My understanding is that the rape charges are dropped, since “rape” in NC requires some degree of penetration, and the LW has now changed her story from being raped in every available orifice by non-condom wearing perverts to no penile penetration at all. Thus the rape charges are no longer viable, but kidnapping and sexual assault still are.
As I mentioned earlier, we shall see if the LW fails to testify at the next hearing, leading Nifong to drop the charges “to spare the victim further suffering, since this case has become a media circus”. It is a circus, but Nifong is both the ringmaster and the leading clown.
Bricker is always like that - he has to be one of the most fair-minded Dopers we got. I have to be beat over the head a lot more.
The poor little shrinking violet – the big bad media keeps haunting him, don’tcha know. All he wants is to do his job in peace and professional dignity. Having gotten the urge for publicity out of his system with his 83 press conferences, interviews, slanderous and unethical pronunciamentos, and pep rallies at Crystal Mangum’s campus last Spring, that is.
Sorry, Mike, but if justice is the goal it looks like your presence in this case has been a hindrance indeed, and the right way for you to be part of the healing process is to step (or be pushed) aside.
His presence in the case has been not only a hindrance to “healing,” but the proximate cause of the “wounding.” That he has still not dismissed the remaining charges or apologized in any fashion tells you just about how sincere he is with his touchy-feely pussy-talk about “healing.”
“Healing” will begin with his resignation and disbarment and paying substantial damages for malicious prosecution, and with his last act in office being indictment of lying whore Crystal Mangum’s, swiftly followed by her imprisonment for filing a false police report.
So Mikey . . . still game to be a “healer” for Durham?
K C Johnson breaks down the photo array “lineup.” I am now as certain as I can be that Nifong knows Mangum will never testify. This is some fucked up shit.
I don’t have as much problem with the lineup, because the witness had already, through her statements, limited the possible suspects to the people present at the party. I would consider it comparable to having her go back to the party with police that very night, and point at her attackers directly. You wouldn’t demand fillers under those conditions.
It may have violated procedure, but I don’t think the lineup is conceptually flawed.
Fascinating. Two questions. How often does such an event occur? How do you account for her 100% positive ID of a player who was in Raleigh the entire evening? How would that have happened if she had gone back to the party?
I can’t make sense of this. Lineups by definition must include fillers. It is intrinsic to the concept of a lineup. No lineups are allowed in which the police tell a suspect “We know the perpetrator is one of these men.”
Without fillers, what the police did was give her a multiple choice test with NO wrong answers.
It didn’t matter who she picked, she could not lose.
:dubious:
IIRC, her statements limited the lineup to all members of the team except for the one black player. Isn’t it possible that non-players attended the party as well?
Clearly, the witness in this case is unreliable, but I’m just talking about the photo identification process conceptually.
Imagine, for a moment, that the witness called the police from outside the hotel room right after the attack. She waits for the cops to show, then they knock on the door and she points at the three suspects in the presence of the cops. There are no wrong answers, no possibility that the guy was across town at the time, and no fillers, she can just pick whoever she wants. I don’t think that this identification process would be illegal, I don’t think the police need to get 300 bystanders to provide fillers while they file the players out of the room one at a time for a physical lineup.
I consider the photo identification to be comparable to the direct identification scenario above.
Nonsense – the limited range of people available to identify in this scenario is a natural result of having the cops on the scene shortly after the crime; the limited range of people available to identify in the photo lineup is an artificial result of prosecutorial failure to follow proper protocols.
I’ll ask again, how often does that happen? If your scenarios are comparable, how is it that she IDed someone who was not there? How would that even be possible?
Lineups happen when your scenario is impossible. That’s why we have lineups. Lineups have protocols. Lineups that violate protocols are conceptionally flawed.
The fact that it is physically impossible to immediately point at someone who is not in fact there, but perfectly possible to later point at a photo of someone who was not in fact there, is precisely why Cheesesteak’s scenario is not at all comparable to a photo lineup.
Because she’s a lying cunt? If someone arrived at the party 5min after she left, she’d be able to finger him incorrectly as well. My point is not that she isn’t a liar, it’s that the procedure is not so different than a live identification where fillers are unnecessary.
Can we agree that the live identification scenario is valid without fillers?
If a lack of fillers does not invalidate the live identification, why does it invalidate the photo identification? In both cases, you’re presenting the accuser with every person at the party, with no fillers, and asking them to point to the attacker.
I guess my mistake is having gotten all my information from TV and cinima, so I have to ask: do they really take a victim back to the scene of a crime and have them do live IDs?
I have never heard of it. Can a real-life law official tell us if this is done?
You are changing your parameters. Introducing this new arrival is not part of your original scenario.
Pointing at a person who is not present and claiming that he is, is lying?
Has such a live identification ever happened? If so, how often is an alleged victim taken back to the scene of the alleged crime and shown everyone who was there when it allegedly happened, in the same setting as it allegedly happened? This is a serious question. I’ve asked it twice now. Has it ever happened? How often?
Not the way you set it up. If police arrive on the scene and the alleged victim IDs someone, no fillers are needed.
Why are fillers ever required? Why not get the whole team down for a physical lineup? Why not just put the whole team in a room and tell the alleged victim "Three of those guys did it. Which ones are they?
A while back I was assaulted by a drunk/high freak at 2am on the streets of Manhattan. The police arrived shortly thereafter, and we took a drive around the neighborhood looking for him. We didn’t find him, but if we had, I don’t doubt for a second that my identification would have been considered valid. We didn’t go back for a photo lineup of 10,000 random black men in NYC, we looked together for the guy based on where we knew he was.
The point of it is, the police aren’t telling the victim “3 of these guys did it” The victim is telling the police that 3 people out of this pre-defined group did it, so I’ll look at the group and tell you which ones.
Since there are questions about proper police procedure, I’ll go ahead and post something to GQ asking our resident know-it-alls about the right way to do it.