Criminal Law

Closing Comments

Posted on July 18, 2014
When I first started writing about the lacrosse case, at a joint historians? blog called Cliopatria, I did so in reaction to the Group of 88 statement. Then (and now) I considered the statement an indefensible betrayal by professors of their own school?s students, an action that contradicted many of the basic values on which American higher education rests...

The Group of 88 & Wikipedia

Posted on July 13, 2014
Some interesting comments in a Wikipedia discussion thread regarding efforts to remove mention of their membership in the Group from Wikipedia bios of Group of 88 members. The evidence regarding Cathy Davidson, author of the infamous N&O apologia for the Group, is particularly troubling, in that the editor/whitewasher was traced to a CUNY IP on the same day that Davidson began her CUNY service...

Howard Update

Posted on July 11, 2014
Anne Blythe reports in the N&O that Judge Hudson has said he wants to grant bail to Darryl Howard, whose prosecution, writes Blythe, the judge described ?as one of the most 'horrendous' prosecutions he had seen in his 34 years on the bench.? The prosecutor in the case was, of course, disgraced ex-DA Mike Nifong...

Gottlieb News

Posted on July 07, 2014
WRAL's Julia Sims is reporting that former Sgt. Mark Gottlieb died on Saturday, apparently of suicide. He had, according to WRAL, been living in DeKalb County, Georgia, where he had worked as a paramedic after leaving the Durham Police. I will post more information if and when it becomes available.

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Checking in with the Group of 88

Posted on July 07, 2014
As I wind down the blog after the resolution of the Evans and Carrington lawsuits (I?ll have a closing post next Monday), I thought it might be useful to check in on some members of the Group of 88. An utter lack of accountability within the academy for those faculty members who abandoned due process (and, in some cases, appeared to violate Duke regulations) was apparent almost from the start in the case, and remains so today...

Cohan's Trials

Posted on July 01, 2014
Now that his publicity tour appears to have ended, I thought it might be worthwhile to have two short concluding comments on the work of William D. Cohan. (You can read all of my Cohan-related posts here.)First: a mantra of Cohan?s tour was the author?s purported intention to have the book function as a trial in the case...

Credibility & Commentary

Posted on June 16, 2014
I have a piece over at Minding the Campus on the issue of accountability, in this instance regarding the approach of the commentariat to the current war on campus due process.One of the people I looked at was retired Penn anthropology professor (specialist in Women's Studies, Southeast Asia, Anthropology of Gender, Multiculturalism, Sexual Culture, Public Interest Ethnography/Anthropology) Peggy Reeves Sanday, whose final book, published in 2007, was an updated version of her earlier Fraternity Gang Rape...

Cohan: "Defense Attorneys" Want Nifong "Literally Dead in the Ground"

Posted on June 09, 2014
Author William D. Cohan recently departed a columnist?s position at Bloomberg View for one at Huffington Post (which generally does not pay its columnists). Cohan then used his first HuffPost piece to lash out at the free speech rights of his critics...

Bannon-Nifong Conversation

Posted on June 07, 2014
Given the . . . unusual . . . editing strategy of author William D. Cohan, I thought I would post the video of the testimony in which Brad Bannon revealed a private conversation with Mike Nifong in which the rogue DA exhibited odd behavior. Of course, not only did Cohan (at the very last minute) cut this passage from his book, but he also eliminated a less-than-flattering interview snippet from his book?s hero and protagonist: ?Nifong said of Bannon?s testimony that it was ?snide? and that Bannon was ?a little pissant, is what he is, and there?s no cure for that...

Cohan: Side-by-Side

Posted on June 04, 2014
The handful of close readers of the William D. Cohan book (a list that, alas, did not include reviewers from the Economist and Newsday) doubtless noticed an anomaly?minor errors, usually by a page or two, in the index. It was almost as if there were lots of small, last-minute alterations to the book, some of which led to pagination changes that weren?t accurately reflected in the index...

More on McLeod

Posted on June 02, 2014
[Update, Monday at 11.15am: in the WSJ Law Blog, Jacob Gershman has an excellent summary of the case, including a revealing comment from the Duke spokesperson.]Last year, James Taranto published a sensational piece on a kangaroo court at Auburn; I praised it at Minding the Campus...

Due Process and Duke

Posted on May 30, 2014
[Update, 5.43pm: Judge Smith's preliminary injunction is here.]Over at Minding the Campus, I write about Duke joining the list of universities facing a lawsuit for violating the due process rights of a student accused of sexual assault. The student, Lewis McLeod, was expelled under what appears to be dubious reasoning just before he graduated...

Judges Overturns Howard Verdict, Citing Nifong's "False and Misleading" Statements

Posted on May 27, 2014
[Update, 5.46pm: Joe Neff and Anne Blythe have an article on the ruling in the N&O. Will the Durham Police Department now re-examine all cases in which rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong was involved?][Update, 9.34am, Wed.: As of this time, there is no mention on the Herald-Sun website of the Hudson ruling...

Lacrosse, Litigation, & Editorial Strategy

Posted on May 26, 2014
Earlier today, the Duke lacrosse team narrowly defeated Notre Dame in the national championship game. In the run-up to the event, CBS Sports had an article on Casey Carroll, a member of the 2006 team whose life has taken an extraordinary turn since then...

Free Speech & William D. Cohan

Posted on May 22, 2014
Author William D. Cohan?s first written comments on the Duke case came in an unusual forum?a CNN column bizarrely arguing for lowering the national drinking age to 19 years old. Cohan?s proposal would have left the strongest moral arguments against the current policy?that if you can die for your country, you should be able to buy a beer?in place, perhaps explaining why not a single state is considering the idea...

Rabinowitz Eviscerates Author Cohan

Posted on May 18, 2014
In the Monday edition of the Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dorothy Rabinowitz has thoroughly taken apart the arguments of author William D. Cohan, as expressed in both Cohan's book and his myriad interviews. In addition to winning the award, Rabinowitz also had been a Pulitzer finalist for her extraordinary commentary on prosecutorial misconduct and the conviction of the innocent...

Nifong Ironies in Settlement

Posted on May 17, 2014
Two Nifong-related ironies in the civil suit settlement:First, the H-S reports the following: Seligmann attorney Richard Emery ?said the former prosecutor had agreed to make a $1,000 contribution to the Innocence Inquiry Commission and reaffirm 'his statement of [the players] innocence...

Civil Suit Settlement

Posted on May 16, 2014
Anne Blythe at the N&O brings word of the final resolution of the civil suit filed by the three falsely accused players. The suit was effectively neutered by the 4th Circuit, and the settlement reflects that reality: the city has agreed to make a $50,000 donation to the state Innocence Inquiry Commission, but otherwise make no payments or admit to any wrongdoing...

On the Rev. Barber

Posted on May 13, 2014
Amidst the lacrosse case, more-than-occasional comparisons occurred to the Tawana Brawley rape hoax. The cases, in fact, don?t seem to me all that much alike: there was no prosecutorial misconduct in the Brawley case (if anything, there was the reverse), and there was nothing like 88 Columbia or Fordham or NYU professors taking out a full-page ad to proclaim something ?happened? to Brawley...

On Amazon

Posted on May 12, 2014
I admit that before I purchase a book from Amazon, I tend to look at the reviews; I?ll rarely purchase a book that has quite negative feedback. Radley Balko first commented on the disparity between the overwhelmingly negative response the Cohan book received from Amazon reviewers (51 of the 75 Amazon reviews are 1-star) and the puff-piece comments from reviews in most of the mainstream media...

Cohan's Greatest Hits

Posted on May 09, 2014
Now that author William D. Cohan appears to be wrapping up his publicity tour?and his review process ended with a biting item from the Independent?it might be worth reviewing some of his ?greatest hits? in interviews. A general comment: in a highly unusual approach to a book tour, Cohan was far, far more aggressive about the case than he was in the book itself...

Readership Note

Posted on May 08, 2014
Earlier today, the blog surpassed the 6,000,000 mark for visits. It currently has just under 9.1 million page views. The overwhelming percentage of that total came in 2006 and 2007 (when posts were, at least, daily), but the blog still averages around 7,500 reads per week...

The Independent: "The Price of Silence Adds Nothing New to the Case or Our Understanding of It"

Posted on May 07, 2014
As Radley Balko has presciently observed, the pattern in reviews of author William Cohan?s book has been straightforward: overwhelmingly negative reviews from any reviewer who followed the case closely, coupled with glowing reviews from those who knew nothing about the case and appeared willing to uncritically accept Cohan?s musings without even wondering about the merits of using a convicted liar as the book?s chief source...

The Independent: Durham Needs a DA with Passion, Like Nifong & Cline

Posted on May 05, 2014
Tuesday is primary day in North Carolina. The Independent, the Triangle?s alternative weekly, recently made its endorsement for the Democratic primary for DA.The Independenthosts the columns of Hal Crowther, hailed by author William D. Cohan as ?the conscience of progressive thinkers in North Carolina...

Media & Cohan

Posted on May 03, 2014
Stuart and I had a piece yesterday in Real Clear Politics, examining how the failure of (much of) the mainstream media--both in reviewers and interviewers--to critically examine the extreme arguments of author William D. Cohan reveals a new round in the media's rush to judgment about the case...

Beaty Decision (Carrington Lawsuit, Unindicted Players): Updated

Posted on April 01, 2011
In general, perhaps the most surprising element of this filing came not from Judge Beaty but from Duke spokesperson Michael Schoenfeld, who commented that a ruling in which Pres. Brodhead, Tara Levicy, Dean Sue Wasiolek, and Duke Health would remain as defendants, and thus be subject to depositions and discovery, and in which Duke professors were condemned for having committed possibly liable acts, (and, for the record, in which a federal judge affirmed Duke's argument that its handbook and bulletin aren't legally binding on Duke, a finding that I doubt very much Duke shares with too many prospective parents) worked out "as we had hoped...

A Multiple Choice Quiz

Posted on March 31, 2011
Student A, who describes himself as black and Hispanic, receives a 98 on a statistics test; his professor also writes ?excellent? beneath the grade. Student A peers at the tests of blonde, blue-eyed Students B and C, both of whom have told him their parents are WASPs...

Beaty Decision (Evans Lawsuit): Key Passages (Updated)

Posted on March 31, 2011
Seligmann attorney Richard Emery: "The opinion is what I would call, overall, a ringing success for the boys . . . We?re glad that we?re moving ahead with the case.? Duke spokesperson Michael Schoenfeld commented, "The few claims remaining are substantially narrowed, as we had hoped...

Breaking News

Posted on March 31, 2011
Motion to dismiss the civil lawsuits denied in part and granted in part. Immediate reaction: suits against Durham, Nifong, Wilson, the DPD, DNA Security, Duke, Brodhead, and Tara Levicy go forward--to include discovery. I suspect it will be a gloomy night in Durham...

Stay Classy, Linwood!

Posted on March 19, 2011
Few figures associated with the lacrosse case are quite so despicable as Linwood Wilson?the ethically-challenged, Bible-singing p.i. hired by the equally ethically-challenged Mike Nifong to be Nifong?s chief investigator.Wilson, who was summarily fired as soon as the disbarred Nifong left his position, has had a rather checkered career since his time as Sheriff of the Lacrosse Case...

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