Entire Duke Lacrosse Team Suspended from Play
 

Apparently, some of the team members won't talk with investigators because they want to show "team unity". I wonder how much team unity there'll be when Dad and Mom, with lawyers, show up on campus telling their sons they'd damn well better start talking to save their own butts...

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/5450234

There's a pretty good discussion about this over on Deadspin.

The first poster (who is a Duke alumus) says "I love Duke, I'm proud of my school, but incidents like this are the reason why I hated so many of the kids there and why a lot of nice people I know suffered through four years of school there: rich kids who've never seen a consequence in their life. Maybe 16 years of jail time... the first offense penalty for this crime... will make them understand that, but the sad truth is, Daddy's probably going to get them out of this."

I heard today that the school has suspended the rest of the games until something is resolved.

Hard to sweep something like this under the carpet.

What is it about groups of young men who think they can take liberties with "dancers"? This isn't the first time I've seen this kind of thing.

Maybe this will turn out like several other stories posted on this forum about a rape that didn't occur or maybe it won't.

-Rudey
--Innocent until proven guilty

On top of that...who in their right mind would want to have sex with a stripper anyway?

You are asking for HIV.

As a Duke alum, I'm saddened to hear about this story (whichever way it turns out). I've been reading some good articles from the Duke Chronicle.

Two interesting legal issues I've read in the articles so far:

1. DA Mike Nifong said, "Teammates who did not commit or observe the alleged assault are potentially liable for charges of aiding and abetting the crime because of teammate relationships." That seems crazy to me. You weren't even there, but because you play on the same team with these people you could be liable!

2. Attorney Tom Lofton said he is suspicious of the validity of any evidence collected from the 46 athletes. "You've got a fishing expedition where 46 people -- without individualized suspicion focusing on any one of them -- are being subject to an extreme violation of privacy....Not everyone in that pool was at the party. Should they hit a home run with any of these samples, then that person is going to have a very, very strong motion to supress the evidence."

I love my alma mater and hope for the best resolution of this situation!

I would think (and hope) that he meant this in that if they know information about what happened and won't come forward with it, they would be aiding and abetting after the fact.

They provided DNA samples.

Clearly they wouldn't have if they were aiding and abetting.

So why aren't the police waiting until those results are out instead of simply attacking the team and making this to be racial as opposed to sexual?

-Rudey

From the one of the dancer's perspective.....
 

Apparently, the dancer was also a student at NC Central so this is her account of what happened according to the News Observer.

Dancer gives details of ordeal
Samiha Khanna and Anne Blythe, Staff Writers

The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40.

Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing.

"We started to cry," she said. "We were so scared."

Forty-six members of the men's lacrosse team submitted DNA samples Thursday in the unusual case. As of late Friday, there had been no arrests. Duke officials briefed university staff Friday on the allegations, and authorities vowed to crack the team's wall of solidarity.

Read the rest of the article here

Have the police really "attacked" the team in anyway?

OK well how about the DA in clearly saying a rape was done and that even after DNA samples were taken that the players were aiding and abetting or the townies and whomever else put up signs on their lawns.

There are private schools all over the country. Without Duke, that area would be worse off I would think. Instead of complaining about the students and their disconnect with the neighborhood, they should be happy. As for the rape, it is being investigated and they have DNA samples so why can't the townies just wait for those results?

-Rudey

DNA samples will only prove that the person who gave the sample didn't actually commit the rape. The DNA results and anything that might amount to aiding and abetting aren't really related. Withholding information about what may have or may not have happened has nothing to do with their DNA.

I don't know how much it is the police "attacking" the team than the community, the media, etc.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with the approach that seems to be going on here by the DA's office, but i'm not familiar with the particularities of the criminal laws of NC.

There you go baby girl! Law school taught you well.

Come take the Cali bar and play with the big boys. You can make big money out here and your office plant won't have to look at steel mills from the 36th floor.

This looks like pretty straight reportage to me. Out of curiousity, why would you say the media is attacking? Lots of quotes, but no real editorializing. Or am I missing something?

This is a pretty big story, there are a lot of news articles out there about it. Some that i've glanced at have certainly editorialized.