WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  July 22, 2006

Topic category:  Other/General

Does Destine Play a Part in the Duke Rape Hoax?


Talk about putting the cart before the horse: having rushed to indict the Duke Three, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong has gone fishing in the hope of coming up with evidence. His star witness is incredible, the DNA results do not implicate any of the Duke Three, the alibi evidence is solid and the other stripper thought the rape claim was "a crock" because she was with the accuser for all but five minutes.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse: having rushed to indict the Duke Three, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong has gone fishing in the hope of coming up with evidence.  His star witness is incredible, the DNA results do not implicate any of the Duke Three, the alibi evidence is solid and the other stripper thought the rape claim was "a crock" because she was with the accuser for all but five minutes. A fair and objective prosecutor would not have sought an indictments precipitously and, when confronted with the evidence facing Mr. Nifong, would admit he was wrong.  But NOT the Durham Disgrace, Mr. Nifong.

Mr. Nifong avoided a speedy trial, because he needs to fish and a trial before Election Day would be disastrous for him.  By pushing the trial beyond Election Day, the clever, but contemptible, Mr. Nifong expects to win re-election.  He can't afford to disappoint those Durham County voters who prefer to believe the accuser and hope he has or will have evidence up his sleeve than somehow will retroactively justify indictments that obviously were unwarranted when issued and based on a shamefully selective presentation of evidence and the undeserved presumption that the prosecutor would not seek indictments unless they were warranted.

Mr. Nifong's position is that every member of Duke's men's lacrosse team is a potential witness in the case against the Duke Three (the "winners" in the which three of the 46 white males on the team will the accuser pick), so he disregards there right to privacy and demands access to their student ID card records in order "to be able to confirm what they tell us about where they went afterward.”  So much for probable cause considerations.

Such cards can be used to buy things and gain access to campus buildings. Attorneys for the uncharged players (NOT attorneys for the Duke Three) argued that the information is protected by federal privacy laws and that Mr. Nifong’s subpoenas for them were flawed. The subpoenas not only sought student ID card records, but also a list of the UNCHARGED players’ home addresses, which Mr. Nifong said he wanted to facilitate calling the players to testify at trial.

Mr. Nifong: “We’re not trying to investigate them.  We are not trying to say there are crimes that we want to prove they are guilty of. We want to be put in a position to call them to tell the jury in Durham what they observed go on that night when this took place.”

Whatever "this" was, it WASN'T kidnapping, rape and sexual assault, the crimes with which each of the Duke Three is charged.

The privacy rights of the UNCHARGED players did not phase Mr. Nifong, of course.

Perhaps Mr. Nifong would do better to closely investigate the people he hired as prosecutors.

Example: C. Destine Counch.

Heraclitus said: "Character is Destiny."

I say: "Destine is a character."

Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human, wrote: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."

I wonder whether Mr. Nifong's Destine has exercised influence and bears  blame for the way the law has been misused to abuse the Duke Three and win a Democrat primary for Mr. Nifong. In December of 2005 (long before the unfortunate lacrosse party), Durham attorney C. Destine Couch was sworn in as a Durham County District Court prosecutor.

On the website for Mr. Couch's private law firm, he is described as a “SECOND GENERATION ATTORNEY WITH UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON LAW AND RESPECT FOR OTHERS…” and "a newly licensed attorney who joined the firm in August 2003 [whose] personal interests include mentoring youth, studying nutrition, and natural (steroid free) bodybuilding."

Mr. Couch's education information is as follows: North Carolina Central School of Law, J.D. Durham, NC, May 2003. North Carolina State University, B.S. Political Science, Raleigh, NC, May 2000. Hillside High School, Salutatorian, Durham, NC, June 1996.

What is noteworthy is that Mr. Couch graduated from Hillside High School in 1996.  That is noteworthy because the accuser did too.

Did Mr. Couch have a relationship with the accuser and, if so, has it affected the decisions to seek indictments and continue to prosecute?

Mr. Couch is no longer on myspace.com, but he was into July of 2006 and the public part of his posting makes one wonder why he was hired to be a prosecutor.  Fortunately, information from his myspace.com posting has been saved and is accessible at http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:L8Udn7ql9IIJ:profile.myspace.com/index.cfm%3Ffuseaction%3Duser.viewprofile%26friendid%3D995861%2Bcappadonna21xxx&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4.

WARNING: CHILDREN SHOULD NOT USE THIS LINK.

This message appears when access to Mr. Couch's pictures is sought: This user has either canceled their membership, or their account has been deleted.

However, Mr. Couch's motto is "Come get some!" and "Sweets", one of his 1837 friends, left him as message on July 3, 2006: "I love your body." (with hearts). Then there is LatinPeanutButta, who left this message the same day: "There are times in life when I take a look and realize how blessed I am to have people like you in my life....CD...you know I love your azz!! Thank you for being there for me papi...*besos*".

Mr. Couch's Blurb's;

"About me:  I am a 6'2 professional male living in the Triangle Area of NC (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) who enjoys bodybuilding, reading, watching movies at home, WWE, listening to all types of music, anime, and dancing occassionally. I sometimes travel, but admit I'm more of a homebody.

"Who I'd like to meet: Gwen Stefani... and other beautiful well-rounded females who can appreciate my eclectic tastes for chat, friendship, and possibly more. IM me on yahoo ONLY if you are hot and/or local: cappadonna21xxx"

After reading the accessible parts of Mr. Couch's posting, the need to cleanse the Durham District Attorney's Office is even more obvious to me and the willingness to believe the Duke Three capable of the horrific crimes of which they stand accused a bit more comprehensible.

If the people of Durham County, North Carolina expect their criminal justice system to be fair, they have to vote for people who will be fair and put principle above interest.

Michael J. Gaynor


Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


Copyright © 2006 by Michael J. Gaynor
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