In response to your blog response of September 9, 2008, the author of this blog site is Sidney B. Harr, and not Mike Nifong or Cy Gurney. I am the Lay Advocate for the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong, and a staunch supporter of Mr. Nifong (although the "News & Observer" columnist Barry Saunders, in his July 22, 2008 column called me a "rabid Nifong supporter"). I firmly believe that Mr. Nifong was unjustly disbarred by the State Bar, and that it should take responsibility for its actions by doing the right thing (legally and morally) and reinstating his license to practice law in the state of North Carolina.
It takes a small amount of courage to stand up for a cause which is extremely unpopular, and to identify yourself, instead of hiding behind an alias. It takes very little courage to think for oneself and not just automatically buy into what the media is peddling. That said, by no means do I insuate that you lack courage because you conceal your identity when you make statements on the blog or because you choose the safe confinds of popular opinion. I appreciate your participation to this blog, and hearing points of view that differ with mine.
Several statements that you made were patently false. First, Mr. Nifong did not arbitrarily indict three men. They were identified by the alleged victim/accuser with 80-100% certainty. Now although the identification system may not have been perfect in the Duke Lacrosse case, the ID system used by Durham Prosecutor Freda Black was no more perfect when Erick Daniels was picked out of a middle school yearbook by the victim of an armed robbery. Erick Daniels, did not even fit the description of the perpetrator of the crime, yet he was convicted as a 16 year old, and has spent more than four years incarcerated. Do you believe that the three Duke LAXers, who spent no time in jail, have suffered greater injustice than Erick Daniels, whose case is under review by the courts, thanks in large measure to investigative articles that appeared in the "Independent Weekly." The point I am making is that the State and the State Bar of North Carolina will not go after Prosecutor Black because the injustice is against a defendant who is poor, of color, and disenfranchised. It selectively chose to persecute and prosecute Mr. Nifong because his defendants were from families of wealth, status, and privilege.
At least there is one thing we can agree on, and that is that there is a failure by the State Bar to prosecute prosecutors who commit acts of prosecutorial misconduct. If the State Bar held all of the prosecutors in the state to the same standards used to disbar Mr. Nifong, then the number of the state prosecutors would be depleted. Rather than disbarring 99% of all state prosecutors, it seems to me that a more practical course would be to re-instate the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar since its inception.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Before the lineup at which CGM identified the accusers with 80-100% certainty, she had been unable to identify her supposed attackers. She claimed Dave Evans had had a mustache when he had not. CGM said she was sure with 100% certainty, on more than one occasion, that Lacrosse player Brad Ross was present at the party when he was not even present in Durham. CGM was not a reliable witness, for all her "certainty". Nifong was aware of this before the 4th lineup, in which Seligman, Finnerty and Evans were identified with "80-100%" certainty.
Nifong had that lineup conducted after, earlier in the case before there was hard evidence of anything, he had publicly proclaimed that a crime had been committed and that Lacrosse players were the perpetrators.
The lineup violated police procedure in that it contained photos only of the caucasian Lacrosse players, no fillers. CGM was told it contained pictures of only Lacrosse players. Nifong had the lineup conducted so CGM could pick out members of the Lacrosse team to be prosecuted. The whole lineup process was, as I have previously said, a way for Nifong to randomly choose lacrosse players to prosecute.
Are Mike Nifong or Victoria Peterson paying you to publish this blog?
You sure act like Mike Nifong. You seem to think that if you ignore all the evidence against your sordid "hero" it will go away.
You haven't answered one question. If you were charged with a crime, would you want Mike Nifong prosecuting you?
You really should go to the Durham in Wonderland site and read the report of the North Carolina Attorney General or go to You Tube and type in "Marsha Goodenow" and watch her testimony to the North Carolina Bar during Nifong's ethics trial.
You argue that Nifong sought indictments against the Lacrosse Players after CGM identified them with 80-100% certainty. You leave out that CGM had given multiple inconsistent account of the so called "rape", that there was no evidence on physical exam of rape (the exam was done and recorded by an OB-GYN resident, not the SANE nurse), that there was no DNA evidence of any contact between CGM and the indicted Lacrosse players all of which Nifong knew when he sought indictments. Two of the Lacrosse players had hard evidence they were not present at the supposed "crime" scene when the supposed "crime" took place, something Nifong did not want to know about. CGM was not a very reliable witness. Marsha Goodenow, ADA of Mecklenberg County, testified in Nifong's ethics trial that a reasonable, fair prosecutor, even in North Carolina, would not have gone forward with the case when all he had was a witness like Crystal Mangum. You may not like me saying this but CGM identifying Evans, Finnerty and Seligman as her attackers with 80-100% certainty was like Ray Charles giving eye witness to some event.
I say again, even before there was any hard evidence inculpatory or exculpatory, Mike Nifong had declared publicly that a crime had taken place and that Lacrosse players had been the perpetrators. He set up an improper photo line up so that CGM could just pick three Duke Lacrosse players to prosecute. De facto, Nifong picked three innocent men at random to prosecute for a crime he knew had not happened.
Last comment, last sentence in the second paragraph should have read, ...CGM identifying Evans, Finnerty and Seligman with 80-100% certainty was like Ray Charles giving eye witness testimony to some event.
It s not enough to have a witness. A witness has to be credible. Before CGM identified the Lacrosse players with "80-100%" certainty, much hard evidence had been developed in the case, some of it by Nifong himself(DNA) which indicated she was not a credible witness.
Before the DNA evidence came in, the Lacrosse team and their lawyers told the public that the DNA evidence would exonerate the team. When the evidence became public, it showed no DNA from any member of the Lacrosse team. It supported the credibility of the Lacrosse players. Why did Nifong refuse to believe Dave Evans when he asserted with what seemed to be 100% certainty that the charges against the Lacrosse players were lies. Why did he refuse to review hard evidence that neither Reade Seligman nor Colin Finnerty had been present in the party house when the alleged rape took place. Why was Nifong justified in acting on CGM's assertions but not on those of the accused when the evidence showed more credibility on the part of the accused? Answer that question, if you dare.
What about the evidence from DNA Security. You say that evidence of DNA from males other than the Lacrosse players had no probative value for the defendants. Are you serious? If a rape had occurred, common sense logic should tell the prosecutor, DNA on the victim would most likely come from the attacker, that individuals whose DNA had not been found on the victim were not the attackers. When Nifong got the results from DNA security, he had more hard evidence that CGM's ID of the accused was not reliable. He should have dismissed the charges against the accused, and, if he really did believe a rape had occurred, he should have gone looking for the real rapists. He did not. He wanted to convict the rich white boys, regardless of credibility, regardless of guilt or innocence.
Wendy Murphy was one of those who argued that Nifong was justified in concealing the results of DNA Security's testing. Are you really Wendy Murphy?
Maybe you are really Nancy Grace
Go to Durham in Wonderland, read the Motion to suppress the Identification Procedure and the Supplemental Motion to Suppress the Identification Procedure. You might get some more insight about the ID procedures, CGM's ID of the Lacrosse Players with "80-100%" certainty and her credibility as an accusing witness.
Since you ask, yes the Lacrosse players suffered a greater injustice than did Erick Daniels. In the Duke Rape Frame up, no crime was committed, Nifong knew no crime had been committed, and went after three innocent men anyway because he needed an issue which would make him popular with the African American electorate in Durham County.
As I wrote in a comment to one of your earlier posts, had CGM accused poor African American men of raping her, Nifong would never have gone after them. Prosecuting poor African American males would not have gotten him any points with Durham's African Americans.
Further, as I recall, the liberal media, like the Independent Weekly, condemned the Lacrosse Players. Regardless of evidence, regardless of actual guilt or innocence, the liberal media wanted them convicted simply because they were caucasian males from relatively well off families. Even after they had been exonerated, even after it had been exposed in open court how contrived the case against them had been, people like you refuse to acknowledge they had been unjustly targeted for prosecution. People like the Gang of 88 try to perpetuate the myth that "something happened in there".
If you were really concerned about prosecutorial misconduct, you would be trying to bring down Prosecutor Black, not trying to reinstate a sociopathic narcissist like Nifong.
Are you one of these Durham voters who believe the Lacrosse players should have been convicted and imprisoned regardless of any other circumstance? What seems to really irritate you is that the Lacrosse players were innocent.
Post a Comment