Duke suspends lacrosse team from play amid rape allegations

Haven't we realized yet that rich white kids are allowed to do whatever they want?

Fuck! With Duke out my NCAA Lacrosse Championship bracket just went right down the crapper.

It wasn't rape, until their check bounced....

I want to write a check and put it in a stripper's thong. Just for fun. Thanks for the idea, Death Surge.

What's a nice mormon boy like you doing in a Strip Club?

It's just an idea . . . I think it would be funny. Guys are throwing ones at her and you pull out your checkbook. That's Kaufman level comedy gold, right there.

He didn't say he would do it in a strip club.

I could do it at a cemetary.

I'M JES' KEEDEENG!

nope

Looks like someone needs to watch Havoc, and then watch Crash, so they can "learn" something about the "real" world.

Being from durham and hearing this on the news everyday... my wife works close to the Duke Campus, she has heard this rumor:

the cops have video tape evidence of a "show"

So how long before we hear the inevitable "racism against whites" argument? Oh, wait, here - where the author counteracts "racism" with racism.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190720,00.html

Apparently them Duke boys wanted to kill 'em and skin 'em too. No word on eating them though.

Oh those rich people, they get bored with their privileged lifestyle and then they want to TASTE GOD!!!!!

Looks like the bitch lied
I remember seeing this guy on tv saying that because the players got a lawyer meant they were guilty. He was taunting the players to talk.

If she is lying it could make it a lot tougher for strippers down the road to claim they have been raped. Good news for me though!

I just find it funny that everyone is talking "Can Duke's image bounce back?"

Last time I checked, everyone hates Duke with a burning passion already.

"Looks like the bitch lied"

Is that necessary?

I was thinking that. And the rape joke, of course.

What else would you call her? Lying about sexual assult is low.

Come on guys, can't you see there's nothing worse in this world than a lying stripper. Maybe a fat stripper is worse but not by much. And if there is such a thing as a fat lying stripper then Great Caeser's Ghost I hope to hell I never meet her.

Don't mind Anya, guys. If it has a vagina but hasn't yet appeared in a Whedon show, he detests it with every quivering fiber of his being.

I wasn't aware that the case was over, and that it had been "proved" that she was lying and that the lacrosse team is "innocent". DNA evidence is certainly great to have, but even in the absence of it, there are other ways to discern sexual assault.

If it comes to that in the end, fine. At least let the law work first before jumping to that conclusion.

The prosecutor was the one jumping to conclusions saying he had so much evidence that the DNA would be the icing on the cake. Now no DNA on the woman . Add that to the defense lawyers saying there are pictures of the stripper time stamped at the party with bruises on her body before the alleged incident took place.

It's apparently not a joke, anymore...

Remind me to stay the hell away from that bakery.

There might be other ways to prove an assault, but if the DNA sample taken from the girl doesn't match any of the players, whose DNA is it? I mean, it would be interesting to know if the DNA was of the type that would likely have come from a sexual assault (skin under the fingernails, bodily fluids, pubic hair, etc...) or from regular contact with other people (non-pubic hair on clothes). If it's the first, she was probably assaulted, just not by a member of the lacrosse team. Then they need to look at others who may not be members of the lacrosse team but may have been the party. They will need to lean heavily on team members at the party to identify those non-team members who were there.

Some of the DNA was under the fingernails.

A great example of America's knee-jerk reaction to sexual assaults. Too bad their coach already quit, and their season was cancelled. Innocent until proven guilty my ass...

The CSI effect. There must be DNA evidence.

While DNA evidence is nice, about 70% of the time there isn't any to be found in rape cases. Prosecuters have to rely on other forms of evidence. I hate it when the media/lawyers/prosecutors force a crime to be publicly judged before all the evidence is heard.

WTF? America's "knee-jerk reaction to sexual assault" has long been to blame the woman first, drag her sexual history into court, attempt to characterize her as promiscuous and possibly even deserving of her attack.

It has? Since when?

A lot of you guys hate women.

Look, I'm sure if I could actually get one to talk to me, I wouldn't hate them as much...

You seem pretty touchy about sexual assault, by the way.

In all seriousness, how old are you? I can only hope that you are incredibly young and are just unaware of the facts. Singer's response was dead on and is the reason why the majority of sexual crimes go unreported.

I'm not incredibly young, but I *am* unaware of the facts. Maybe it's all the TV I see about men automatically getting 'the shaft' and 'blackballed' when they are publically accused of a sexual crime...

Duke's lacrosse team might be completely innocent, in which case, they may have been falsely accused, which isn't going to help the cause for women, oui?

I haven't run into any sexual assault problems, personally, Mr. devincf, sir.

Are there false claims of sexual assult? Sure, but it's rare and is used against women in cases like this. Phoenix, you want an example of what Singer was talking about? Look at your own posts. All that's been decided is that there's no DNA evidence in this case implicating a lacrosse player and all of a sudden you're going off about 'knee-jerk reactions to sexual assult'. As if the problem of reacting harshley to sexual assult charges is as big of an issue as sexual assult itself.

Suprisingly enough, sexual assult cases are hard to prove in court (hell, no matter how much evidence, with the right lawyer and a stupid judge and jury, the cases of most obvious guilt can be won by the defense). The fact that many times men win the cases against them doesn't prove much of anything, other than the fact that the system is fucked.

I will say, though, some of the attacks against the lacrosse team were stupid. In painting how out of control the team was, reporters used examples like being cited for underage drinking and public urination. While certainly not something we should aspire to, these are actions done by regular college students every day, on every campus.

The guy who talked about skinning strippers? Yeah, he should be sexually assulted in prison (and probably will sometime in his future).

From what I understand, they found DNA evidence. It just didn't match any of the 46 players they tested. When you have a complete lack of DNA material, you can certainly prove your case by other means. When you find DNA material that conclusively shows that the DNA does not belong to the defendant(s), say hello to reasonable doubt. They might be able to overcome that reasonable doubt with other evidence, but any defense attorney worth his salt (the type which I imagine the families of Duke Lacrosse players will be able to afford) will hammer home to the jury the fact that the DNA doesn't match in order to get an acquittal. Barring more substantial evidence we don't know about, this case doesn't make it to trial with a team member as a defendant.

Seeing as how you manage to keep yourself informed about these fairly rare cases (which make for good television drama), you must be very familiar with the staggeringly high percentages of women who claim to have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Lying bitches. And you can bet there was some innocent guy getting "blackballed" for every one of those spurious claims...

Thanks for the info. I appreciate you sending me those links so I can get more information on something I'm not really up to date with. And such a nice message too, with no snark! Jackass. I was honest about not knowing that much about the statistics, or the history... I didn't try to back myself up with facts I don't have.

*EDIT* You might want to separate your links, by the way.

You're "informed" enough to know that the knee-jerk reaction to sexual assault is to demonize the man and besmirch his reputation, but not enough to know that there are tons of legitimate cases of sexual assault and relatively few unjust accusations.

You deserved every bit of snark. There's really no excuse for making a kneejerk comment like you did, and, if there were, it wouldn't be "I didn't know what I was talking about!" If you don't know what you're talking about, don't say anything.

That's the internet for you. A gem of wisdom. You should go into politics.

I like how the identity of the woman has to be kept hidden to protect her, but the media has no problem splashing the names and faces of the charged players all over the airwaves even though they haven't been found guilty of anything yet.

Get 'im Dave! Get 'im!

Oh shut up and go whine to Roche.

I would, but I can't see how this fits into any kind of Biblical discussion :-/

So to go a bit back on topic, two of the players were indicted today on rape and kidnapping charges. The prosecution has basically stated they have no DNA evidence, and the defense has said they have time-stamped photos of the woman prior to the alleged assault.

What's the measure of evidence that usually results in a conviction? The prosecuting attorney made mention that some 75% - 80% of rape prosecutions lack DNA evidence, so I'm wondering what they go on.