Thursday, 6 April 2006

Duke under siege, day twelve: the defense story emerges

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.

Saturday, 8 April 2006

WRAL confirms first 911 caller definitely second dancer

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.

Sunday, 9 April 2006

Duke under siege, day fourteen: defense claims photos exculpatory

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.

More on the photos

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?

Wednesday, 19 April 2006

Some defense photos now online

NBC 17 has posted seven photos from the night of the alleged attack, as shown on MSNBC’s The Abrams Report this afternoon; these are part of the same set of photos taken at the party and previously described to the press and seen by various news outlets over the past week or so.