Duke lacrosse: At Friends of Duke University

there are two items I want to call to your attention.

First, Joan Collins of Garden City, N.Y., writes a beautiful letter which begins

Amidst all the ugliness and weakness the Duke Lacrosse Case has revealed, we should not forget the true heroes that have emerged. Dave Evans, co-captain of the 2006 Duke Men's Lacrosse Team is such a hero.

Ernest Hemingway defined courage as "Grace under pressure." What better evidence of this than Evans' inspiring and courageous speech to the press on the steps of the Durham County Jail on May 16, 2006.

One day earlier, Mr. Evans joined fellow senior classmates in graduation ceremonies at Duke, one of the most important and long awaited days of students and their families. But Evans and his family had been told earlier that Dave would be indicted and thrust front and center into the media spectacle known as the Duke Lacrosse Case.

You can read the rest of Joan Collins' letter here.If you want to go there right now and finish the letter before moving to the second item, I don’t blame you.

Go ahead. A click from Joan’s letter will bring you back here to JinC.

And I’ll be right here waiting when you get back; and then we can go on to the second item which is a response by FODU's Jason Trumpbour to a Raleigh News & Observer op-ed critical of FODU and supportive of the man they’ve called “America worst DA,” Mike Nifong.

Trumpbour begins:

In a recent opinion piece in this newspaper, John Schwade weakly defends Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case. Schwade can find little positive to say about Nifong. […]

Trumpbour summarizes Schwade’s “case,” and then says:

[Schwade] devotes most of his efforts to personally attacking Nifong’s critics, among them Lewis Cheek and the organization I represent, the Friends of Duke University. Cheek he dismisses with ridicule. […]

As for FODU, Schwade borrows a page from Nifong and attempts to exploit or create prejudice within the community by using unfair caricatures. He compares us to the mafia and darkly suggests we are using “money”, “influence,” and “friends in the national media.” […]

Trumpbour easily turns Schwade’s false accusations on themselves :

[Friends of Duke University is] a group of alumni and parents who are deeply concerned about what is happening to three members of the Duke Community.

We want to see justice served, not frustrated.

I myself am a former attorney in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s office. I now teach law, jurisprudence and legal practice to law students and students in a graduate program in legal and ethical studies.[...]

The source of our concern is Nifong’s egregious and systematic misconduct. Nifong has made false and prejudicial extrajudicial statements in violation of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct.

With Trumpbour's background, you'd expect him to expose Nifong’s misconduct; and he does just that :

[Nifong] has invited the public to disregard the civil rights of the accused and made appeals to prejudice.

He has a continuing conflict of interest due to his political alliance with another attorney who hopes to profit from the Duke case.

He has manipulated witnesses.

Worst of all is his violation of NCRPC Rule 3.8 which prohibits a prosecutor from avoiding “pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor’s case.”

There’s more. You can read it all here.

Thank you Joan Collins and Jason Trumpbour. Thank you FODU.

To the players and families: Your case grows stronger ever day.