Without knowing both sides, how can anyone say who is in the right?

Isn't this why we ran into trouble on this case in the first place? Automatically believing the prosecution and the city?

was tossed by the courts. Settling for $50K to the Innocence Project is a face-saving move that shows everyone's tired of dumping money into this pit

For those of us that followed it, and initially believed her, it was a gross injustice, she was a total fraud, and proven so. The city joined in the lynching of these boys, as did I, and many on this board, much to my dismay. Check it out.

What I was saying is that the person posted only the city's response, denying culpability. I wanted to know what the students in their lawsuit were saying the city specifically did wrong (as opposed to the prosecutor, who apparently was an employee of the state.)

The person I was answering seemed to take the city's statement at face value, as if it was established fact since the city said it. I wanted to know what the response to that particular statement was.

I'll get some coffee and reread the thread.. Sorry if I jumped the tracks. yikes

Not yet.

City, Duke lacrosse players settle

May. 16, 2014 @ 11:02 AM
Ray Gronberg

....
The settlements left Linwood Wilson, a former investigator for the DA’s office, as the sole remaining defendant in the lawsuit. He has been representing himself, instead of employing a lawyer.

The city is still in litigation with three other members of the 2005-06 Duke team who escaped indictment in 2006. That case remained unsettled ahead of a conference Friday morning between lawyers and U.S. District Court Judge James Beaty Jr.

A third lawsuit, filed by 38 unindicted members of the team, was dropped last year after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate the federal civil-rights claims against the city.

I am not over it.

Crystall Gale Magnum (yes, I used her name, so sue me), is in jail, but Matt Nifong should have gone to jail for 20 years. The president and fuckwad administrators at Duke should have been fired and blacklisted from academia. The 88 professors who signed that bullshit politically correct letter were not disciplined and all of the angry agitators: militant feminists, the New Black Panthers, Nancy Grace, Wendy HUnter and some agenda-pushers right here on DU, never apologized.

I am not over it.

She's a perpetrator, not a victim. Her many victims have had their lives forever disrupted.

As innocent as these kids were, it took an army of highly paid lawyers to keep them out of jail due to malacious prosecution. If they weren't so rich, they would be in prison right now. Justice and truth don't matter.

I hope whoever replaced him isn't the slime he was.

He totally fkd with wrong people!

Nifong was going after these guys like they had killed his dog. Everyone had an opinion on their guilt or innocence. Many people on DU were out for their blood, convinced that they were guilty as sin. It looked to me that they were going to prison. These boys were saved, not by the truth (which was on their side, as if THAT mattered), but by their parents money. Take that money away, and they would be gone. It's as simple as that.
Courts and prosecutors are not interested in the truth. They want a win. They want to put people in jail. The performances in front of the camera are a show. Trust them at your peril.
We hear stories all the time of innocent people in jail for 15, 20, 30 years because the cops lie. Because the prosecution fabricates evidence to get a win. And there are no consequences for those horrible acts. This country is 228 years old. The first prosecutor that was jailed for putting an innocent person in prison happened in 2013. And he only got 10 days in jail, 500 hours of community service and a small fine. His victim was in prison for 25 years. Until we start jailing prosecutors for malfeasance, I won't trust the court system. No one should. Official immunity needs to become a thing of the past. There is no legitimate reason for it.

Make it clear that we would rather 99 guilty go free than one innocent person being imprisoned and back that up with the force of law. Maybe if a malicious prosecutor and their immediate families are required to spend one year in prison for every day that an innocent person spends in prison that would cut down on this horseshit.

They like the status quo. And there is no incentive for the legislature to fix the problem. It's a few less tax payers out there. And it's more money for the profit-for-prison industry. Why should they care about the lives they destroy?

quite aside from the damage done to the lives of those falsely accused of rape, is the fact that they make real rape victims less likely to be believed. This is an utterly disgusting crime.

By Anne Blythe
ablythe@newsobserver.comMay 16, 2014 Updated 19 hours ago

DURHAM — Three Duke University lacrosse players and the City of Durham settled a long-running lawsuit Friday, closing another chapter in a case that exposed flaws in the Durham justice system and ended a district attorney’s legal career.

Under terms of the settlement, the three players – Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans – will receive no money. At their request, the city will make a $50,000 grant to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission. ... Mike Nifong, the disbarred and disgraced former district attorney, also agreed to give the commission $1,000, settling the case against him, according to one of the attorneys representing the players.

“It was an honor and a surprise to be chosen to receive this grant,” said Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, executive director of the commission. “We will put the money in a special fund, and it will be used for the investigation of innocence claims. We are pleased that the important work of the Innocence Inquiry Commission was recognized in this way.”

The Innocence Inquiry Commission, the first of its kind in the nation, was created in 2006 after several high-profile cases of wrongful convictions raised questions about the criminal justice system. Though the wrongfully convicted can appeal their verdicts, their claims generally are limited to technical problems at the trial level, not claims of innocence. But the commission has legal authority and powers to delve into such claims, then put them before a panel of judges that can grant immediate freedom.

Eight years. This has been going on for eight years

Nifong Ironies in Settlement

The attempted rehabilitation of Mike Nifong

At DU: Darryl Howard and the rampaging prosecutor: Durham learns little from Duke lacrosse debacle

This is a sad display of prosecutorial misconduct. Maybe malevolence is a better word than misconduct.

From the Washington Post: Darryl Howard and the rampaging prosecutor: Durham learns little from Duke lacrosse debacle

The Watch
A reported opinion blog on civil liberties and the criminal justice system

By Radley Balko March 20 at 12:11 pm

When Darryl Howard was convicted of murder in 1995, he cried out ”I didn’t do it!” then sobbed in open court. He has maintained his innocence ever since.
....

Now, newly discovered evidence further argues for Howard’s innocence. In court papers filed this week, the Innocence Project reveals that DNA testing of a rape kit taken from Doris Washington found some sperm that went undetected during the initial investigation. That sperm is a match to a career criminal, not to Howard. Attorneys for Howard have also uncovered evidence that prosecutors in the case may have withheld important exculpatory evidence, including a credible statement from an informant days after the murder who attributed the crimes to a local gang, not to Darryl Howard.

Discovery of the memo, which was known to police and should have been known to prosecutors, shows that the state failed to turn over relevant evidence pointing to Howard’s innocence. But the contents of the memo also suggest that Howard’s prosecutor not only put on perjurious testimony from a police investigator, he then used that evidence to give false statements in court himself.

Perhaps most interesting of all is just who that prosecutor was: Michael Nifong, then an assistant district attorney for Durham County. Nifong of course would later be appointed, then elected district attorney, and then make national headlines in 2006 when he falsely charged three Duke University lacrosse players with sexually assaulting a stripper. In 2007 Nifong was disbarred for his handling of evidence in that case. He was also found in contempt for making false statements about the case in court.