston-Salem. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got shot or something.”

With comments like that, I’d be in retreat too.

Finally, we see a classic example of everyone reading whatever they want into the situation; case in point, Old North Durham neighborhood ringleader John Schelp manages to work in his peeve about "campus retail plans," his codeword for the Central Campus Redevelopment project, which some Righteous Townies think is a Duke Plot masterminded by Nan Keohane, Dick Brodhead, Tallman Trask, and the Trilateral Commission to wipe out the 9th Street retail corridor (such as it is) rather than a much-needed effort by the university to replace the armpit of campus with something vaguely aesthetic.

It’s another day without any satellite trucks parked in front of the Duke Chapel. A return to normalcy, or the eye of the storm? I don’t care; I have to deal with some grading and Duke’s IRB. Priorities, priorities.

Your daily Chronicle fix includes a report on Monday’s protest at North Carolina Central University, the historically-black public university where the alleged victim of the Duke lacrosse rape was a part-time student, a look at the effects, or lack thereof, on student recruitment, and a sports columnist ponders the value of non-revenue sports like men’s lacrosse in the wake of the rape allegations.

Last, but not least, go read the op-ed page, because fundamentally I’m too lazy to add all the links.

A couple of Duke lacrosse-related links for your edification before I turn in: a pseudononymous student posts his lengthy reaction, while Provost Peter Lange and Prof. Houston Baker have a frank exchange of views.

I generally make it a policy not to discuss, directly or obliquely, students in this blog. That said, I think I need to stake out a few positions (particularly for people who are new readers).

First and foremost, I tend to have a very snarky aspect of my personality that gets emphasized in the blog. You may find it inappropriate given the weighty subject matter of this case, but it’s just how I treat more or less everything that gets discussed here—most of all myself.

Let me make something else clear at the outset: I have no qualms about students—even those under the legal drinking age—consuming alcohol (or other drugs) in a responsible, restrained manner. I also have no objection to adults purchasing the services of other adult escorts, “private party performers,” and the like for fully consensual activities. I fundamentally subscribe to the libertarian harm principle—if one’s actions don’t cause harm to others, they should be legal. (This doesn’t resolve all issues or legality or morality, but it covers those at least.)

What is perfectly clear at this point is that the young men present at the party at 610 Buchanan (who may or may not be the same set of individuals as the men’s lacrosse team) behaved extremely poorly and went beyond the boundaries of good taste. It is also clear that there is strong evidence that the alleged victim experienced physical trauma consistent with rougher-than-typical sex, perhaps even rape. What is not perfectly clear at this point is that this woman was raped by three men who were at this party, much less three members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team.

There are a number of troubling aspects to the evidence in this case, many of which revolve around the timeline of events. We are to believe that at least 40 people disappeared completely from a house in a residential neighborhood in less than eight minutes (by the neighbor’s account), perhaps as few as two minutes (if the “passerby” responsible for the first 911 call was actually at the scene at the time the call was made and is not, as is widely believed, the driver/second performer), with nobody seeing where they went. We are also to believe that the driver waited outside for around 30 minutes for the alleged victim to emerge from the house, after already fleeing said house after hearing racial slurs and the subject of the broomstick was broached, apparently without the slightest curiosity about what was taking so long. We are also to believe that the driver and the victim decided to go on a 20-minute cruise through west Durham, in the opposite direction of the victim’s home, after the victim was allegedly assaulted.

Another aspect of the case that’s troubling is what was found—and not found—at the home on 610 Buchanan. The DA has asserted that the DNA evidence in the case may be insignificant because the attackers may have used condoms—yet no condoms were found, despite the police finding a veritable treasure trove of evidence left behind by the alleged victim. If there had been a rape at the house, would they get rid of the condoms—but not anything else, including the false nails that (according to the victim’s account) could have skin cells from one of the attackers? In addition, the most celebrated piece of evidence—the bottle of K-Y jelly—doesn’t even appear on the search warrant as an item to be siezed, even though it is an item you would think would have been mentioned in the victim’s account of the events.

The behavior of the county’s district attorney in the case has also been, to put it mildly, disturbing. He has sought DNA evidence from 46 people, potentially in violation of state law and the U.S. Constitution, then discounted whether the evidence will actually have any probitive value. If the victim had identified an attacker or attackers from the photos of the team members (which were available to Durham police from the Duke athletics website), the dragnet was inappropriate; if she hadn’t, that would be reasonably strong evidence than none of the lacrosse team members were responsible.

He has also insinuated that team members’ decisions to avail themselves of their constitutional right to legal counsel is somehow an effort to obstruct justice in the case. And, his interest in appearing before the cameras somehow dries up when he is asked to respond to these serious issues.

All that said, I’ll tell you something: the victim is probably telling the truth, and she probably was raped that evening (I don’t know if it happened at 610 Buchanan; it may have happened before or after she came to the house, perhaps even at the hands of other perpetrators). But the idiotic behavior of Mike Nifong and her companion that evening has poked enough holes in her case that, in the absence of DNA evidence, it is going to be exceedingly unlikely for anyone to be convicted in this case.

The one exception, of course, is if the “wall of silence” breaks down. I suspect, however, given Nifong’s tactics in this case, it will not. The African-American and Trinity Park communities in Durham are looking for scapegoats, and in the absence of DNA evidence anyone at that party (or on the team, save the lone black player) can be a scapegoat. My guess is that a conviction for obstruction of justice and underage drinking is much more appealing to these kids than the possibility of facing rape charges against a jury full of Righteous Townies, even if the jury verdict doesn’t hold up on appeal.

Of course, the acid test will be next week, when Nifong claims (at least now) that he will file charges. But I will be very surprised if he can identify three—and only three—alleged rapists.

Since there’s no real news today (again, doubtless because Mike Nifong is well away from the nearest camera), here’s the latest on the media navel-gazing.

Rush Limbaugh has helpfully lived up to his reputation as a big fat idiot by referring to the alleged victim in the case as a “ho.” Yet another person to add to the pile of media morons loosely connected with this case.

Meanwhile, another media crapstorm has emerged as the News and Observer’s public editor takes the paper to task for its decision to publish an unrebutted interview last week with the alleged victim in the case, a choice defended by the paper’s executive editor. One wonders about this little tidbit of the editor’s response:

We took care in editing the story not to introduce new accusations—the basics were the same as in police reports, which had already been made public.

This would seem to indicate that the alleged victim had additional accusations beyond those previously alleged—you don’t need to be careful if no more accusations were made.

In other N&O business, John in North Carolina notes that a person claiming to be the mother of one of the members of the lacrosse team has posted a comment to the blog of the paper’s Metro columnist, Ruth “Don’t Call Me Cindy” Sheehan, who has taken to the paper’s pages on two occasions to excorciate the whole men’s lacrosse team.

There’s two rape investigation stories in today’s Duke Chronicle: probably the more interesting is this piece by Ryan McCartney, which looks at what the other half thinks of Duke. Included is what may rate as a candidate for Dumb Townie Quote of the Day:

“Most people have been upset about what’s happened in those houses for a long time,” said Trinity Heights resident Wendy Goldstein. “It’s almost like it’s over the wall-it’s the city’s problem.”

I’ve got news for you, Ms. Goldstein: over the wall, it is the city’s problem. These young people are legally adults, and they live on private property. It’s up to the city—not the Duke University administration—to be the primary enforcers of zoning regulations, noise ordinances, and the state alcohol laws. These kids are bad neighbors, by and large, because the City of Durham lets them get away with being bad neighbors by failing to enforce the existing housing codes and the like against the property owners and tenants.

In the other story, Adam Eaglin fills in the details on the reported assault on two Duke students at the Cook Out restaurant on Hillsborough Road, as well as reporting that Duke plans to continue the stepped-up DPD presence around the campus perimeter indefinitely. A sidebar also looks at the legality of the mass DNA testing that was ordered in the case.

On the op-ed front, the editorial board thinks some campus protesters have lost their grip on reality, while columns from Sara Oliver and Daniel Bowes are also worth a read. Finally, Jack Bauer’s Bidet has choice words for many principals and extraneous figures in the case.

In the blogosphere, dukeobsrvr links to the latest in anti-Righteous Townie fashion. I’m pretty sure you won’t be seeing those at the Duck Shop.

Today’s theme is alcohol; UD points to Allison Clarke’s lengthy post on the culture of drinking at Duke, while Paul Bonner of the Herald-Sun catches up with William Willimon, the former dean of Duke Chapel who wrote a report on Duke’s drinking culture in the early 1990s.

Elsewhere in the legacy media, Newsday reports that attorneys for the lacrosse team members plan to release the DNA test results, even if Righteous Townie AD Mike Nifong doesn’t, the New York Times reports that the alleged victim has joined the lacrosse captains in self-imposed exile from their homes due to the media attention, and Filip Bondy whines in the New York Daily News that he can’t get any juicy quotes from the women’s basketball team, who presumably have better things to do than opine about the rape allegations to ninth-tier sports reporters who normally don’t give a shit about women’s college basketball (or lacrosse, for that matter).

Since Nifong is away from the cameras much of this week, I don’t expect any major developments… but I’ll keep an eye on things nonetheless.

Here’s the Newsweek story, which surprisingly is the first I’ve seen that quotes a student I happen to teach, while Bryan notes that it’s made Outside the Lines, the weekly program where ESPN pretends (mostly unsuccessfully) that it can cover serious sports news.

Meanwhile, the Herald-Sun reports that some students on the men’s lacrosse team, in addition to facing past charges for such common collegiate misdemeanors like underage drinking and public urination, had the temerity to not be all they could be in a class on Native American history:

History professor Peter Wood said Saturday he complained to athletic department representatives after it seemed to him a group of half a dozen or so men’s lacrosse players didn’t take one of his classes seriously in the spring semester of 2004.

The course was a survey of Native American history that Wood said has been popular among lacrosse players because of the sport’s roots in American Indian culture.

Wood’s unhappiness with what happened in the spring 2004 class focused on what he termed the players’ “lack of engagement in classroom activities and discussions, and giving priority to unnecessary athletic commitments created by the coaching staff, such as a practice called during class time at 10 a.m. on a Friday.”

The professor didn’t put his concerns in writing and now wishes he had done more at the time.

Wow, student athletes slacking off. I’m shocked and appalled that such things might ever go on at a college campus, and even more shocked and appalled that this phenomenon is apparently unique to student athletes in Wood’s experience. I look forward to other stunning revelations, like names of the lacrosse players who have speeding tickets, the list of scofflaws who had to go to detention once in 10th grade, and a report detailing the kids who didn’t file to pay the state sales tax on their Amazon.com purchases over the past year.

No news per se, so it’s time to do what American society always does on Sundays—sit around and let a bunch of pundits reanalyze the week that was:

Chris at Outside Report (no relation) notes the politics surrounding the case, describing Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong’s newfound role as the White Avenger:

Even though there are several problems with the timeline of events with the rape story, the lacrosse members have already been convicted in the court of public opinion. Ever since this incident, Mike Nifong has been on TV and in the local Durham papers nonstop discussing this case and its implications. He and the police have kept this story overtly vague while leaving little doubt of the Duke lacrosse members’ guilt. The entire rape scandal has been a boon of free press and publicity for incumbent Mike Nifong who I frankly had never heard of before this scandal.

Now, we have word that Nifong won’t release the results of the DNA test and won’t file charges until April 10th. Curiously, that is even closer to the May 2nd primary and will keep him in the papers and on television for another two weeks. Duke students are too oblivious to read the local papers or know a single thing going on in Durham, thus I’m sure none of the lawyers or the national press recognize this political element to the story.

While Duke did not handle this story in the best way, the DA office published this story without any mention of the doubts as if though it had been true. In many ways, its a brilliant political move in Durham, where whites and blacks are equally divided in population (48% white/40% black). The one thing that all Durhamites hate (particularly black Durhamites) is Duke. Nifong has won alot of African-American friends in his strident attack on the Duke elites.

Steve Donohue notes a weird quote in Greg Garber’s latest ESPN.com report:

“North Carolina is the Bible Belt, and a fair amount of folks in the black community feel the sexual attack was something the young woman brought on herself,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke associate professor who teaches black pop culture in the African-American Studies Department. “On a certain level, they’re most concerned with the racial epithets.”

Wow, I really hope that isn’t true. I’ve said that certain aspects of the story have seemed fishy since the very beginning, but if the rape accusations are true, then the most serious aspect of the story isn’t that some rich white kids called black people “niggers”. Yes, nasty racial language isn’t decent or proper, and I wish the word stricken from the English vocabulary posthaste. But think about how horrible that is: if the girl was raped, she sorta deserved it because she was an exotic dancer? I just can’t believe that many people in any community would say, “sure, a girl may have been violated in the most severe possible way, but listen to what they said!”

Last, but not least, Lisa of A Complete Bunch of Pants has a theory as to why Larry Moneta decided to disseminate the “gang threat” rumors. Then again, maybe people are rightfully jumpy after a reported attack on two students in west Durham and a bizarre pair of shootings in Walltown, several blocks north of East Campus.

Lisa also says that Jill Hopman, who wrote this commentary in Monday’s Chronicle, has been banned from Charlie’s. Makes me half-tempted to go over there and do some reporting of my own.

This AP story does a reasonably good job of dissecting the stereotypes and reality surrounding Duke and the wider community in the wake of the rape allegations against the lacrosse team. Also, WRAL tonight carried an interview with a female Duke student athlete who stood behind the team; a snippet of her interview is quoted in this piece that mostly focuses on the threat of gang violence against Duke students.

Another question from my growing mental file: my suspicion is that people who would commit a gang-rape are typically not first-time rapists. Even if that’s not the case, if we are to believe the statistics on rape—that one in four women have been raped in their lifetime, and that most rapes are committed by people who know the victim—I can’t imagine that not one of the 47 lacrosse players (or one of 47 other randomly-selected males, for that matter) haven’t raped someone in their lives. So where are the other rape victims? This has been national news for a week, and not a single additional woman has come forward claiming that one of these guys has raped her. I don’t know that it matters in terms of the credibility of these charges, but it just seems weird in and of itself.

Brendan Nyhan has a link to a timeline compiled by the News and Observer that incorporates the observations of neighbor Jason Bissey.

Meanwhile, Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong has apparently decided that fiddling while Durham burns is going to be his primary strategy in the case. When’s that Democratic primary again?

Apparently the local gang community has made what are believed to be credible threats of drive-by shootings targeting Duke students living off East Campus, according to the Chronicle and a Duke press release.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is not a good sign.

Update: Another link for the insomniacs: TalkLeft also takes note of the timeline inconsistencies.

(I initially drafted this as a comment to a post at Brendan Nyhan’s blog, but it’s gotten pretty unwieldy so I’ll just post it here. Note that it is somewhat speculative, but I think it fits the established facts. “Woman 1” is the alleged victim of the rape, “Woman 2” is the other exotic dancer.)

My plausible timeline works something like this:

• Party happens, although it’s not exactly established when. The neighbors could put a rough time on the “cotton shirt” comment, at the very least. This should be in the witness statement to police.
• Women leave, lax players skedaddle afterwards. This has to take some time.
• Woman 2 decides to make first 911 call from somewhere in Durham to get lax players in trouble with police, not knowing lax players are on Franklin Street (or who knows where) by now. Maybe Woman 1 has told Woman 2 she left stuff in 610 house, and figures if cops are competent they’ll look around and find it. (Knowing the exact address—even if the numbers were actually removed between the incident and today—does seem a bit odd for a mere passerby; I doubt you could read the address at night in the dark from the street even if the numbers were still there, as Buchanan is not a very well-lit street.)
• Police show up immediately, are mystified that nobody is there, find evidence of a party earlier, interview neighbors, then leave.
• Women venture out to Hillsborough Rd Kroger, in West Durham near 15-501, the opposite direction in town from where most African-Americans live, to do something (I can’t imagine they were there for groceries). Woman 2 goes inside Kroger, leaving Woman 1 in car parked in fire lane. Kroger security guy finds Woman 1 in car, calls 911. Woman 2 comes back to car, finds Kroger guard on phone, has to tell what happened.

This timeline doesn’t preclude the possibility of an assault, but it does put it quite a bit earlier than the first 911 call. Or it puts it somewhere other than the 610 house (Edens Quad?).

Unsolved mysteries: why leave everything in 610 house for 2 days—clearly one player was there when the warrant was served (he’s listed as the person receiving the inventory)? What did the police find in the room in Edens Quad and the Edens student’s car? (Related: What lax team members live in the specified room in Edens, if any?)

The victim claims she scratched one of the alleged rapists on the arm, so which (if any) of the 46 lax players had abraisons on their arms? I can’t believe the cops didn’t check this when they were all called in for the DNA testing—which, given the latest out of Nifong and DPD, may have just been a ruse to get everyone in so they could look for the scratches.

Why are two women who allegedly don’t know each other driving around Durham together for at least 20 minutes? Kroger on Hillsborough is 5–10 minutes from Buchanan and Markham at 1 am, and a straight shot west on Markham until it turns into Hillsborough. If you were looking for a drug store or grocery store, there are closer ones (Food Lion on Hillsborough near Erwin Mill Tower, Rite Aid and Walgreens further west nearer Kroger).

This whole thing is damned peculiar. Not that everything needs to add up for the rape allegations to be true, but if there’s no DNA and the women aren’t credible on the timeline, Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong’s going to have some real trouble prosecuting this thing, particularly once Nifong narrows down the suspects and they get good high-priced lawyers who can start poking holes in this investigation and his jury pool tampering and borderline unethical conduct—for example, I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules for a prosecutor to assert that people who have been targeted by an investigation and hired lawyers must have something to hide.

Elsewhere, Timothy Burke ponders the “cotton shirt” comment, while Doug Wright thinks other important issues may be lost in the shuffle if the rape allegations turn out to be false (or at least unproveable). Out in the dead tree media universe, the Chronicle reports on the media circus; there’s also a good op-ed by Boston Cote in today’s paper. Last, but not least, UD offers the following suggestion:

The school needs to shut down most of its other operations for awhile and reopen as a rehab unit.