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Former Duke Players Cleared of All Charges


From left, David F. Evans, 24, of Annapolis, Md.; Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., and Reade W. Seligmann, 21, of Essex Falls, N.J., at a news conference in Raleigh, N.C., today.

By DUFF WILSON
Published: April 11, 2007

RALEIGH, N.C. April 11 — All remaining charges were dropped today against three former Duke University lacrosse players who had been accused of rape more than a year ago, North Carolina’s attorney general announced, concluding a three-month investigation of a racially charged case that polarized and outraged many in the state and nation.


North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper speaks during a news conference in Raleigh, N.C., today.



From left are former Duke lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Collin Finnerty in file photos from Dec. 2006.


Two strippers were hired for a lacrosse team party in March 2006 at this house on North Buchanan Boulevard in Durham.

An independent investigation “showed clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed,” Roy A. Cooper, the state attorney general, said at a televised news conference. “ We believe these individuals are innocent.”

He said the accounts of the events given by the woman who made the accusations were so inconsistent that they were not credible. “She contradicts herself,” Mr. Cooper said.

“In this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that night,” he said.

The decision brings to an end a 13-month ordeal for the young men, two of whom were dismissed from Duke because of the charges.

David F. Evans, 24, of Annapolis, Md.; Reade W. Seligmann, 21, of Essex Falls, N.J., and Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., were initially charged with rape, sexual offense and kidnapping.

One of two women hired to strip at the lacrosse team’s spring break party in March 2006 accused them of raping and assaulting her in a bathroom of an off-campus house.

The rape charges were dropped in December, after the woman changed a key detail in the case, saying she could not be sure what had penetrated her when she said she was gang-raped.

The woman changed her story after DNA tests showed no traces of DNA from any of the three defendants or any other Duke lacrosse player on her body or clothes, while traces of other male DNA were present.

Despite the shifting accusations, Mr. Cooper said today that no charges would be brought against the woman. He said investigators and attorneys from his office who talked to her “think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.”

This afternoon, the young men, their families and their lawyers expressed their relief that the charges were all dropped.

“It’s been 395 days since this nightmare began, and finally today it’s come to a closure,” Mr. Evans said at a news conference, noting that the three men have been declaring their innocence since they were accused.

“We’re just as innocent today as were back then,” he said. “We have never wavered in our stories.”

Joseph B. Cheshire, a lawyer for Mr. Evans, said the young men had suffered a great injustice through what he characterized as the “tremendous lies” told by the Durham County, N.C., district attorney, Michael B. Nifong.

“This is not a great day for celebration,” he said. “This is a great day for justice.”

At his news conference, Mr. Cooper said the case was an example of “a tragic rush to accuse” by Mr. Nifong, before all the evidence was collected and weighed.

“Any state in the country, including the federal government, can have a rogue prosecutor who goes out on his own and does things,” Mr. Cooper said “I think here in North Carolina we’ve solved the problem, we’ve corrected the problem, and I’ve suggested a way today that it can be done quickly”

He called for the passage of a law that would allow the North Carolina Supreme Court to remove a prosecutor “who needs to step away from a case where justice demands.”

The reaction on the Duke campus appeared to be satisfaction that the three young men had been cleared.

“When there was no DNA evidence, I thought the case would be thrown out right away,” said Caleb Seeley, 19, a sophomore economics major from New Jersey. “I’m surprised it wasn’t.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Tucker Page, a junior from Portland, Oregon. “I could see it coming from the news in the last month once the new prosecutor took over the case. I think that is the sentiment on campus.”

Bridgette Howard, 20, a junior public policy major from Baltimore said “Once Nifong was dropped from the case, it was kind of known what would happen.”

The case touched nerves of race, sex and privilege, both nationally and in Durham, because the accuser was a poor, black local woman and the students were relatively affluent, white out-of-staters. It also tapped into a debate about the off-the-field behavior of college athletes and the proper role of big-money sports on America’s university campuses.

Increasingly, the case came to be seen by many — especially among the players’ supporters and on the Internet — as a morality play of justice run off the rails by political correctness and the district attorney’s political ambitions. Mr. Nifong, became the focus of that rising anger and eventually, facing charges of prosecutorial misconduct from the state bar, turned the case over the attorney general.

Mr. Cooper, a Democrat running for re-election next year, promised “a completely new, fresh look at this case” when he assigned two veterans of a special prosecutions unit. They have pored over thousands of pages of material and interviewed many people. Mr. Cooper himself spent 23 minutes in the lacrosse team house on March 15, touring it with the prosecutors, James J. Coman and Mary D. Winstead.

Mr. Nifong and other supporters of the woman as well as the defense lawyers all said they would trust the new prosecutors to do the right thing. Defense lawyers said the state has been performing the first real investigation of the case.

Mr. Nifong said in interviews with the news media that he was certain that a rape had occurred and that lacrosse players were “hooligans” hiding behind a “wall of silence.” Three co-captains of the team, including one of the men eventually charged, had, in fact, cooperated fully with the police, but other team members canceled interviews on the advice of their lawyers.

The defense lawyers immediately and vocally protested the three lacrosse players’ innocence and branded the woman a false accuser.

The case unraveled under the glare of national publicity as the accuser — an unmarried mother and student at the predominately black North Carolina Central University in Durham who worked part time as a stripper — changed key details of her account and defense lawyers laid out alibi information, including time-stamped photographs. Presenting a united front of anger at the prosecution, the defense lawyers — some of the best in the state — also seized on a lack of DNA, semen or any other forensic evidence to contradict the accuser’s initial description of a brutal gang rape.

No one but the accuser — neither the other dancer nor any of the more than 20 men at the party — said they had witnessed an assault. In bringing the charges, Mr. Nifong relied solely on the woman’s photo identification of the three suspects and on a report by a sexual assault nurse who had examined the woman the night of the attack. The district attorney said that the examination showed proof of assault, and that he was compelled to give the woman a chance to testify and identify people in court.

As recently as Jan. 11, the accuser, during her longest meeting with Mr. Nifong, said she still wanted to press charges. Mr. Nifong was criticized furiously for failing to interview her earlier. He said he had relied on police interviews.

The photo lineup procedure appeared to violate local, state and federal guidelines for photo line-ups. The police, instructed by Mr. Nifong, showed her only pictures of lacrosse team members, with no filler photographs of people who could not possibly be suspects. Mr. Nifong later said it was not a lineup in the technical sense of the word.

Mr. Nifong won a primary election on May 3 and general election on Nov. 7 during the frenzy over the case, gaining most of the black vote, as his supporters said he would have done anyway. Mr. Nifong had been appointed acting district attorney in April 2005 by Gov. Mike Easley.

The North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against Mr. Nifong on Dec. 28, an unprecedented action against a prosecutor in the middle of a continuing case that was the subject of the charges. The bar said he made false and inflammatory public statements that prejudiced the rights of the accused. Added charges later accused him of withholding potentially exculpatory DNA evidence from the defense and lying to judges about it.

Mr. Nifong removed himself from the criminal case two weeks later, reluctantly, saying he had no choice because of a conflict of interest while he fought the ethics charges. He asked Mr. Cooper, the attorney general, to take over the case.

The ethics charges against Mr. Nifong, if upheld, could result in penalties from reprimand to disbarment. A preliminary hearing on Friday will decide Mr. Nifong’s motion to dismiss the most serious charges. A full hearing before a three-person panel is scheduled to begin June 7.

Defense lawyers have also accused Mr. Nifong, a 28-year veteran prosecutor with a previously impeccable record, of obstruction of justice and manipulation of evidence. Some of the parents for the accused young men have suggested they may sue Mr. Nifong and Durham County. The parents have also criticized Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, for not supporting them strongly enough.

Mr. Brodhead canceled the lacrosse season and accepted the resignation of the coach on April 4 after the release of an e-mail from one player talking about skinning strippers; it turned out to be a reference to the book “American Psycho.” Mr. Brodhead appointed panels to examine the team’s behavior and university’s handling of the case. He invited Mr. Finnerty and Mr. Seligmann back to school after the rape charges were dropped, but they declined. Mr. Evans had graduated the day before he was charged.

Today, Mr. Evans is working in the Washington area. Mr. Finnerty and Mr. Seligmann are deciding where to continue their educations.

Duke officials say the scandal has not hurt their admissions or fund-raising efforts, which are both at or near record levels. The university got 19,170 applicants this year — including record numbers of African Americans (2,190), Asians or Asian Americans (5,173) and Latinos (1,303) — and accepted about one in five.

John Holusha and Maria Newman contributed reporting from New York, and Mosi Secret from Durham, N.C.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company