The Liberty Papers

You have upright motives. This is such a wrong. It would be better if you were on the right side of rape victims.

I am on the side of rape victims…the true rape victim which Crystal Mangum has hurt along with the young men she FALSLY accused. She should receive whatever punishment these boys would have had they been convicted. It’s my hope she endures as much shame as these boys did over the last couple of years. Imus should have reserved his comments for this despicable human being.

I think Ms. Mangum and Mr. Nifong should have some company in the “Defendants” seat.

The media and the Duke administration were just as quick to pounce on the players. I hold a special place of ire for the group of Duke professors who took out a collective ad denouncing the players and the current state of racial tension at universities.

The wrong is in you Stephen Littau. I was speaking on your moralism. She is not a criminal any more than some other women, some in college that accuse rape when they find themselves in a situation where they had made a bad choice. In the past, false accusations have lead to executions. All these individual have suffered is a blow to their reputations and in their case the system worked. I think this incident has hit too close to home for many males, because they know that such incidents could have lead to rape. Instead of continuing to vilify Ms. Mangum, it would have been better to have a post that informs, just what is rape and date rape. That if you are unsure what consist of “no”, err on the side of right and zip up that libido. This way you would have been in the right.

VRB, Two questions,

1) Have you actually any idea what a blatant frame up job this case actually was?

2) So, where the white women who accused these boys justified in ruining their lives?

Please, Crystal Magnum falsely accused three people of committing a crime and tried to get them sent to jail. The District Attorney tried to stoke racial prejudice in order to advance his political career (actually is seems he was motivated by getting enough years in office to assure himself a decent pension).

These people played people like a violin. You are a marionette in their hands. Perhaps you should start actually looking at things with a critical eye. You’ll end up with less egg on your face.

Rape is a vile crime. However, a person who makes a false accusation of rape diminishes the credibility of all those who were raped when they cry for justice.

No one has gone to any effort to post those white womens pictures and cry for justice. There have some cases concurrent with this case, where the accuser was white. It was just not national news. How does Ms. Mangum have any power to prosecute? As far as I am concern we do not know enough about the events to know if either party was lying. I have not seen any evidence to prove innocence, just insuficient evidence to bring charges. In their states of inebriation is usually when events become fuzzy. That includes all of the parties. So I have been inclined to believe the students as much as her.
Egg on my face, who the hell cares. I spoke because I didn’t like the intent of this post. I have made enough comments here to know what to kind of response I’ll get. I do comment, so that you all will know that you are not one with the world.

VRB, trust me, your instincts are taking you to a place you do not want to be.

I do comment, so that you all will know that you are not one with the world.

Yes, you are in the mob howling to lynch people because you know, in your bones, that they are guilty and damn the evidence.

I am one of the ones taking a critical look at the evidence and deciding that these men are innocent of any crime. Honestly, I am prejudiced against the lacrosse players – I don’t like jocks, and I have a low opinion of people who would hire strippers to go to a party. The difference is that I don’t let my prejudices blind me.

I have not seen any evidence to prove innocence, just insufficient evidence to bring charges

Well that means you have not been looking at the evidence at all. The physical evidence is not inconclusive. The physical evidence conclusively demonstrates that there was no crime whatsoever. To believe that a crime occurred, you must accept the idea that the crime scene and the victim were cleaned up with a “magic” towel that removed all traces of some people’s DNA while leaving other people’s DNA intact. You must be conclude that the witnesses, including disinterested cab drivers, and a neighbor who loathed the accused were lying. You must conclude that the cell phone records and ATM machines were tampered with. You must conclude that a brutal gang rape can be perpetrated without causing any bruising.

This case got national attention for the same reason that the Scottsboro case did – members of a hated ethnic group were accused of raping a member of a dominant ethnic group. It was in the interests of certain politicians and activists to make a big deal about the case. Note, the national attention was not on poor innocent white boys who were accused by an evil black woman. No the press coverage focused on out-of-control drunken athletes who took advantage of a poor defenseless black woman. The accused were pilloried in the press. They were accused of stone-walling when in fact they were cooperating with the police, threatened with lynching and other forms of mob violence.

The women who falsely accused the Scottsboro boys of rape should have been prosecuted. Filing false police reports, and obstruction of justice, are, I believe felonies in most states. The fact that the false accusers in the Scottsboro case were able to evade prosecution in an era when blacks were treated like animals by the U.S. legal system in no way lessens the seriousness of the crime.

Yes, Ms. Magnum is in many ways a small bit player. The Durham police and Nifong were far more culpable in the prosecution. Obviously Nifong did not consult with her before deciding to hide exculpatory evidence. She did not direct him to make the inflammatory statements that assured his reelection.

However, she is guilty of a very serious crime, despite her skin color and socio-economic class.

Unless you have led a sheltered life, there are more that just this incident of where it has been found the rape allegation have not been supported. Many that have involved college teams, which were mostly black.
There has been much venom spewed in this case, much of it before the evidence was in; this post has taken it to the next level. I did not like how she has been made the poster child as the most vicious person on earth who has ever done such a thing. All of you read too much in my comments; my experience not my instinct tells me that when alchohol(them?) and drugs(her?) are involved, sexual situations can get out of hand. You know if they didn’t dance, they should have been told to leave.
If they had sodimized her with an object would there be any DNA? See things like that are possibilities. Now because I said this, does not mean that I think this happened. I just read this somewhere.
I am not going to argue the evidence, that was not the point of my comment. I was not arguing for her innocence, but the way this post presented her as Public Enemy No 1.

I finally found the words that I have been trying to describe the response I felt when I saw the picture.

IT IS ICONOGRAPHY OF THE BLACK WOMAN!

Racist iconography is what some people will see; that is what will travel on the net. All black women will become this woman. Of course you don’t get it. Nobody gets it here, and that is more disturbing to me.
I was not trying to argue her innocence.

If you were the research the time period, during this event you would probably find a white woman that you would be able to post their picture too, but it really wouldn’t add to the discussion about rape.

Aimee,
In a few days or months, no one will remember her name and but they will know what that picture represents. It looks like a mug shot, so the person must be criminal. When the details are lost it becomes all black women. To some seeing this now will look at black woman thats looks similar and think the worst. In the real world, life is not ever tidy.
The prosecution is left up to the local authorities and I really don’t know the law in North Carolina, but if they do her then I think they should prosecute all her contemporaries. I know that doesn’t happen anywhere.

Since the presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of the U.S. judicial system, why not set a good example and grant that right to Ms. Mangum? The attorney general of North Carolina, Ray Cooper, stated that Mangum contradicted herself, but decided not to prosecute her because she:

…continues to insist she was attacked at a team party on March 13, 2006, and asked him to go forward with the case. Mr. Cooper said his investigators had told him that the woman “may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.” He said his decision not to charge her with making false accusations was also based on a review of sealed court files, which include records of the woman’s mental health history.

The quote is from the NYT article which is linked here.

If you truly seek defend to personal freedom, then remove Ms. Mangum’s photo and consider her innocent until proven guilty.

Kochima,

I would not trust the New York times on this matter: they were broadcasting a lot of propaganda for the prosecution, and have been trying to mitigate their blatant attempts to rewrite the news story. The blunt force trauma was inconsistent with forcible rape. In essence it was very minor, and absolutely inconsistent with having an object shoved into an unaroused vagina.

In fact, every version of the story that she has told contradicts some bit of physical evidence. To be blunt, and as the relative of someone who was raped, there is no excuse for her behavior. What this woman did harmed people who were truly raped. Like the Scottsboro case, she was afraid she was going to be arrested, and so she claimed rape as an excuse to evade it.

She could have put a stop to this at any time. Instead, she chose to continue down this path. In trying to get the state to jail her victims, she is guilty of being part of a conspiracy that attempted a kidnapping. Should she be jailed? I don’t think so, mainly because I view jails as worthless. I frankly feel that forced restitution is the route to go in a justice system. Should she be liable for the millions of dollars spent by her vcxtims in defending themselves? A portion of it, yes. Of course, since it was Nifong who chose to hide exculpatory evidence, and the first judge who tacitly encouraged the treats of mob violence, and that investigating officer who penned that misleading report, she shouldn’t bear the cost alone. Furthermore, since the other participants in the conspiracy did not chose to consult with her in taking these actions, one could argue that her share of restitution should be smaller than her co-conspirators. But, however small her crimes are in comparison to her fellow conspirators, she is still guilty of a very serious crime.

VRB,
You act as though that this is the only blog that has put up her picture. You act as though Stephen should have put up a more flattering picture of her in order to not make all black women be looked at like a criminal, that is crazy. O’Reilly had a nicer picture of her, does that help shine a better light on the black women out there? Give your fellow man some credit, I think people have brains and can come to their own conclusions about her and about the people they meet. No one is going to walk down the street and see a black woman and think, “Oh, she must be JUST LIKE that woman that cried rape against those Duke boys”. Are we to also assume that all white girl singers act like Brittany Spears? Because her picture is plastered all over the place too, and a lot of not so flattering ones at that.

VRB:

I have not accused any one of anything.

Of course you haven’t. You have just made broad, sweeping generalizations that imply that people will react a certain way because of their skin color and gender and Mangum’s skin color and gender. If a white man made those exact same statements, what would your reaction be?

I don’t think you can make any comment about my “prejudice” and my “judgment” because I haven’t said a word about Mangum herself, what I think of her, what I think of the situation, etc. I don’t yet know what I think, fully. I very carefully chose the few words in my comment to avoid saying anything specific about my opinions of this event. And I’m continuing to, because I really don’t care to voice my somewhat unformed opinions at this time.

I said what I said, not what any of you have said I have said.

Maybe I should better explain what should happen to Crystal Gail Mangum,…What I would like to see is for her to at least have to go through the process of being arrested, posting bail (or not), hiring a defense attorney, and having her live put under the microscope as her victims did. If all of that were to happen, even if the grand jury did not indict her, I think this would serve as a valuable lesson…It’s my hope that Crystal Gail Mangum’s reputation is completely destroyed. It’s my hope that she will not have any new clients for her escort service.

Your wish may very well be granted, Mr. Littau. Ms. Mangum has the dubious honor of her own page on Wikipedia. What the end result of this will be, I cannot say.

What do I wish for Crystal Gail Mangum? I hope that she can obtain counseling, that she can end her addiction to alcohol and drugs and turn her life around. That she can be a role model for her children and show them that they can change their lives. And most of all, should she succeed in turning her life around, I hope you will not scoff, but congratulate her on what will be no small achievement.

Kochanie

Crystal Mangum is just another oppurtunistic Carrion feeder who would jump at the chance to get a payday no matter what race or creed the men came from. Whether the men were rich Black basketball players or The Russian Dogsled team. Crystal would have gotten greedy with anybody had she the chance. The State of North Carolina is in fear of “Black Backlash” so they decided to give this black ass rat a pass. Had those White boys been wrong and they would have castrated them in the town square…Charge Crystal Mangum and stick it to her and slap a civil judgement on her so that everytime she feels like doin another batchelour party – her pay can goto those 3 boys. In an islamic society that little lie on her part would earn her a stoning. I see no reason why we shant make this animal pay.

Adam,
That story is not hard to find, white woman, black college team, but no one looks for that. I am not saying they should, because I don’t think its this bloggers responsibity to judge situations like these. This kind of response does nothing to advance the dialog about rape. It’s just incindary. I think decisions should be local prosecutors decisions. I say again the intent of this blog is not pure and this kind of thing will affect how black women are viewed I have been around long enough to know the utopian view you have, doesn’t exist.