What they "see happening afterwards" is a result of not sharing with the investigators what they know happened at the party.

By not coming forward, the blameless players let the other players off the hook

in the process the blameless players threw their own hopes and dreams for their lacrosse season down the toilet.

Because you are so convinced that a crime occurred, your arguments beg the question.

The first is that something (criminal) happened worth reporting. What if they have nothing to report?

The second is that there is someone to be "let off the hook." What if there is only a climate of false accusations of criminal behavior by the DA to be dealt with?

By not coming forward, the blameless players let the other players off the hook- the players that decided to have this party and behave in the boorish manner their attorneys have described - and in the process the blameless players threw their own hopes and dreams for their lacrosse season down the toilet.

The third is that the loss of the remainder of a lacrosse season would be more important to these players than defending themselves against false accusations by a DA, who (as was demonstrated by the photo identification procedure he used) has already decided that someone on the team is guilty of a crime.

On top of that, given that the DA and defense attorneys are talking to the media, anyone who speaks is likely to become a focus of media attention. In that situation, you should not consider their caution to be unreasonable (as mmyy also explained).

that the loss of the remainder of a lacrosse season would be more important to these players than defending themselves against false accusations by a DA, who (as was demonstrated by the photo identification procedure he used) has already decided that someone on the team is guilty of a crime.

By his own account in a prior N&O article his primary reason for marrying her was because he could follow her around the world when she was in the Navy (and not have to work).

That fall, the couple got married in Virginia Beach. The union would allow the woman's husband to travel wherever the woman was stationed, he said.

The former husband said he was illiterate when he married the then-19-year-old woman. She taught him to read, he said, and was kind and patient during the process. After months of tutoring and many evenings spent paging through beginning-level books, he said, he was finally able to fill out his own job applications.

"She never downed me for that," he said. "She loved me for who I was." He said he saw her after the accusations of rape were reported and she appeared distressed.

That he would make such a call suggests that he might not have known about the accuser's earlier allegation of a 3-man gang rape until the AP reported it.

The identification procedure used may be many things, but one thing it is not is a demonstration that Nifong had made any decision whatsoever as to whether someone on the team was guilty of a crime.

PB--you are incorrect in your descriptions of a lineup. This was a photo lineup. The problem with it is that it did not follow nationally accepted procedures or procedures adopted by the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission.

If I knew nothing happened I would have been more concerned with the season being cancelled than anyone being convicted of rape. They had no idea at that point they were dealing with maniacal DA.

Has anyone else thought of what a bad career choice stripping must be for a woman who had been gangraped?

imho - about the marriage and the husband's work. I took that sentence to mean the marriage "union" would allow him to travel with her. Though I don't know what his job at the time was.

I really can't explain the harm done to this woman in any other logical manner than an attack at the party.

Eyewitness News Looks at Party Photos

(04/18/06 -- DURHAM) - Eyewitness News and the ABC News law-and-justice unit are getting a chance to examine time-stamped photos taken inside the home on the night of the controversial Duke lacrosse party.

12 a.m.: This is the first picture of the strippers. Students are watching the show, but not grabbing or attempting to touch the women. Bruises are clearly visible on the legs and thighs of the alleged victim.

12:00:40 a.m.: Another picture taken 40 seconds later shows bruises on the accuser's knees. Her right knee appears to have an open cut.

If the whole team (those in attendance) could account for the accuser the entire time, why can't Kim? Or can she and she later decided to lie?

Do you think he should have asked her if she had ever been raped before?

I don't understand how you justify your interpretations, without assuming that every member of the team is motivated solely by an amoral commitment to cover up for one another. Personally I find that hard to believe -- where is the evidence of that motivation?

There would have been no reason to ask. I would assume that police would look into the background of anyone who filed a claim of any serious crime--whether it's something like rape or something like corporate fraud. In a computerized environment, such an effort would take little time.

Cymro was saying it is difficult to believe that every member of the team would have a reason to cover up a crime.(Cymro??)

From this evidence alone, and without any other concrete information (do you have any?), I would have to conclude that it is more likely that the injuries were not the result of an attack at the party, but were probably incurred before she arrived.

So we agree there may be players in attendance that may not be in a position to know whether or not a rape took place?

Are you saying you assume the Durham police usually do run a background check on women that report rape, but for some unknown reason did not in this case?

Occam's Razor suggests adopting simpler assumptions as more likely explanations for their behavior -- in this case the assumption that nothing criminal took place.

Meanwhile, the D.A. says the prior report might not be admitted at trial because of the rape-shield statute. The point is, the report very well might be admitted. The rape shield statute has an exception for the prior inadmissibility of past sexual matters if the accuser has a history of false reporting. (His written statement is here.)

Should the men she named in the police report be credible in their denials of the 1993 rape, her reporting of the incident most likely would come into evidence - particularly due to the fact that both the past allegation and the current Duke allegations involve a gang rape.

In Perry, the trial court's exclusion of a police report was upheld because the proponent of the document presented no evidence that the victim had admitted that her accusations were false, or that the alleged assailant had been tried and acquitted.

Kelley upheld the exclusion of an allegedly prior false accusation of sexual misconduct where the proponent of the evidence failed to show that there had been a trial and the person charged had been found not guilty.

And, indeed, if the DA's principal goal was securing an indictment, regardless of the chances of a conviction down the line, the approach that he's followed would make sense.

I see too many poeple on this site who have taken this thing way too deep, for their own bias reasons

What do you mean by "the injuries?"

The injuries in the photos or the injuries described in the search warrants, the injuries described by her father, the injuries described by the ESPN hospital spy? The injuries Kim Roberts' attorney alluded were in the police report?

What is your definiton of "concrete information?" A reporter's interpretation of a photo? I heard one reporter say the woman looked like she had a demure smile, a defense attorney called the same expression in the same photo "a big time grin" and another reporter described the same same woman in the same photo as having her mouth opened and her teeth showing but she couldn't tell if she was smiling or not.

Well, I guess you must have a different interpretation of TL's previous response to you about the photo lineup, namely PB--you are incorrect in your descriptions of a lineup.

In my view, by using a photo lineup consisting solely of Duke lacrosse players the DA demonstrated that he already believed the accusations. If he had wanted to test the strength of the accuser's claims, he would surely have included known innocent fillers in the lineup he presented to her, as recommended by the procedures TL references.

Can you show me where anyone has claimed that more injuries were incurred later. If not, why would you assume that the injuries in the photographs are not the same ones that everyone else is talking about.

My personal experiance is that [rapes by three men] are quite rare. The odds that this girl was raped twice in her life by two groups of three men is absolutely off the charts.

I quoted the description of the accuser's injuries in the photos provided by the Durham TV station. As far as I know, that is an unbiased description by an independent third party. My opinion is not based on any of the other things you mention, so your references to those is irrelevant to my argument.

So, do you actually have any reason to question either the eyesight or the independence of the Durham ABC-TV reporter?

ABRAMS: But that picture you're seeing there, 12:30:47, you know, look, we disguised her face there, but I can tell you there is a--she is distinctly smiling. I would describe it as a demure smile...

Another photo does show the accuser about 10 minutes before she left on the stairwell with her mouth open and teeth showing. Defense attorneys say she is smiling, but she's not posing and it is difficult to determine whether she is actually smiling.

Or is your response just an attempt to avoid addressing their conclusion that that the accuser was already injured when she arrived at the party?

"I knew somebody had beat her because you could look at her face and tell that her face was swollen," the alleged victim's father told The Herald-Sun newspaper. "It was all around her eyes and her jaw was swollen. She tried to get out of the car, but she couldn't walk. Her leg still hurts."

The police report also included the accuser's account of being hit, kicked, and strangled. A nurse's report based on an examination of the alleged victim on the night of the party reportedly found signs of trauma on her body. She claims to have had bruises on her neck and shoulders.

It wasn't until, after being driven to a Kroger Supermarket at 1:22 a.m., the alleged victim was taken to a psychiatric unit by Durham police, and then to Duke Medical Center after bruises to her neck, arms and body caused alarm, did what officers first thought was a case of drunkenness, immediately become reclassified as sexual assault.

ESPN reported that the source said the accuser walked into the hospital under her own power but did have bruises on her face, neck and arms as well as injuries to her pelvic area.

Medical records and interviews that were obtained by a subpoena revealed the victim had signs, symptoms and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally. Furthermore, the SANE nurse stated the injuries and her behavior were consistent with a traumatic experience.

I don't have any bias in this case from a female point of view. I side with the defense in many cases (my brother was a public defender) and normally consider myself a defense lawyer's dream juror. Based on what I have seen so far I would vote not guilty easily. There's just a part of me that thinks this DA can't be that crazy without something more that we don't know. If not, I agree he is deserving of all the criticism he is receiving.

It means that you better have something more substantial than her word against someone who has a solid alibi.

(2) there will not be firearm involved.

So, who is this 3rd assailant with a mustach, according to this woman's memory of the image of her assailant?

Now I just can't wait for the DA election to be over. I think what may likely to happen is that after the election, the case will soon be dropped, probably at the time when the second DNA result is made public.

If no candidate wins at least 40 percent of the vote, the top two will advance to a May 30 runoff.

I don't understand why they told their attorneys and Tucker Carlson this but not the DA.

Applied probability questions can be tricky, particularly when rare events are involved. If the incidence of women being raped by three men can be said to be rare, the incidence of women falsely claiming to be raped by three men might also be said to be rare. Now which should we claim to be the rarer of the two? And how shall we quantize our results in such a way as to make them significant to the parties in this dispute? Please let me know how you resolve this one, because I know a statistics journal where your results can get published.

The rape shield statute, codified in Rule 412 of our Rules of Evidence, is only concerned with the sexual activity of the complainant. State v. Guthrie, 110 N.C. App. 91, 93, 428 S.E.2d 853, 854 (1993). Accordingly, the rule only excludes evidence of the actual sexual history of the complainant; it does not apply to false accusations.

In other words, where the probative value of the proffered evidence in challenging the witness' credibility is high, and the degree of prejudice present by virtue of reference to previous sexual activity is low, the proffered evidence is relevant and therefore defendant has a right to use the evidence for at least impeachment purposes. Younger, 306 N.C. at 697-99, 295 S.E.2d at 456-58.

Should the men she named in the police report be credible in their denials of the 1993 rape, her reporting of the incident most likely would come into evidence -

In the 1996 case, the alleged Duke lacrosse victim told Creedmoor police that three years earlier, when she was 14, she had been raped and beaten by three men "for a continual time" at an unspecified location in the city. She named the three men and provided addresses for two of them, but authorities in Creedmoor, in Granville County, never brought criminal charges against any of them. Court records confirm that two of the men she named lived at the address she provided and have extensive criminal records.

"This has upset a lot of people's lives, and it will continue to do so," said Chuck Sherwood, father of freshman goalie Devon Sherwood, the only member of the squad not under suspicion. "This is a bad thing, one way or another, whether the players are telling a lie or the accuser is telling a lie. This has turned everything upside down."

Here, the proffered evidence fails this balancing test. Defendant here introduced no evidence that the victim's prior accusations were false. Defendant alleges no prior inconsistent statements.

No evidence at trial was introduced to suggest that N had ever made any false accusations, and defendant's proffer of evidence here made no such showing either. Essentially, defendant was on a fishing expedition. Absent some definitive evidence that N had previously made false accusations, we cannot say the trial court committed prejudicial error by preventing this line of questioning.

Whether the 1993 rape did or didn't occur it may still weaken the AV's credibility either way. If it was a false accusation, that makes her a perjurer. If it did happen, I can imagine the defense attorneys saying that she wanted to get back at men, or she was high and had a flashback or any number of things to further weaken her testimony. In short, the existence of a prior rape claim is not good for the prosecution.

I'm still working on my first cup of coffee, so feel free to correct any obvious flaws.

"They don't want to go up against me," Nifong said when asked outside court Monday about the defense request for his removal. He has denied any political motivation behind his aggressive investigation.

"Their way of trying a case in the media is not to call press conferences, but to simply file motions and court papers that contain outrageous or false statements and assume that people will report them as if they were facts," Nifong said.

Former prosecutor Freda Black got 39 percent support in the poll. Current District Attorney Mike Nifong had support from 38 percent of respondents. Durham attorney Keith Bishop trailed with 11 percent.

Twelve percent of those polled are undecided, making it likely that one of the candidates will win at least 40 percent of the vote and avoid a runoff.

The father said he learned about the broom from others, "and then she told me afterwards because she didn't want me to know that part," he said.

Durham civil rights activist Victoria Peterson told the Observer on Wednesday that an investigator in the case told her the woman had been sodomized "with an object."

"He did not say a broom, just an object," said Peterson, who has become a friend and adviser to the woman's family since the party. "He told me she wasn't just raped, she was terribly sodomized."