N.C. prosecutors drop charges in rape case against Duke lacrosse players

RALEIGH, N.C. – The Duke lacrosse rape case finally collapsed Wednesday, with North Carolina’s top prosecutor saying the three athletes were railroaded by a district attorney who ignored increasingly flimsy evidence in a “tragic rush to accuse.”\nIn a blistering assessment of the case, Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped all charges against the players, all but ensuring that only one person in the whole scandal will be held to account: Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong.\n“This case shows the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor,” Cooper said.\nCooper, who took over the case in January after Nifong was charged with ethics violations that could get him disbarred, said his own investigation into a stripper’s claim that she was sexually assaulted at a team party found nothing to corroborate her story, and “led us to the conclusion that no attack occurred.”\n“There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado,” Cooper said. “In the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly.”\nLater, at an often-bitter, I-told-you-so news conference, the three young men and their lawyers accused the news media and the public of disregarding the presumption of innocence and portraying them as thugs.\n“It’s been 395 days since this nightmare began. And finally today it’s coming to a closure,” said one of the cleared defendants, David Evans, his voice breaking at one point. “We’re just as innocent today as we were back then. Nothing has changed. The facts don’t change.”\nDefense attorney Joe Cheshire said: “We’re angry, very angry. But we’re very relieved.”\nNifong was out of town and could not immediately be reached for comment. \nEvans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty were indicted last spring on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense after the woman told police she was assaulted in the bathroom at an off-campus house during a team party where she had been hired to perform. The rape charges were dropped months ago; the other charges remained until Wednesday.\nThe case stirred furious debate over race, class and the privileged status of college athletes, and heightened long-standing tensions in Durham between its large working-class black population and the mostly white, mostly affluent students at the private, elite university.\nThe woman is black and attended nearby North Carolina Central University, a historically black school; all three Duke players are white.\nThe attorney general said the eyewitness identification procedures were unreliable, no DNA supported the stripper’s story, no other witness corroborated it, and the woman contradicted herself.\n“Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges,” Cooper said. He said the charges resulted from a “tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations.”\n“I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people,” Cooper said.\nNifong withdrew from the case in January after the North Carolina bar charged him with making misleading comments to the media about the athletes under suspicion. \nAmong other things, Nifong called the athletes “a bunch of hooligans” and declared DNA evidence would identify the guilty. He was also accused of withholding the results of lab tests that found DNA from several men – none of them lacrosse team members – on the accuser’s underwear and body.\nDuke suspended Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J., and Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., after their arrest. Both were invited to return to campus this year, but neither accepted. Evans, 24, of Bethesda, Md., graduated the day before he was indicted.\nIn the uproar over the allegations, Duke canceled the rest of the team’s 2006 season, the lacrosse coach resigned under fire, and a schism opened up on the faculty between those who supported the athletes and those who accused them of getting away with loutish frat-boy behavior for too long.\nThe team resumed play this year.