Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
Brodhead endorses another case myth; about the DUPD
Topic Started: Mar 2 2010, 09:28 AM (292 Views)
Quasimodo

(from the Ekstrand suit) :

Duke Officials Cascade the Message that Only the Durham
Police have the Authority to Investigate and Find the Truth.


(snip)

On March 28, 2006, President Brodhead held a press conference that was carried to local, national and international audiences. In his prepared remarks, Brodhead asserted,

“To determine responsibility we need to learn the full truth as quickly as possible... Unavoidably we have to look to the Durham Police to take the lead in the investigation. Duke doesn’t have the power to compel testimony from citizens of this city, and Duke lacks access to warrants, DNA records, and other confidential information.”

These statements were false and misleading, and they were made with the intent to conceal the fact that the Duke Police Department had the power and statutory authority to intervene, to prevent, or aid in preventing the wrongs they knew were conspired to be done to Plaintiffs and their teammates.

In furtherance of the conspiracy to conceal Duke’s responsibility to investigate Mangum’s allegations, Duke Officials, particularly the CMT Defendants, cascaded that message to national and local television and print journalists. For example:

On March 26, 2006, Provost Peter Lange told ABC News, “Do I know that those crimes happened in a way that would allow me to take a position on that? No... [t]hat’s why we have the police. That’s why the police have the means to undertake steps to investigate the crime that Duke could never have.”

On March 27, 2006, Provost Lange told the student newspaper, The Chronicle, “if the University investigates, it could, in fact, somehow affect the ability to pursue the criminal investigation.”

On March 27, 2006, Duke’s Official Spokesperson, John Burness said, “There are some folks who want us to do a full investigation ourselves. But the fact of the matter is this is a police investigation, and we can’t impede it.”

On April 4, 2006, President Brodhead, in his address to the InterCommunity Council, said, “You could lose a police case because of a university’s involvement.”

On April 4, 2006, Brodhead told the Graduate and Professional Student Council (“GPSC”), “If we were to conduct our own separate parallel investigation, there’s all kinds of ways that could interfere—without meaning to—with the police investigation.”

On April 5, 2006, in his “Letter to the Community,” Brodhead wrote:

“Many have urged me to have Duke conduct its own inquiry into these charges. Frustrating though it is, Duke must defer its own investigation until the police inquiry is completed, first because the police have access to key witnesses, warrants, and information that we lack, and second because our concurrent questioning could create a risk of complications—for instance, charges of witness tampering—that could negatively affect the legal proceedings.”


[OTOH, Duke could have conducted its own disciplinary process--AS IT URGED ANDREW GIULIANI TO ACCEPT--and in that process have established for the public that the DNA
had already cleared all the defendants with 100% scientific certainty.

Plus, it could have established clearly for the public that Mangum had a history of making
phony claims in order to get out of trouble.

Plus, it could have established that at least two of the accused had airtight alibis.

Then, having found its students to be innocent of the accusations, it could have admitted
them back to the campus.

That would have put enormous pressure on Nifong to come up with something, or else explain why he wasn't dropping the case.

The University could have done the job the media should have undertaken.

But instead, it appears it was eager to throw its innocent students under the bus, AND TO BE OBSERVED DOING SO, for the sake of PR. ]


A year later, on April 8, 2007, Burness told The Daily Progress:

“Obviously, we have a lot of information that we did not have then. But you’re making your decisions based on the best information you have at the time. Nonetheless, the decision made by the president with the strong support of the board of trustees was made in the best long-term interest of the university and the athletic programs.”

On September 29, 2007, Brodhead issued a statement to all of the team members, and provided several reasons for the University’s failures. One reason was Brodhead’s fear that, “if Duke spoke out in an overly aggressive fashion, it would be perceived that a well-connected institution was improperly attempting to influence the judicial process, which could have caused the case to miscarry in a variety of ways.”

Brodhead also claimed that there was “no legal recourse against the District Attorney, for me or anyone else. Under North Carolina laws, no one had authority to take an active case from a DA absent the DA’s own request, as finally happened in January.”

The foregoing statements were all false and/or misleading, and intended to conceal the fact that the Duke Police Department had the power and opportunity to intervene to prevent or aid in preventing the wrongs conspired to be done to Plaintiffs, but ‘turned a blind eye’ and refused to intervene.

[Duke police had the power to investigate on their own, as they had done in several previous criminal cases involving Duke students/employees. Why was this case handled differently?]
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

(from the Ekstrand suit) :

Duke Police Department’s Public Efforts to Conceal its
Authority to Intervene


The Duke Police Supervising Defendants made numerous public statements designed to conceal the fact that Duke Police had the responsibility to investigate Mangum’s claims. For example:

On May 11, 2006, Defendant Graves told the Charlotte Observer that “It would be somewhat inappropriate for us [Duke Police] to pry into the (Durham Police Department’s) investigation because it’s their case. It’s really up to them to share as much or as little information as they desire.”

Defendant Graves also told a representatives of the news media often that, “Duke...is cooperating fully with the police investigation and urges anyone with information pertinent to the events of March 13 to cooperate with the authorities.”

In addition to their public acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to conceal their own responsibility to investigate, Duke Police Defendants acted privately to further its purposes. For example, in response to a University professor’s suspicions, expressed
in an email to a discussion group, that the Duke Police Department was concealing its role in the investigation, Duke Police Officer Dyson (Gottlieb’s cohort in the Watts raid), personally appeared at the professor’s office the following morning to quell her suspicions.

Dyson falsely explained to the professor that there is nothing to disclose about Duke Police involvement in the investigation of Mangum’s allegations because “it [the assault] happened in the Durham Police jurisdiction,” and Duke Police investigate only incidents that happen within Duke Police Department’s jurisdiction

[which we know to be false, from other examples]
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers · Next Topic »
Add Reply