The lineups that weren't?

City leader says photo arrays didn't qualify; report coming

DURHAM -- One flaw in the Duke lacrosse case pointed out by the attorney general's report Friday was that the lineup in which accuser Crystal Gail Mangum identified players as rapists was "of questionable validity." Durham police violated their own policy by not interspersing photos of nonsuspects.

On Friday, City Manager Patrick Baker, who oversees the Police Department, offered an explanation: None of the three photo arrays Mangum viewed technically were lineups.

The photos were intended as much for Mangum to identify witnesses as to identify suspects, Baker said. That doesn't qualify as a lineup, he said.

Baker promised a report next week from Police Chief Steve Chalmers with fuller explanations of that and other issues raised in the Friday report.

The report, Baker said, "will at least explain the basis for why I didn't believe and still don't believe we were conducting a lineup at the time."

City Council member Thomas Stith was skeptical, given that the photos resulted in indictments.

"You can call it what you want, but that's what it ended up being," Stith said.

Baker said next week's debriefing will try to clear up why police didn't step in sooner to put the brakes on the case.

Baker said he thinks the attorney general's special prosecutors, Jim Coman and Mary Winstead, had more information than Durham investigators.

"Would we have arrived at the same conclusion the attorney general arrived at if we had more information?" Baker asked.

Coman and Winstead said no one had asked Mangum to explain her inconsistencies until they did so in March -- a year after the initial accusation.

Chalmers' report also will address what role Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong played in the investigation and whether his involvement in the investigation was appropriate.

After Mangum failed to identify any players as her attackers in two lineups in March 2006, Nifong directed police to make a PowerPoint presentation with photos of every white Duke lacrosse player, one depicted on each slide.

Mangum had said her attackers were white.

"The police have to work with the DA," Stith said, "but we should make sure we're playing our proper role and not being unduly influenced by the prosecutor."