<p>What is interesting to me about the conference is how much Mr. Burness talked about how much the media was to blame for all this… But with stories like the one in Newsday as well as anecdotal accounts of Mr. Burness’ “off the record” activities and the horrid way Duke communicated with government officials, I am left wondering why our senior vice president for public affairs and government relations is surprised.</p>
<p>That’s nice. Although it would have been better if he’d admitted that he was afraid to stand up to the forces of political correctness.</p>
<p>From Burness’ bio on the Duke public affairs page:
I just found it funny that a white haired man would still be mentioning making the Dean’s List as an undergrad on his bio…</p>
<p>On page 28 of last Sunday’s New York Times, right opposite the page where the obituaries were, at the very bottom was a news item almost exactly the size of a 3-by-5 card.
It was a fraction of an Associated Press dispatch about Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, apologizing for “not having better supported” the Duke lacrosse players last year when they were accused of rape.
When this story first broke last year, it was big news not only on the front page of the New York Times but on the editorial page as well.
The way things were discussed in both places, you could hardly help coming away with the conclusion that the students were guilty as sin. But now that the president of Duke University apologizes for the way he handled the case, that gets buried on page 28 at the bottom, opposite the obituaries.</p>
<p>Read full story </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/columbia_duke_and_the_media.html[/url]”>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/columbia_duke_and_the_media.html</a></p>
<p>If the document the Herald-Sun received detailing events in March of 2006 are accurate then all the comments about too many lawsuits and too much money look pretty foolish.</p>
<p>DukeEgr93 it looks like Duke has a lot of explaining to do. You have Duke officials at a March 29, 2006 meeting where the conspiring to deprive Duke students of their civil rights may have been discussed. When you walk around Durham and Duke you are in the presence of true evil.</p>
<p>“When you walk around Durham and Duke you are in the presence of true evil.”</p>
<p>— aren’t you being a little dramatic? After all, isn’t this exactly what the other side was saying about Duke’s athletes just a few months ago?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Remember all the talk about Mike Nifong being a rogue prosecutor? It looks more and more like a large number of people were involved. Mayor “Bell urged police to expedite a resolution to the case partly because he worried that racial unrest could erupt, he acknowledged Tuesday” according to Ray Gronberg of The Herald-Sun today. You have to know the code. He didn’t mean we don’t have enough evidence stop investigating he meant find somebody to charge.</p>
<p>parentofbear~I’m not sure I’m reading the HS article the same way you are. The article mentions that he (Bell) had gotten complaints from Burness about the way the lax players were characterized as uncooperative with the police, and after the meeting with Himan and Gottlieb and City Manager Baker, the police ended up issuing a statement correcting that (to some degree) to say that the captains had voluntarily gone in for questioning and DNA testing. The other two officials from Duke who met with the police were security people, not Burness or Brodhead. They met with them after the police and Bell had had their meeting–probably to indicate that they were issuing the correction about the players’ lack of cooperation. There is no indication that they were conspiring with the Duke police about anything. </p>
<p>S1 does not feel that he is in the presence of true evil when he walks around Duke or Durham. He loves Duke, and has had a good time getting to know some of the people of Durham through community service and other interactions. You need to be closer to both before you make statements like that.</p>
<p>I think there are a spectrum of people - ranging from intentionally unethical to unintentionally naive - who have made and acted on a spectrum of poor decisions - ranging from utterly beneath contempt to the utterly inexplicable. It’s going to take some time to sort all that out, but I don’t think a walking tour of Duke or of Durham puts you in the midst of evil… </p>
<p>I can’t read too much into a meeting between Duke and Durham police - whenever Duke students are suspects in a crime I would like to think that the city and the school would meet to figure things out. Bell’s response to the publication of the timeline wasn’t too convincing; part of my support for the Lacrosse lawsuits is the fact that Durham officials have made it quite clear they are not willing to use sunlight as a disinfectant for what ails the city and county…</p>
<p>True Evil is the complete disregard for the rule of law. You dont feel it you discover it. Generally simple through detective work finds it. Twice I encountered one truly evil person Randall Woodfield (the I-5 Bandit 19 murders). Once before he started his killing spree and once after but before he was caught. I never knew and neither did the Green Bay Packers when they drafted him in 1974. We discovered it later after a lot detective work was done. </p>
<p>Ive sat across conference tables with people who believed they only violated a small part of a law or looked the other way when someone else was. These people believe they can pick and choose what laws they obey. These people have small amounts of evil in them. </p>
<p>It is now obvious that if Crystal Magnum was the victim of a crime on March 14, 2006 that by the end of the day on March 29, 2006 no Duke Lacrosse player was responsible. Add up everything that happened from March 30, 2006 to the present and tell me these events happened without an intentional disregard of procedures, rules and laws. </p>
<p>The City of Durham and Duke University seem to have a lot of people who did just a little wrong. And some people who did a lot wrong. Add it up True Evil.</p>
<p>irishforever</p>
<p>I havent talked to any students about Duke this month but its only the 4th. There are many very good reasons to cross the country to attend Duke competent administrators just arent one of them. And Ive been on campus enough. Durham’s issues arent any different than Portlands in the seventies only the names and facts. Corruption is corruption. Durham seems to have less mysterious fires and policemen dying though, my complements. </p>
<p>DukeEgr93
Dont take that tour to City Hall, Police Services or the District Attorneys Office and when youre on campus be careful of what Administrative you visit.</p>
<p>I have to admit: I find this fascinating. I’m a real lawyer (don’t play one on TV) and I have had some experience in criminal cases at the trial court level years ago and a lot of experience at the appellate level currently. I see how cases develop - routine cases, nothing you folks would ever hear about. This case was not that different from other cases which result in convictions. And most - but not all - of the people convicted in cases not much different from this one were actually guilty. The criminal justice system is operated by human beings, and is sloppy, inefficient, and prone to routine human error and misjudgments. It’s not like “CSI.” </p>
<p>I see the many overwrought posts on this case as being examples of the “White woman in peril” phenomenon: The travails of attractive individuals who could well be our friends, or neighbors, or even our own children are perceived as being incredibly significant and unique, while objectively similar (or even more serious) events happening to other people who don’t fit that description pass unnoticed. </p>
<p>I think Mike Nifong and his investigators actually thought the LAX players were guilty in the beginning, and they were reluctant to change that opinion despite the lack of corroborating evidence. In real life, when people “follow their gut” they are prone to being wrong, unlike on TV. I’ve said for months that ascribing this case to the “black hat bad guy” theory of explaining the world is a mistake. </p>
<p>The cure for what happened in Durham is professionalism, not exorcism. It wasn’t “evil” that caused the problem, it was ignoring professional standards in pursuit of a belief that failed to meet appropriate standards of proof because it was, as it turned out, untrue. Adherence to proper procedure by the prosecutor’s office would have prevented what happened - and not just in this case involving young men who look a lot like my own sons, but in every case that office handles.</p>
<p>kluge - I have to respectfully, but entirely, disagree with you. Nifong’s investigator, very early, when asked to indict someone, said, “With What?” Nifong was reluctant to change his mind despite evidence not because he thought they might be guilty, but because he knew they needed to be for him to beat his opponents in the primary and then for him to beat an empty chair in the election. This goes beyond “adherence to proper procedure,” this is a 27-year veteran of this DA’s office willfully (no…gleefully) giving prejudicial public statements, willfully acting in contempt of court, and willfully, as James Coleman said, “mooning justice.”</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that the secondary motivation for pursuing indictments was a driving factor - but again, the cure for that is professionalism. A DA adhering to professional standards doesn’t pursue an indictment - even if he’s sure their guilty - unless he’s got the proof, objectively. A lot of good DA’s have taken unwarranted criticism for adhering to that standard, instead of just “gettin’ the bad guys” based on gut feelings and what “everybody knows.” The problem with ascribing the events solely to evil motivations is that that explanation resolves everything simply by blaming what happened on “bad people.” If you mandate the following of professional standards you don’t have to rely on the people involved being “good” or “bad” (and most people waver from one spot to another along that spectrum at different times.) Because even an “evil” DA who adheres to professional standards doesn’t indict these three defendants. On the other hand, a “non-evil” prosecutor who’s just plain sloppy and stubborn, and convinced that his “gut feeling” was right, might do exactly what Nifong did. Also: my take on the situation doesn’t require me to presume to be able to read another man’s mind.</p>
<p>I’ve made no secret of my disapproval of how Nifong performed his job throughout this matter, but I honestly think that blaming “the bad guys” is a copout.</p>
<p>Wait - how does
parse with
</p>
<p>Simple: They said they thought they were guilty in the beginning, and then they failed to change course despite the lack of additional corroborating evidence over time. When a person says they believe something is true, and acts in accord with that stated belief, my default assumption is that they are telling the truth (or something pretty close to it.) It’s not always true, but it’s usually true. People shade things all the time, but they rarely out-and-out lie. I don’t see any reason in this case to assume that it was an exception to that rule, when a simpler explanation exists - they jumped to a conclusion which quickly became rewarding to them to believe, and then clung to that belief long after they should have realized it was baseless because the psychological and practical cost of publicly acknowledging error was (as it usually is) too high for them to face. That made it all the more appealing to cling to the hope that some evidence would somehow emerge - the deus ex machina, if you will - to snatch victory from the jaws of looming defeat.</p>
<p>The assumption that they knew the boys were innocent, but hatched a fiendish plot to prosecute them anyway, requires a much greater presumption of understanding of the unusual internal workings of others’ minds, and a greater degree of duplicity (and stupidity, under the circumstances) than is plausible to me. In hindsight, cherry-picking events over the course of 18 months, you can make a plausible case for that - just as you can make a plausible case tha the US Government was behind 911. But if you go back to the early days of the case, and go through the events as they unfolded in the eyes of the participants, the simpler explanations is by far the more convincing one to me.</p>
<p>Well - I can see what you’re saying, but I think it depends as much on mind-reading, or at least mind-predicting, as my train of thought does 
I just can’t see a 27-year veteran indicting someone after the DNA evidence, the line-up malfunctions, and the rest of the information he had unless he intended to go after someone come heck or high water, regardles of any belief in guilt or innocence.</p>
<p>And now a section 1983 action in Federal District Court against Durham et al. Gotta love it!
<a href=“http://dig.abclocal.go.com/wtvd/duke%20lax%20lawsuit.pdf[/url]”>http://dig.abclocal.go.com/wtvd/duke%20lax%20lawsuit.pdf</a></p>
<p>Lets think this through. Start with the bathroom. The search warrant says there were five men and the complaining witness in it when the alleged rape occurred. The bathroom is too small for the alleged sex acts to happen in the manner described on March 16, 2006 and April 6, 2006 when her story was changed to three men. </p>
<p>The two police officers that testified to the grand jury made false statements to obtain the indictments. They alleged the complaining witness identified the perpetrators of the rape. She did not because they did not use a legally permissible lineup. The grand jury has a right to rely on proper lineup procedures in its deliberations. If you say the lineup was proper when it wasnt you have committed a crime.</p>
<p>Mike Nifong was disbarred for withholding DNA evidence so he violated ethics rules.</p>
<p>So there never was probable cause that a crime was committed in the bathroom of the house on 610 N Buchanan and the three players committed it. But they obtained indictments anyway. By violating procedures, laws against lying and withholding evidence.</p>
<p>More rules arent necessary; all that had to be done was follow the existing ones. The police officers knew they didnt have evidence to even indict remember the with what quote in the bar hearings. As for your simpler explanations the only way a rape could have plausibly occurred in the bathroom is if only one man did it.</p>
<p>
That’s true, and it’s what I’m talking about. There’s no question about the fact that proper procedures weren’t followed. An institutional culture of adherence to professional conduct is the best vaccine against a recurrence.</p>
<p>This is true in lots of circumstances. An institutional ethics culture at a college which frowns on cheating is a more effective deterrent than additional rules and regulations. Bad cops thrive in a “wink, wink” department environment, etc. Weak institutional support of professional and ethical standards breeds unethical behavior, even among people who might not have “bent” otherwise. And the weak-willed among us are less likely to behave unethically when doing so is culturally “unthinkable.”</p>
<p>The only way to fix the culture is to replace the people.</p>
<p>I wonder who will disappear like the Atlantic City Mayor?</p>