Criminal Law

T. Cline, Esq., Paragon of Ethics

Posted on April 27, 2009
No one can say that Durham voters didn?t know what they were getting when they chose Tracey Cline as their next ?minister of justice.? In the past three years, Cline has made her contempt for ethics known in virtually every way possible. Consider:During the campaign, Cline at best misled voters and at worst outright lied about her role in the lacrosse case, most notably by denying the written record that she developed the idea to initiate the legal case through a procedurally preposterous non-testimonial order against all 46 white lacrosse players...

Steel On Way Out

Posted on April 27, 2009
The Chronicle reports that Bob Steel will step down as chairman of the Duke Board of Trustees at the end of this academic year, to be replaced by former N.C. Democratic legislator Dan Blue.Blue has what could most charitably be described as a mixed record on the lacrosse case--most troublingly, he chaired the committee that recommended a new five-year term for Richard Brodhead--but regardless, the first step toward meaningful reform at Duke is the departure of Steel, who had a personal, vested interest in maintaining the pretense that the Duke administration handled the case well.

Suggested Panels for the Stone Center

Posted on April 25, 2009
As noted below, on Wednesday, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center hosted an address by Crystal Mangum who spoke about ?the harsh realities of minority treatment both in the justice system and the media.? The event sponsors?Theta Nu Xi Inc. sorority and Alpha Phi Alpha Inc...

Mangum at UNC, Audience Questions To Be Censored

Posted on April 22, 2009
In what is nothing short of an extraordinary decision, UNC?s Sonja Haynes Stone Center has chosen to host serial fabricator Crystal Mangum at the University of North Carolina tonight, at 6.30pm, in a gathering devoted to ?social injustice? and ?the harsh realities of minority treatment both in the justice system and the media...

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The False Accuser Speaks

Posted on April 22, 2009
At the Liestoppers forum, Walt-in-Durham has a detailed rundown of Crystal Mangum?s appearance tonight at UNC. As I have noted previously, it is mindboggling that an academic institution would invite someone who the state AG had, with copious evidence, deemed a false accuser and not allow her to be questioned on the myriad contradictions in her story...

Lubiano: "Why Do I Think Young People Matter?"

Posted on April 20, 2009
A reader tracked down for me what Group of 88 leader Wahneema Lubiano lists on her Duke webpage as her most recent scholarly ?publication??an interview in an obscure journal called e3w.And what is it that passes for ?scholarship? among this Group of 88?er?Information about Lubiano?s drinking habits, among other items: ?There are so many half-remembered stories and pieces of stories that they jostle each other in my mind into a kind of rich but incoherent mass that?s hard to untangle?late night discussions at each others? houses over food and drink...

Up & Down

Posted on April 16, 2009
Sometimes doing the right thing is rewarded.A PPP poll shows that Roy Cooper, one of the heroes of the lacrosse case, continues to lead incumbent Senator Richard ("Silent Dick") Burr in what appears to be an increasingly likely Senate bid.And who doesn't like Cooper? The Nifong true believers...

Nifong & Stevens: Follow-up

Posted on April 14, 2009
Ironically, on the very day that the post below came out, a major report from the Justice Project appeared, using Nifong and the Stevens prosecutors as the two specific examples of prosecutorial misconduct in recent years.I agree completely with the report's recommendations--especially its sympathic view toward open-file discovery--although its description of the lacrosse case seems a bit off the mark...

Nifong & Stevens

Posted on April 13, 2009
Two weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder asked the court to dismiss all charges against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens. Holder cited the performance of the prosecutors in the case, who had been repeatedly excoriated by Judge Emmet Sullivan for withholding exculpatory evidence from Stevens? attorneys...

Weekend Reading

Posted on April 10, 2009
Last week, I noted that Wahneema Lubiano had published virtually nothing since arriving as a tenured professor at Duke more than a decade ago.Her latest "publication"--a 3-page interview in an obscure journal called e3w--isn't available in any scholarly databases to my knowledge, isn't available at the Columbia, NYU, or CUNY libraries, and whose website was last updated in 2007, but below is a taste of what the Group of 88 leader has published...

March Events in the Case

Posted on April 06, 2009
A major theme of this blog has been the importance of ethics in the legal profession. In late March, the Volokh Conspiracy, the nation?s leading legal blog, invited Prof. Richard Painter, to guest blog about his new book, Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference...

Some Swaggerers Are More Equal Than Others

Posted on April 03, 2009
Four items involving groups of men at Duke and the media:1.) ?Team has swaggered for years? --headline, N&O, 9 April 2006 2.) ?The charges track the noisy passage of a championship lacrosse team with a reputation for a swaggering sense of entitlement and privilege...

The Group Tightens Its Vise

Posted on April 01, 2009
Election returns have come in for Duke's Academic Council, the body tasked with implementing Duke's principle of faculty "self-governance." The body is already run by Group of 88 stalwart Paula McClain.Indicating just how much the Group's pedagogy dominates Duke's Humanities departments, four of the five vacant Humanities positions went to Group of 88 members, led by extremists Wahneema Lubiano and Karla Holloway...

Checking In with Drs. Bowen & Farred

Posted on March 30, 2009
There were a few high-profile instances in the case in which events conspired to prove a figure of authority unequivocally and publicly wrong. The most spectacular example of the pattern involved the New York Times August 25, 2006 front-page article, which asserted, ?By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks...

Grisham on Public Memory

Posted on March 26, 2009
From page 43 of John Grisham?s latest novel, The Associate: Each fleeting thought was chased away by the next, and he found it impossible to concentrate, to think rationally, to focus on what should and should not be said. Decisions made at this ugly moment could reverberate forever...

North Carolina Poll: Cooper Ahead

Posted on March 25, 2009
The second consecutive poll on the 2010 North Carolina Senate race shows one of the heroes of the lacrosse case, Roy Cooper, with a narrow lead over incumbent Senator Richard Burr--who joined his former colleague, Elizabeth Dole, in refusing to endorse Cooper's request for a Dept...

From Burch to the Bohemian Lubiano

Posted on March 23, 2009
Last week, Durham resident Michael Burch pled guilty to two counts of attempted rape, for which he received a sentence of between 48 and 67 months in prison. The Burch case provided an unusually clear illustration of the hypocrisy of the Duke administration and faculty ?activists...

Wendy Murphy, Esq.

Posted on March 18, 2009
The astounding Wendy Murphy is at it again. In this morning?s edition of the Patriot-Ledger, a small paper in suburban Boston, the person who seemed to have no trouble spewing demonstrable falsehoods in the lacrosse case writes the following:For example, I?d like to see full disclosure of the file in the ?Duke Lacrosse? rape case...

The Group of 88 Convenes a Conference

Posted on March 16, 2009
In most professions, credibility matters. Imagine how seriously people would take a seminar on best principles of corporate governance conducted by John Thain (or Bob Steel, for that matter). Or a speech from Bill Clinton on the importance of personal morality for elected leaders...

The Iowa Way

Posted on March 09, 2009
Two articles that crossed my desk in the past week attest to the grip that race/class/gender-based political correctness exercises over college and university campuses. The articles also give a sense as to why so few administrations have chosen to use what happened at Duke to address similar problems of faculty groupthink on issues of race, class, and gender on their own campuses...

Feburary Events in the Case

Posted on March 05, 2009

A Difficult Task

Posted on March 02, 2009

miriam cooke, "Moderate"

Posted on February 28, 2009

Taylor on the Holder Address; Kristin Butler

Posted on February 26, 2009

The Nifong Conspiracy Theorists

Posted on February 25, 2009
I largely have avoided commenting on the strange ?Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong? organization, put together by a self-described ?lay person,? Sidney Harr. The group, which demands restoration of Mike Nifong?s law license, portrays the disgraced ex-DA as a victim of a conspiracy involving Attorney General Roy Cooper, the North Carolina Bar, various defense attorneys, Judge Osmond Smith, Moezeldin Elmostafa, the North Carolina legislature (for enacting the law, which Nifong ignored, requiring prosecutors to turn over all test results from NTO?s), and (perhaps) other, unnamed co-conspirators in Durham, in North Carolina, in other states, and in other countries as well...

Learning from Lacrosse

Posted on February 22, 2009
Two cases showing how the lessons of the lacrosse case can apply more broadly:1.) The Supreme Court has agreed to hear District Attorney's Office v. Osborne. The issue: should people convicted before modern DNA standards were developed have the right to DNA tests now, which could prove their innocence?2...

Old "Friends"

Posted on February 16, 2009
A variety of figures whose performance in the lacrosse case drew widespread condemnation surfaced in the news over the past week?with scant, if any, suggestions that they had learned any lessons from their misbehavior.--------- In a race to the bottom for lack of integrity, it?s hard to choose between Selena Roberts and Alex Rodriguez...

Law and Contemporary Problems Article

Posted on February 10, 2009
My article from the most recent edition of Law and Contemporary Problems, on the role of the blogosphere in the lacrosse case.

Bryant's Ron Machtley Speaks Out

Posted on February 07, 2009
Former Rhode Island congressman Ron Machtley, president of Bryant University, becomes (to my knowledge) the first college or university administrator to publicly criticize how Richard Brodhead and the Group of 88 responded to the lacrosse case.For the full video, on Bryant's move to Division I, including some excellent footage of Mike Pressler, see Lax Power.

On Other Blogs

Posted on February 06, 2009
Two items not to miss on other blogs:Bill Anderson calls for ending the practice of civil suit absolute immunity for prosecutorial behavior in light of Nifong's misconduct.John in Carolina takes the Chronicle to task for a peculiar passage in a recent editorial baldly asserting, on the basis of neither actual evidence nor any original reporting, that the lacrosse case didn't affect Duke fundraising.

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