A Rush to Injustice by Nader Baydoun

Author:Nader Baydoun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

PROSECUTORIAL

MISCONDUCT

As the evidence continued to expose the lies, the final ax was about to fall on Nifong’s credibility and possibly on his case. On December 21, 2006, someone from the Durham District Attorney’s office interviewed Crystal Gail Mangum—for the very first time. Linwood Wilson, a gospel singer/former police officer/retired private investigator, and Nifong’s chief investigator in the Duke Lacrosse Case, met with the alleged victim to hear her version of the events that transpired on the night of March 13 and early morning hours of March 14, 2006.Wilson, after spending seven years in retirement, was hired by Nifong in 2005 to help track down people who had written bad checks. He was assigned to the lacrosse case as soon as Nifong took over supervision of it. During Wilson’s meeting with Mangum, astoundingly, she allegedly changed her story yet again, altering numerous material details, including the timeline of events, the identity of her alleged attackers, as well as how she was allegedly assaulted. Significantly, this time she stated that she didn’t know if anyone had penetrated her vagina with a penis. She also stated that Seligmann did not participate in any part of the alleged assault.

Her newest version of the story presented yet another piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit with the actual and documented timeline of events, the pictures, Bissey’s statement, or the accused players’ alibis. In fact,Mangum’s new claims were as follows: that the attack occurred between 11:35 p.m. and midnight; that it was not “Reade Seligmann who stood in front of her and made her commit a sex act,” and that instead, it was David Evans; the revelation that “Seligmann did not commit any sex act on her”; the recanting of her statement that her attacker had a moustache; the recanting of her previous statements that “‘Matt,’ ‘Adam,’ and ‘Brett’ were three separate people,” claiming now “that they were only two people”; the recanting of her statements that “each attacker used a separate name,” now claiming “that Dave Evans used three (and possibly four) names, and that Collin Finnerty did not use any name during the attack.” She also recanted her “numerous statements that she was certain that two of her attackers used their penises to penetrate both her vagina and her rectum . . . now claiming that she cannot be sure about penile penetration at all.”

It was an entirely new version of events and, if none of the earlier contradicting evidence had made Nifong drop the charges,Mangum’s latest story should definitely have pushed him to toss the whole case out. But he didn’t toss it. In his own distorted way of thinking,merely made the case a little easier for him to win. On Friday, December 22, 2006, Nifong, having been left with no other choice, dropped the rape charges. Amazingly, sexual assault and kidnapping charges remained, even against Reade Seligmann, who had well-documented evidence that he was not even at the party when the crimes were alleged to have occurred.

To better appreciate how any charges

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