April 17, 2006
<NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">2 Duke Lacrosse Players Indicted in Rape Case </NYT_HEADLINE>
<NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">By DUFF WILSON
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>DURHAM, N.C., April 17 - A state grand jury issued sealed indictments against two Duke University lacrosse players Monday in a case involving a woman who has accused three team members of raping her at a party last month, Robert C. Ekstrand, the lawyer for 32 of the lacrosse players said.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens sealed the indictments after the grand jury adjourned, citing a state law that allows indictments to remain secret until a defendant is arrested or appears in court.
The two team members could appear in court as early as Tuesday morning. Glen Bachman, the lawyer for Ryan McFadyen, a lacrosse player who was suspended from the university after sending a vicious email related to the party, confirmed that two players had been indicted but said McFadyen was not one of them.
Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, declined to comment on the sealed indictments, which were returned with 81 public indictments involving other cases.
Ekstrand said that he and other defense lawyers had asked Nifong on Thursday and again today to issue public indictments so that anyone who was charged with a crime could voluntarily surrender. Ekstrand said Nifong refused the request, "so we’d be left in the dark." He said the situation meant students could be arrested in classrooms or paraded in front of the media. "I can’t imagine any other reason but humiliation." he said in an interview while the grand jury was in session.
John F. Burness, a spokesman for Duke University, said in a statement that the administration only knew that Nifong had “made a presentation to the grand jury,” but said the university did not know what had been said. “At this point we remain unclear about the precise status of this case and we must simply wait for news of today’s proceedings,” said the statement, which was released before Ekstrand confirmed the indictments involved two players.
The case has drawn national attention to Duke and Durham while underscoring issues of class and race between the private university and the city, which is largely middle class with a population that is about 45 percent black.
The woman, 27, a single mother of two and student at a nearby university, is black. She was hired to perform March 13 at an off-campus party held by members of the team, where she said she was attacked by three white players.
Defense lawyers for the lacrosse players have said there was no rape and no sex at the party. They have mounted a campaign to discredit the woman by saying she was drunk and injured before the party. Robert Bennett, a former lawyer for President Bill Clinton, has been hired by a group of Duke supporters to help mount a public-relations campaign counteracting the negative attention on the university.
On Monday, the 18-member grand jury, which exited the courthouse at about 2 p.m., consisted of about equal numbers of black and white residents of Durham County. Their identities are secret and they are forbidden from talking about the cases. Along with the 81 bills of indictment, the set another 24 indictments to carry forward or return to the prosecutor.
In the past two months, Durham County grand juries have indicted 99 percent of the cases presented to them. County records show the juries indicted 326 peopole and refused to indict three people in that period. No attorneys are allowed in the grand jury room. The jurors only hear the police case.
Forty-one of the team’s 47 players attended the party, according to police interviews with three team captains, Dan Flannery, Bret Thompson and Matt Zash, who told the police that only members of the team were present. Flannery told the police that he used an alias to make the reservation to hire the dancers.
Forty-six team members submitted DNA samples to the police on March 23 under a court order. Results of those DNA tests were released April 9 by defense attorneys, who said the results failed to link any of the players to the woman. The 47th player, who is black, was not required to submit a sample because the woman said the attackers were white.
The woman told the police she was blocked in a bathroom, held, hit, kicked and strangled while she was sexually assaulted for about 30 minutes. She said she had been separated from another dancer, who had also been hired to perform.
The women drove to a nearby grocery store after leaving the house. A security guard there called police, saying the accuser appeared intoxicated and would not get out of the other women’s car.
Police initially thought the accuser was intoxicated but later took her to the Duke University Hospital emergency room. She had “signs, symptoms, and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally,” according to a district attorney’s affidavit.
Defense lawyers have told reporters that the second dancer at the party has contradicted the accuser. But that woman spoke with a local television station over the weekend, under conditions set by her lawyer that she could not be asked about specifics at the party, and she did not contradict the accuser.
"Out-and-out lies," the second dancer told MSNBC of the defense lawyers’ comments about her testimony. "It’s making me believe more and more every single day, every single news story that I hear coming from them, that they have something to hide and they’re scared of what’s to come.”
The second dancer told MSNBC that she had not seen a rape occur but she thought the accuser was telling the truth. "I think that it’s quite possible that something really terrible had happened to her," the second dancer said. She said the accuser was "talkative and friendly and smiling" before the episode and totally incoherent afterward.
Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, canceled the lacrosse team’s season and accepted the resignation of the coach, Mike Pressler, on April 4, the day an unsealed search warrant revealed that one of the team’s players, McFadyen, had sent an e-mail message from his dorm room soon after the party, saying that he wanted to invite strippers to his room the following night, kill them and skin them.
Brodhead also appointed panels to examine the team’s behavior and the university’s handling of the case. The university released seven recruits from their commitments and several have indicated they will go elsewhere.
<NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">2 Duke Lacrosse Players Indicted in Rape Case </NYT_HEADLINE>
<NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">By DUFF WILSON
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>DURHAM, N.C., April 17 - A state grand jury issued sealed indictments against two Duke University lacrosse players Monday in a case involving a woman who has accused three team members of raping her at a party last month, Robert C. Ekstrand, the lawyer for 32 of the lacrosse players said.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens sealed the indictments after the grand jury adjourned, citing a state law that allows indictments to remain secret until a defendant is arrested or appears in court.
The two team members could appear in court as early as Tuesday morning. Glen Bachman, the lawyer for Ryan McFadyen, a lacrosse player who was suspended from the university after sending a vicious email related to the party, confirmed that two players had been indicted but said McFadyen was not one of them.
Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, declined to comment on the sealed indictments, which were returned with 81 public indictments involving other cases.
Ekstrand said that he and other defense lawyers had asked Nifong on Thursday and again today to issue public indictments so that anyone who was charged with a crime could voluntarily surrender. Ekstrand said Nifong refused the request, "so we’d be left in the dark." He said the situation meant students could be arrested in classrooms or paraded in front of the media. "I can’t imagine any other reason but humiliation." he said in an interview while the grand jury was in session.
John F. Burness, a spokesman for Duke University, said in a statement that the administration only knew that Nifong had “made a presentation to the grand jury,” but said the university did not know what had been said. “At this point we remain unclear about the precise status of this case and we must simply wait for news of today’s proceedings,” said the statement, which was released before Ekstrand confirmed the indictments involved two players.
The case has drawn national attention to Duke and Durham while underscoring issues of class and race between the private university and the city, which is largely middle class with a population that is about 45 percent black.
The woman, 27, a single mother of two and student at a nearby university, is black. She was hired to perform March 13 at an off-campus party held by members of the team, where she said she was attacked by three white players.
Defense lawyers for the lacrosse players have said there was no rape and no sex at the party. They have mounted a campaign to discredit the woman by saying she was drunk and injured before the party. Robert Bennett, a former lawyer for President Bill Clinton, has been hired by a group of Duke supporters to help mount a public-relations campaign counteracting the negative attention on the university.
On Monday, the 18-member grand jury, which exited the courthouse at about 2 p.m., consisted of about equal numbers of black and white residents of Durham County. Their identities are secret and they are forbidden from talking about the cases. Along with the 81 bills of indictment, the set another 24 indictments to carry forward or return to the prosecutor.
In the past two months, Durham County grand juries have indicted 99 percent of the cases presented to them. County records show the juries indicted 326 peopole and refused to indict three people in that period. No attorneys are allowed in the grand jury room. The jurors only hear the police case.
Forty-one of the team’s 47 players attended the party, according to police interviews with three team captains, Dan Flannery, Bret Thompson and Matt Zash, who told the police that only members of the team were present. Flannery told the police that he used an alias to make the reservation to hire the dancers.
Forty-six team members submitted DNA samples to the police on March 23 under a court order. Results of those DNA tests were released April 9 by defense attorneys, who said the results failed to link any of the players to the woman. The 47th player, who is black, was not required to submit a sample because the woman said the attackers were white.
The woman told the police she was blocked in a bathroom, held, hit, kicked and strangled while she was sexually assaulted for about 30 minutes. She said she had been separated from another dancer, who had also been hired to perform.
The women drove to a nearby grocery store after leaving the house. A security guard there called police, saying the accuser appeared intoxicated and would not get out of the other women’s car.
Police initially thought the accuser was intoxicated but later took her to the Duke University Hospital emergency room. She had “signs, symptoms, and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally,” according to a district attorney’s affidavit.
Defense lawyers have told reporters that the second dancer at the party has contradicted the accuser. But that woman spoke with a local television station over the weekend, under conditions set by her lawyer that she could not be asked about specifics at the party, and she did not contradict the accuser.
"Out-and-out lies," the second dancer told MSNBC of the defense lawyers’ comments about her testimony. "It’s making me believe more and more every single day, every single news story that I hear coming from them, that they have something to hide and they’re scared of what’s to come.”
The second dancer told MSNBC that she had not seen a rape occur but she thought the accuser was telling the truth. "I think that it’s quite possible that something really terrible had happened to her," the second dancer said. She said the accuser was "talkative and friendly and smiling" before the episode and totally incoherent afterward.
Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, canceled the lacrosse team’s season and accepted the resignation of the coach, Mike Pressler, on April 4, the day an unsealed search warrant revealed that one of the team’s players, McFadyen, had sent an e-mail message from his dorm room soon after the party, saying that he wanted to invite strippers to his room the following night, kill them and skin them.
Brodhead also appointed panels to examine the team’s behavior and the university’s handling of the case. The university released seven recruits from their commitments and several have indicated they will go elsewhere.
