Nice Mea Culpa Wee Bairn, I apologize for the snarky tone of my last post. I am just a little tired of pointing things out about this case to people who leap screaming onto the “BOIL THEM IN OIL!!!” bandwagon, so sometimes I’m sarcastic.
I haven’t read any part of this thread, but I’d just like to state that the defendants should be boiled in oil.
Happy 40th, Dave.
BTW, we’re having a dopefest at our house tomorrow, wanna come?
No problem, at some point I will learn not to jump in after six pages of posts without having my facts in order.
Back to Cafe Society for me, where it’s safe 
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Hey, well done. 
Well, as of the 5:00 news, the State Ethics Board had denied all motions by Nifong’s attorney for summary dismissal of any of the charges (to be correct, he’d moved for dismissal on a few of the most serious charges). It will now absolutely go to an evidentiary hearing, and then (barring something dramatic and unforeeen) to a trial.
Memo to Mike Nifong: I know the regional manager for the Burger King franchise chain in the Triangle is a compassionate man, who hires people that have had legal problems in the past. You could finish out your career as Assistant Manager of a BK, if you’re diligent and don’t get too long a sentence.
Jumpin jehosophat! So let’s see we have witness intimidation, withheld evidence, and a rigged line-up, which to me is just like planting evidence. As far as I can tell this is basically the trifecta of justice run amok.
One article blatantly names her: Let the liar be named and shamed
On the other hand, Kim Roberts, who at the time was considered an important prosecution witness, got a sweetheart deal from Nifong on outstanding embezzlement charges.
Didn’t Jesse Jackson promise the woman a full college scholarship whether it turned out she was lying or not? Do we ever get to find out what happens with that?
I’ll bet she hasn’t even been attending NCCU since the lie.
Oh, you hadn’t seen that before? That was just one of Dumbfuck Nifong’s nasty little reindeer games. By the way (to the uber-dumbfuck herein to whom I’ll be responding momentarily (that’d be you, brickbacon)) – I said in the OP, and I’ll say here, recall my pages and pages of vitriol spilled on how Dumbfuck Mike and his Mayberry RFD force are especially embarassing as they validate every stereotype of ham-fisted dumbass redneck “justice,” whether embodied in the form of Bull Connor, apartheid era S.A.'s security forces, Papa Doc, Idi Amin, or any of the countless white, black, and other “rednecks” who run and have run police forces like personal clique-vengeance agencies and not investigative bodies. It’s just that this time the rednecks were kowtowing to a different, but no less ign’ant (as Chris Rock would put it) vengeful mob, one that was black (and fey-liberal-academic-white).
This was classic shoot-the-messenger, nobody-rats-on-the-boys bully behavior. It was among my first concrete incremental pieces of evidence that he was a criminal, and it was among the first things that had me banging a fuck-Nifong drum for the past however many months.
There is probably ample fruit for a separate thread on GJs and their shortcomings.
Just a few notes.
Do they take their job seriously? One would hope so, but as you may know, GJs are simply juries drawn to sit for a set period and hear indictment applications. They are drawn from the exact same pools as petit (trial) juries. Given how many people assiduously try to avoid jury service of any kind, you can assume that many GJs are reluctant participants looking to run out the clock on their two week (or whatever) term. If delivering an indictment clears the docket and gets them to go home at 2:30 on the second to last day of term . . . without being cynical, I can tell you that that could be a significant motivator for at least some GJs.
Most GJs would indict a ham sandwich, but it’s worse (or better?) than that – they don’t always do so. Instead, as far as I can tell, they indict about – well, from what my friend the DA told me, about 85% of cases presented. Now, her office is pretty selective in what they present, so other DAs may have higher (or lower) indictment rates.
But when they do enter a “no true bill” – it can be for a multitude of reasons, which honestly approximate a random walk. They may be bored and want to vary things up. They may sympathize with a young/handsome/pitiful defendant. They may think the DA is a jerk. They may think the cops were sloppy. They may think (the “CSI effect”) that the case is week because the cops did not do DNA testing, even when it is a murder case and there is surveillance video showing the shooting – they want that DNA!). They may have just delivered ten indictments and don’t want to make it too easy for the DA). Depressing, but this is how it happens – many indictments and non-indictments are not very substantively vetted by the GJ. Query whether they could meaningfully do so if they had a fuller evidentiary presentation (but, they don’t).
This may well be the stupidest thing I have ever read.
There was no physical evidence against the three students. The ENTIRE case rested precisely on the lineup identification.
The accuser had already gone through a photo lineup once before, one that did have some “filler” pictures. She did not identify anyone, even though 2 of the eventual students she would later identify were in the pictures.
The second lineup, the accuser was told beforehand that there would be no “fillers.” Literally anyone she identified would be charged on no other evidence than the fact she had just identified them, and she knew that.
Luckily, one of the students she identified had video footage showing they were elsewhere at the time. If not for this pure luck, it could have gone even worse for the students.
Keep in mind that the accuser’s descriptions of her attackers (one was chubby, one was 270 lbs, one had a moustache) were completely different in every aspect than the students she eventually “identified” in this bogus lineup.
I can only assume that your brain is not capable of logical thought, for you to say that you don’t have too much of a problem with the lineup.
The lineup is also the reason why even those (such as YWTF) who said we should wait and see are idiots. The lineup, on its own, was already sufficient reason to throw out the case.
Though I realize it may be impossible for you, try to think about this logically for a second:
If the only evidence is identification by the accuser, and the accuser failed to identify the first time around, and only identified anyone when told that no matter who she identified they would be charged, then how can you possibly say the case should go on?
Even if a rape occurred, there would be no reason to believe the three students were the ones who did it. In fact, as the ACLU usually says in cases like this but conspicuously did not this time, false IDs like this are the number 1 cause of false convictions. That is the scariest thing: it was only by pure luck, that the whole story was a lie, that the students weren’t in more danger. Had the accuser actually been raped somewhere else than the party, the students would have been in great danger of conviction.
There was no “wait and see”. This case was a malicious and self serving crime by Nifong from the very start, as anyone could see if they did not share his bias.
Not so. I do not use words as surplusage. She is a whore, who also lies. I will address separately the issue of whether being a whore influences how we should view her credibility (I submit that it does, to some degree). But no, Crystal is both someone who (a) almost certainly had/has sex for money; and (b) lies about a lot of things.
Pretty much my feelings when I responded to this back in posts #215 and 216.
As promised, Dumbfuck:
A post upthread, by me, explicitly said that I have not, and would not, ever advocate for a rule that accuser-testimony-only “rape” cases need to be automatically dismissed.
However, as forensic technology grows in prevalence and accuracy, we may also revisit old procedural assumptions. As there is no research of which I am aware indicating widespread safe-sex practices by rapists (who are almost by definitions spontaneous risk-takers), it is safe to assume that in most real rapes there will be some detectable-by-today’s-technologies forensic evidence, especially when an accuser makes no mention of condoms being used [in her initial accusation]. Given the improved technology, it may be quite reasonable (vis a vis the days when even an available spooge sample did nothing to rule in, or rule out, a particular suspect) a particular person, to assume that when there is no spooge matching the accused, or no spooge or other forensic evidence at all, that a particular case is not in the “very credible” category.
This is just about incomprehensible. DAs don’t (in a democracy) arrest anybody – police do, following an investigation by the police. But when the DAs and the police are corrupt, the police may take orders from the DAs to run the investigation and arrests in a way that suits the DA’s corrupt preferences. And in such a corrupt situation – of course, the DAs or the cops may well arrest someone they don’t think is guilty, if they think that doing so will still allow them to achieve their corrupt purpose (getting re-elected? Getting a conviction from a black lynch-mob jury?). If you don’t even know how the legal system operates, you’d save us a lot of time by not posting in legal-themed threads.
“Not too bad in my opinion.” Hmm, it was the basis for the arrest warrant. So, if I stage I line-up for an allegation of sheep-raping (sorry, my video camera malfunctioned, and I didn’t get a really clear picture of you out in the pasture), and stock it with you and the other 42 inmates at the Retard Asylum, and you get arrested, handcuffed, and sent to jail – and it turns out no sheep was ever raped, you were just out there because you got lost on the way home from the shortbus – that’s “not too bad?”
Whether my mother blew (a) no one, (b) my father, or (c) the Sixth Fleet, is a matter of no relevance, given that my mother never fucking accused anyone of a crime, lest of all a heinous crime carrying multi-decade sentences, lest of all without ANY FUCKING BASIS.
If she had made such an evil sexually-charged allegation, as did LWCM, then her sexual character and proclivites might well be a relevant topic in assessing the credibility thereof. But, that is not the case here.
You know, when dumbasses (that’s you) construct dumbass strawman arguments, they usually bother to labor toward at least some superficial parallelism in the posited scenarios. You, though, can’t be bothered. Right now, hundreds nay thousands of white, black, and other cum dumpsters are doing their duty for God (well, maybe not) and their country (well, maybe not) around our fair land. I have never called them out by name – I may not invite them to my next book club meeting, but I don’t really care what they do. Likewise, even had I known of the Cum Dumpster predelictions of Lying Whore Crystal Mangum before last April, they would have troubled me not a bit, nor would I have mentioned them here or anywhere. To boil it down to a bumper sticker level (for your benefit) – your right to swing your fist (be a lying whore cum dumpster) ends where my nose begins (where you accuse me of something I didn’t do).
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=3741607&postcount=111
Gee, here’s a case involving a highly-dubious rape claim by a pristine (???) blonde white girl against a big bad black man – and many people (some probably lily white) questioned that one, too. Certainly most of my white jock acquaintances were siding with brotherman and not with the Aryan Katelynn Faber (who interestingly, was also found with three or so semen samples on her underwear (psycho ladies everywhere, PSA – please take a freaking shower and change the undies between the bouts of the serial gang bang!)), and likewise had clearly-consensual sex shortly after her “trauma” (and also bragged about banging Kobe). And yet, white jocks skewered her, as did I – and at least in that case, it was undisputed that sex took place – here, the entire episode was a fabulist contrivance, not a dispute over the fine points of consent.
I can’t take seriously anymore you and your warantless ascriptions of non-existent racial bias (which, as noted, do nothing but conclusively establish your own).
I wonder if Brickhead would have a different opinion of this if he was at a party where a drunk woman claimed she was raped, and subsequently picked his photo out of a line up made up of just the males that attended that party? :dubious: