Transcript: Duke Scandal Heats Up

This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," April 7, 2006, that has been edited for clarity.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: The Duke rape scandal is heating up. Reports tonight that lacrosse players at the party were angry, but angry about what? Joining us with the details in Raleigh, North Carolina is Mark Johnson, a reporter with The Charlotte Observer.

Martha, what are the players supposedly angry about?

MARK JOHNSON, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER: Greta, according to the reports from authorities and defense lawyers, essentially they were unhappy that they didn't get a long enough dance, I guess is the short way to put it. They paid $800 and they're complaining according to defense lawyers is that the women came in and danced for only a few minutes when it was supposed to be a couple of hours left and of course these guys were unhappy. They felt like they had been ripped of. The women took the money with them.

VAN SUSTEREN: How many dancers were hired?

JOHNSON: Two. I believe they were from different companies. But that was the information that we had.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, so one of the two is the accuser, is that right?

JOHNSON: That's correct. And the other one apparently is the person who drove her to the Kroger, where she spoke to the security guard who made the 911 call.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you know if the two knew each other before they arrived at the party?

JOHNSON: Not for certain, but there's no indication of that. It doesn't appear they were friends or anything like that. And that's one of the sources of questions that or is related to one of the sources of questions that the defense attorneys are raising. They talk about these different 911 calls and they're questioning whether the other dancer, not the accuser, made both of those calls.

VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, the accuser said that she had been raped. That's why she left. Did the other dancer leave in sympathy? Did she say she knew what had happened? Did she give any indication that she was aware of any accusations that night?

JOHNSON: I'm afraid the only folks that know the answers to those questions are the police. That's one element of this story we have not really been able to dig into.

VAN SUSTEREN: Now the university has put together a commission to investigate what happened. Who is going to chair this?

JOHNSON: A couple of very prominent well-respected folks working on this. One is Julius Chambers, who is a pioneer in civil rights litigation. He's a former chancellor of NC Central University which is where the accuser is a student. One of the other folks that's very heavily involved in this is Jim Coleman, who is a former dean at Duke law school, a very prominent lawyer. He was head of the committee in Congress that essentially investigates Congress itself. He was their chief lawyer and investigator for some time. So they're pretty well involved and actually, there's several commissions that the Duke president has appointed to look at various aspects of the problem. And I believe some of the parts of this investigation will be getting going this weekend. That is one of the several things that are kind of moving right now in the case.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, so to sum up, the university is doing an investigation and of course we have the parallel investigation by the district attorney and we might hear something on that next week. Mark, thank you.

The woman at the center of the Duke rape scandal has a criminal record herself. Joining us from Raleigh is the accuser's former attorney Woody Vann. Woody, the fact that this woman has a prior conviction, a run in with the law, does not mean that she wasn't raped. It doesn't mean that she was raped, but it is certainly at least an interesting piece of information. What can you tell us about her record?

WOODY VANN, FMR ATTORNEY TO DUKE RAPE ACCUSER: Her record primarily consisted of an incident that occurred in June of 2002, where she was charged with larceny of a motor vehicle, speeding to elude arrest, assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer, that being a motor vehicle and driving while impaired. She eventually was indicted on three felonies, along with a misdemeanor and we reached a plea agreement to where she pled guilty to four misdemeanors, one of them being driving while impaired and she was placed on probation and was requested, directed to serve a six days active in jail and ordered to pay a substantial amount of restitution for damage to vehicles.

VAN SUSTEREN: While you were representing her, was she an exotic dancer?

VANN: That was one of the allegations that was made in the police report that was part of that investigation.

VAN SUSTEREN: During any time that you were representing her, during any time that you know that she has been an exotic dancer, has she ever made another accusation of being sexually assaulted?

VANN: No. None that I'm aware of and I think I would have heard.

VAN SUSTEREN: How would you describe her? If I ran into her tonight someplace, what would I think?

VANN: Very nice, very straightforward, comes from a good family. She's well spoken. She, prior to this incident in 2002 had no criminal record, had no driving record, raises her two kids, works, seems to just be a normal hard working lady.

VAN SUSTEREN: Have you spoken to her since this particular accusation?

VANN: Just briefly about a week ago and I have been primarily in contact with her father this week.

VAN SUSTEREN: Did she describe any injuries she may have sustained that night?

VANN: She did not. We primarily discussed her concerns about needing — what she should do about making comments and things of that nature. And it was my opinion at that point in time that she should be limiting any comments she'd be making to media and to also make any arrangements, if she was going to at that point in time to discuss them with the district attorney.

VAN SUSTEREN: Thank you, Woody. Let's bring in our legal panel. Joining us from San Francisco, former assistant DA Jim Hammer, in Tampa, criminal defense attorney Jeff Brown, in Washington, defense attorneys Bernie Grimm and Ted Williams. Bernie, the fact that at least as we know, made no other accusations of rape, that is small piece of information but a valuable one.

BERNIE GRIMM, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yeah. To me, I was wondering whether you were going to sit here and ask that question. But a prior false complaint or a prior complaint that wasn't resulting in an arrest or conviction would certainly go a long way with me. For me, this case, it's not the DNA. It's not what the nurse says. It's not her claim of a sexual assault. For me what this comes down to, is this woman shows up at the hospital and she's got a swollen eye as described by her father. She couldn't open her eye, had bruises, lacerations, choke marks around her neck. If there's evidence of that and they took pictures, for me it's a foregone conclusion. At a minimum right there, she was assaulted. How can the players explain why you would assault someone?

VAN SUSTEREN: And of course you are making the assumption, you're making the assumption that that was soon after she left the party, that there's no intervening cause. It wasn't four days later.

GRIMM: Right.

VAN SUSTEREN: If it was four days later, at least she can account for her time. It was a four-day-old injury or something.

GRIMM: Immediately after, because I've had cases like this where actually women victims have injured themselves and made a claim against a man of sexual assault.

VAN SUSTEREN: Jeff Brown, where are you in this ongoing investigation? What do you think?

JEFF BROWN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, I'm going to take an unpopular position, but that's only because I have a lot of faith in human nature. I have a hard time believing that 43 boys or young men at a school like Duke are going to sit by and let this woman get brutally raped if that's what occurred.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think it was three.

BROWN: It's three but there's three there, but there's 43 supposedly in the room right next door to this bathroom. And I have a hard time believing.

VAN SUSTEREN: Can I ask you something. Do you remember (INAUDIBLE) the guy in the police force up in New York in a precinct, a police precinct in a bathroom, was assaulted by police officers? I mean, things do happen.

BROWN: Not 43.

VAN SUSTEREN: He had the whole precinct.

BROWN: I've had cases where there were four. There's three. There's five. 43 of what we consider to be an elite school, that not one of them has the moral courage to say hey wait a second. This is absolutely wrong? And if I'm wrong and this is true and these 43 sat by and did nothing? Then they are as guilty as the three that are in there and I hope they throw the book at them. But right now there's just a lot of unanswered questions. There hasn't even been an arrest yet.

VAN SUSTEREN: I will agree with you, unanswered questions. Jim?

JIM HAMMER, FORMER ASSISTANT DA: I'm with Bernie. If she pretty soon went after a medical profession Greta and looked beaten up, she says she was raped. I'm going to believe her as the DA if I want to find out who did it. But as to Jeff's point, I don't think it's an impossible scenario at all and I think there is a peer pressure we talked about last night that could allow that to happen. But I'll tell you as the DA, Greta, I'd know already because I would have them in front of the grand jury, one by one saying right now not waiting for the DA Greta. You go in right now. You're either going to jail for contempt or you're telling the truth. You missed up before but this is your moment of moral courage.

TED WILLIAMS, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Jeff, as far as I'm concerned you are living in a dream if you believe that 43 people could sit there and not allow a rape to take place. Look, what has happened here and I anticipated that it would happen. They are going to do all they can to dirty up this victim. But let's be very clear here. Even a prostitute could very well be raped. The bottom line — and we need to make this clear. They are waiting for this DNA. This DNA is not the alpha and omega of this case. It is not dispositive as to whether there was a rape. What is needed here more than anything else is to put all of these guys' butt in the grand jury. There was a witness on that scene that allegedly heard one of these guys as these women were leaving say, hey, B, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt. To me that is racially (INAUDIBLE) and it should never have been said.

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