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.”
In 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.
“This case shows the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor,” Cooper said.
Cooper, who took over the case in January after Nifong was charged with ethics violations that could get him disbarred, said his 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.”
“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.”
Later, at an often-bitter 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.
“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.”
Defense attorney Joe Cheshire said: “We’re angry, very angry. But we’re very relieved.”
Nifong was out of town and could not immediately be reached for comment. But his lawyer, David Freedman, said, “If further investigation showed the boys were innocent, he would be in agreement with what the attorney general’s office decided to do.”
Evans, 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.
“I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people,” Cooper said.
James Coleman, a Duke law professor who was one of Nifong’s biggest critics, said he hopes the case makes the public “aware and sensitive to the importance of public scrutiny of what a prosecutor can do.”
“They have enormous power. They can ruin innocent people and in some cases put innocent people in prison never to get out because they don’t do their job with integrity,” Coleman said. “That’s really the lesson.”
