NEWS IN BRIEF: Student Charged With Domestic Assault Of An Ex-Girlfriend Appears in Court; Next Court Date in Dec.

Editor's Note: Since the publication of this story in October 2006, new information has arisen regarding the case in question. The allegations were proven false, the arrest was expunged, and subsequent police investigations and inquiries by Harvard's Administrative Board concluded that the claims made by the alleged victim in the subsequent story had no basis. At the time of these developments, The Crimson was not notified of the exoneration and therefore did not report on those developments. As such, we provide this note as a way of fully documenting the situation to its eventual conclusion.The undergraduate facing charges of domestic assault appeared before a judge yesterday, and the next pretrial conference in his case was set for December. Nicholas Y. Crowne ’08­­—flanked by his lawyer, David Rich, and his father—faced Judge George R. Sprague ’60 yesterday morning in a Middlesex District courtroom. Sprague joked yesterday morning at the pretrial conference’s opening, saying “So, this is the Nicholas Crowne affair?” Once a Dec. 7 court date was announced for the next pretrial hearing, Sprague said, “Pearl Harbor day, a date that will live in infamy.” The Quincy House junior was arrested in late September after a female undergraduate, who was an ex-girlfriend, alleged that he had placed her in a headlock. The 20-year-old student from Brooklyn, N.Y., “grabbed the victim by the neck and put her in a headlock, causing her to have trouble breathing,” the police narrative stated.