Brendan Nyhan

An article in today’s News & Observer includes more details about the alleged Duke lacrosse party pictures and the timeline that they purportedly document:

A sequence of photos from the lacrosse team party where police say a dancer was raped shows the accuser impaired and stumbling, team members drinking beer and the accuser smiling before passing out on the back porch, according to Joseph B. Cheshire V, a lawyer for one of the players….

Cheshire said the time-stamped photos have a 27-minute gap between when the two women stopped dancing and when the accuser was photographed outside the house. During that period, the dancers locked themselves in a bathroom then went outside, he said.

Cheshire declined to provide copies of the photos to The News & Observer and would not identify the photographer. And he has not shared the photos with prosecutors.

…The first sequence of photographs, taken over three and a half minutes, shows two women dancing in negligees in the living room of the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., Cheshire said.

He gave the following description of the photographs: In the first, the accuser is prone on the floor, her face in the carpet.

The other photos show her on the floor, on all fours or on her back. The other dancer is on her feet for all the photos. The lacrosse players line the room, drinking out of beer cans and plastic cups, and one photo shows a player unconscious on the floor, his shorts pulled down and his underwear wet.

“The photographs show the accuser has bruises and cuts on her arms, legs and feet,” Cheshire said. “These are visible at the very start of the dance.”

The dance lasted less than four minutes, Cheshire said, when the second dancer stopped the performance after an offensive remark from a player.

There are no photos for the next 27 minutes. During this time, Cheshire said, the women locked themselves in a bathroom while one of the captains tried to persuade them to continue the show. Some players accused the women of pocketing the $800 fee and not performing. The dancers then left the house, he said.

Cheshire said the next photographs show the accuser on the back porch, fumbling through her purse. One shows her smiling at the photographer. She is still in her negligee, which does not appear torn or damaged, Cheshire said.

The next photo, six minutes later, shows her passed out on her side on the back porch, he said. Cheshire said the final photograph, taken three minutes later, shows a team captain helping the accuser into the other dancer’s car.

“There was no rape in this house,” Cheshire said. “It didn’t happen.”

Until we see the photographs and technical experts assess the accuracy of the timestamps, this is all hearsay, but it is still worth comparing the defense attorney’s timeline with the one previously constructed by the N&O.

The total time in the house from the start of the dancing to the dancers leaving is approximately 39 minutes, which roughly corresponds to the witness account of the women entering the house at midnight and leaving between 12:45 and 1 AM. However, the key discrepancy concerns the accuser’s return to the house after initially leaving. According to the accuser, she returned to the house and was raped in a bathroom for approximately 30 minutes. But Cheshire’s claimed timeline shows a much shorter interval between the accuser leaving the house for the first time and getting in the other dancer’s car — approximately nine minutes.

Again, this is all speculation until these photographs are entered into evidence and verified by evidence, but the most important point is that the pictures do not necessarily exonerate the players. Even if the pictures are accurate, the accuser could have been raped in the six minute interval between leaving the house and passing out on the back porch. We just don’t know.

Update 4/10 9:34 AM: According to the AP, another defense attorney named Bill Thomas made two noteworthy claims yesterday.

First, he said the alleged photos were taken by more than one person: “[Thomas] declined to identify the player he represents and said he would not release the photos, taken by at least two cameras, until pending DNA tests are completed.”

Second, he claimed that the other dancer cannot provide corroboration of the alleged victim’s story. The AP reports that “Thomas said one of the attorneys representing team members had interviewed the other dancer extensively, and she said the alleged victim never told her about a rape.”

Today’s Herald Sun includes a report on a claim by a Duke lacrosse player’s attorney claiming that time-stamped pictures show that the alleged victim was (a) already bruised up before attending the party and (b) passed out outside rather than returning inside at the time of the alleged rape. However, the attorney refused to identify who took the pictures or to provide them to the Herald Sun, so it’s unclear if these claims have any merit.

Here is the story:

A defense attorney says pictures taken at the now-infamous Duke University lacrosse party last month contradict an exotic dancer’s allegations of being raped, beaten and strangled by three players.

The photos show the woman attempting to get back inside the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. where the attack allegedly occurred on the night of March 13-14, said attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the lacrosse players.

"She had a big smile on her face," Thomas said.

Then the woman fell down at the back door of the house and lay on the ground "for quite some time" as if she were intoxicated or asleep, Thomas added.

In addition, the time-stamped photos indicate the woman was severely bruised on her legs and face, and had cuts on her legs, knees and feet when she arrived at the home — and before the rape allegedly occurred — Thomas said.

He said the photos clearly show "there is no way she was assaulted at all, much less in the manner she described."

Thomas declined to allow The Herald-Sun to view the pictures.

Two other lawyers associated with the case, who declined to be named, corroborated Thomas’ description of the photos. The defense attorneys said they might soon make the pictures public.

…The camera used to take the pictures at the party has been tested and calibrated to guarantee the accuracy of its time stamps, according to Thomas.

Thomas said the photographs were taken by a student, but "not necessarily one of the lacrosse players." He declined to be more specific.

Previously, authorities have suggested that only lacrosse team members were at the party. DNA tests were ordered for all 46 white members of the lacrosse team. The victim said her attackers were white.

So who is this mysterious witness? And why didn’t the authorities know that someone who wasn’t on the team was at the party?

The New York Times has been producing saturation coverage of the Duke lacrosse case for days now. Today they ran two op-eds on the case.

The first, by a writer named Allan Gurganus, is a semi-incoherent quasi-literary rant. The concluding passage gives you the flavor of the piece:

Now corporate America, athletic America, Defense Department America form a unified competitive team. Duke’s head basketball coach was recently offered tens of millions to lead a pro team. He refused, receiving a fancier leadership title and the full attention of Duke’s new president.

A man nabbed for using Duke stationery to support his favorite Republican Senate candidate, Mike Krzyzewski gives inspirational talks to Fortune 500 corporations. Though silent about the scandal, he still appears in ads for American Express and Chevy. Does he keep the money, or his school? Guess.

When the children of privilege feel vividly alive only while victimizing, even torturing, we must all ask why. This question is first personal then goes Ethical soon National. Boys 18 to 25 are natural warriors: bodies have wildly outgrown reason, the sexual imperative outranks everything. They are insurance risks. They need (and crave) true leadership, genuine order. But left alone, granted absolute power, their deeds can terrify.

The imperative to win, and damn all collateral costs, is not peculiar to Durham — and it is killing us.

Why is there no one to admire?

Meanwhile, behind the subscription wall of Times Select, David Brooks has a more cogent take:

All great scandals occur twice, first as Tom Wolfe novels, then as real-life events that nightmarishly mimic them. And so after “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” it was perhaps inevitable that Duke University would have to endure a mini-social explosion involving athletic thugs, resentful townies, nervous administrators, male predators, aggrieved professors, binge drinking and lust gone wild.

If you wander through the thicket of commentary that already surrounds the Duke lacrosse scandal, the first thing you notice is how sociological it is. In almost every article and piece of commentary, the event is portrayed not as a crime between individuals but as a clash between classes, races and sexes.

…The key word in the coverage has been “entitlement.” In a thousand different ways commentators have asserted (based on no knowledge of the people involved) that the lacrosse players behaved rancidly because they felt privileged and entitled to act as they pleased.

The main theme shaping the coverage is that inequality leads to exploitation. The whites felt free to exploit the blacks. The men felt free to exploit women. The jocks felt free to exploit everybody else. As a Duke professor, Houston Baker, wrote, their environment gave the lacrosse players “license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech and feel proud of themselves in the bargain.”

It could be that this environmental, sociological explanation of events is entirely accurate. But it says something about our current intellectual climate that almost every reporter and commentator used these mental categories so unconsciously and automatically.

Several decades ago, American commentators would have used an entirely different vocabulary to grapple with what happened at Duke. Instead of the vocabulary of sociology, they would have used the language of morality and character.

I’m currently participating in the Conference on Party Effects in the United States Senate being held here at Duke today and tomorrow. All the papers, including the one I co-wrote on “Party and Constituency in the U.S. Senate, 1933-2004,” are available in PDF if you are interested…

Last month, I wrote about the myth that George W. Bush is a “rancher.” For the record, he bought his property in 1999 and all he does there is cut brush. Yet people still believe it represents his true identity, as this ridiculous question yesterday during a Q&A in Charlotte, NC illustrates:

Q Mr. President, I was raised on a ranch in New Mexico. And my heroes
have always been cowboys.

THE PRESIDENT: There you go. Thank you, yes. (Laughter.) I’m not sure I
qualify as a cowboy. (Laughter.)

People have questioned why it took so long for the police to search the Duke lacrosse house – here’s the answer from the City Manager in an interview with the News & Observer:

City Manager Patrick Baker said in an interview Thursday that it took two days before police searched the house where a woman said she was raped because 31 hours passed before she was able to provide details about what happened.

I want to briefly note some critiques I’ve heard from readers about my blogging on the Duke lacrosse case:

(1) I’m being too hard on the victim and her family.

(2) I’m putting too much weight on statements made in the press, particularly those not made by the accuser.

(3) The alleged identifications by the victim don’t mean that the mass DNA tests weren’t required.

(4) The Durham County District Attorney, Matt Nifong, is the one mouthing off in the press.

(5) I’m putting too much weight on statements coming from defendants’ attornies.

Just to quickly respond to (1) and (2), I don’t mean to pick on the victim and her family, and I certainly understand that statements in the press are likely to be imprecise and contradictory, particularly those not coming directly from the victim.

Nonetheless, I do think it’s noteworthy when the victim’s account and the timeline of the night in question come into conflict with media reports or public statements by her father. I’ve tried to be careful to note that these conflicts are not dispositive one way or the other, but if you haven’t gotten that message, please listen now.

As far as (3), I’m not a lawyer and I certainly understand that eyewitness identifications are frequently inaccurate. But if the victim identified her attackers as her father claimed, can the DA just go out and compel 43 other DNA samples just in case she is wrong? In fact, if she remembered any physical characteristics of her attackers besides race, the DA could have at least narrowed down the list of suspects.

As a result, it seems like either the father is overstating what his daughter can remember or the DA is on a fishing expedition, the subject of (4). I’m certainly wary of Mike Nifong, the Durham County District Attorney, who has essentially tried this case in the press in the midst of an election campaign.

Re: (5), I try to be skeptical of defense claims, but there is a limited amount of information in the public record. Many of these issues — such as the address that was or wasn’t on the front of the lacrosse house — will ultimately be resolved in court if this case goes anywhere.

Rep. Curt Weldon, my former representative when I was at Swarthmore College, has embarrassed himself yet again. This time, Weldon is criticizing Joe Sestak, his opponent, for having his daughter’s brain tumor treated at a hospital in Washington, DC. According to The Hill, Weldon “suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital.” How dare he? (Via Atrios here and here.)

Jonathan Cohn makes an important point on TNR’s blog The Plank about the Massachusetts quasi-universal health care plan:

Mitt Romney will say this law makes him a worthy candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. And he’s right. Politics should reward officials who accomplish something in office. And while it will undoubtedly annoy some progressives who don’t love the plan or think he’s taking credit for an idea (and favorable circumstances) that fell into his lap, they should be thankful for this development.

Thankful, because nationally the most important impact of this new law may be on politics, not policy. Once Romney starts boasting about how he achieved universal health coverage in Massachusetts, it will become that much harder for conservatives to demonize the very concept as “big government.” Oh, they’ll try–and they’ll have at least some success. But now Democrats will have this retort: If a Republican governor and leading presidential contender with strong conservative credentials thinks universal health care is a good idea, how radical an idea can it be?

More importantly, Romney will make it his signature issue, forcing Republicans to come to the table with their own proposals. If both sides feel compelled to do something, it’s more likely that national-level action could happen.

Via Chris Lawrence, I just learned that the Duke men’s lacrosse season has been cancelled and the coach has been fired in the wake of the release of a disgusting and hateful email sent by a lacrosse player after the alleged rape:

[Brodhead’s] statement comes in the wake of the Durham Police Department releasing two documents: an e-mail sent by one of the players and a search warrant of an Edens 2C Dormitory residence.

The e-mail was sent from sophomore lacrosse player Ryan McFadyen’s account, just hours after a March 13 party at which an exotic dancer has alleged she was raped by three players of the team.

“After tonight’s show, I’ve decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c,” the e-mail read, the writer noting, however, that there would be no nudity. “i plan on killing the b- as soon as [they] walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while c- in my duke issue spandex.”

The search warrant, which includes the full text of the email, has been made available online by the News and Observer in PDF format.

Brodhead’s decision was the right one. However, Duke and Durham must be cautious about a rush to judgment. The email — however repugnant — does not prove that a crime was committed before it was sent.

PS For those who have complained about the lack of cooperation from team members, it’s worth noting that the McFayden email was provided to police by an anonymous source who is probably a lacrosse player.

Update 4/6 8:25 AM: According to the Herald Sun, McFadyen reportedly attended the Take Back the Night march:

McFadyen reportedly was one of about 500 people who attended a Take Back the Night march during Sexual Assault Awareness Week at Duke.

“I completely support this event and this entire week,” McFadyen told The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper. “It’s just sad that the allegations we are accused of happened to fall when they did.”