More about the Addison Motion clanger

Yesterday I posted A clanger in the Addison Motion to Dismiss. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to read it.

The post includes a statement attorney James Maxwell made in his dismissal motion filed on behalf of Durham Police Sgt. David Addison and three other DPD employees (2 sworn, 1 civilian). Regarding the Plaintiffs, three unindicted members of the 2006 Duke Men’s lacrosse team, Maxwell said:

“In this instance, none of these Defendants (sic) were even subjected to arrest or indictment and after March 21 (one week after the alleged events had occurred), none of these Plaintiffs were even considered a part of he (sic) ongoing investigation.”(emphasis added)

I want to share here parts of three of the comments I’ve received in response to Maxwell’s clanger. Respondents are in italics; I’m in plain.

An offline commenter said - - -

All the lacrosse players were very much part of the investigation for many months.

In addition to the NTO, Nifong threatened to go after all the players at the party for aiding and abetting with potential punishment of up to 30 years in prison.

In April, 2006 the DPD entered campus, without warrants, and attempted to interrogate players and search their rooms even though DPD knew the players were represented by counsel.

In June, 2006 Nifong subpoenaed Duke for players' key card information even though Duke had provided this information to DPD two months earlier in violation of FERPA.

Even after Dave Evans was indicted in May, 2006 and Nifong said he expected no further indictments, his statement left the door open. More importantly the parents and players did not believe him since he had lied so many times already.

You’re right on every point. I’m guessing the Plaintiff’s attorney, Bob Ekstrand, will point out all that and more in his response to the motion. And what can Judge Beaty but wonder as we do why Maxwell dropped such a significant clanger.

Now from the post thread - - -

That filing is so dishonest that one wonders if the attorney is in need of being disciplined or even disbarred. First, Addison made his statements AFTER March 21, and the NTO came after that as well, something you pointed out.

The very point of the NTO was that ALL of the white lacrosse players were official suspects, something that is true on its face. One cannot get a court order to take DNA from someone WHO IS NOT A SUSPECT.

When the defense makes statements such as we have seen, and those are filed as official documents, then we have an attorney who knowingly is filing false information. However, why should we be surprised if the attorneys for the defense are lying? After all, they are representing defendants who lied from the first day and still are lying.

As regards the statement at issue here, I don’t know if Maxwell was being dishonest or just unintentionally disclosed his belief the Plaintiffs weren’t really suspects on or about March 21 and thereafter, but were instead simply pawns in a developing and extensive frame-up attempt?

Wouldn’t you and the rest of us like to know what Maxwell has or will say to the other defense attorneys about his clanger?

You comment really hammers home critical points which Maxwell ignored but Ekstrand surely won't.

Another commenter said this - - -

It does make one wonder about the quality of the attorneys hired by Addison and others in this case. One would think that Addison and his compatriots would:

1.) hope that their attorneys would know the difference between defendants and plaintiffs;

2.) have attorneys who would hire someone to proofread what they submitted for spelling errors or at the very least employ spell check since they (unlike me who quite often dashes something off and forgets to proofread for spelling and grammatical errors) are charging their clients big bucks for what one would hope would be top quality professional services:

3. ) once again have attorneys who would have taken a logic course so as to see the fallacies in the arguments that they presented in their responses.

However, given that this is Durham in wonderland, I suppose that they figure that the judge is in their pocket and so any response, no matter how illogical, how poorly spelled, or even incorrectly worded will still fly.

This wouldn’t be the first time Durham City has spent public money and not gotten much, if anything, in return.

If it turns out the attorneys Durham’s hired to protect itself from accountability for the frame-up attempt and the ongoing cover-up are not very helpful, wouldn't that be poetic justice?

I thank all three of you for your comments, as I do others who’ve commented.