All charges dismissed in Duke sex case

Closing a painful chapter of public condemnation and racial recriminations in a Southern city with an elite university, North Carolina’s attorney general dropped all charges Wednesday against three white former Duke University athletes accused by a black stripper of raping her at a house party 13 months ago.

Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper, condemning Durham Dist. Atty. Mike Nifong for “a rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” said there was “no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night.”

Calling the men victims of “a rush to condemn,” Cooper said flatly: “We believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.” Several North Carolina lawyers said they could recall no case in which a sitting district attorney was so harshly and publicly rebuked by a fellow prosecutor.

After a 12-week reexamination of the highly charged case, Cooper said accusations by the stripper, 28, who attended historically black North Carolina Central University in Durham, were inconsistent and contradictory. The woman identified the athletes at what Cooper said were deeply flawed photo lineups approved by Nifong.

“No other witness confirms her story,” Cooper said at a crowded news conference. “Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself.”

David Evans, 24, who was indicted the day after he graduated from Duke last spring, said the defendants and their families had “gone to hell and back.”

The other two accused men were Collin Finnerty, 20, and Reade Seligmann, 21.

“This past year was robbed from our lives,” Evans told reporters at a downtown hotel event that was more pep rally than news conference, with Duke lacrosse players and family members applauding and cheering .”We are just as innocent today as we were back then.”

The case exposed racial and socioeconomic fault lines in Durham, a working-class city that has a black population of 40% and is home to a highly selective university. It also prompted bitter discord within Duke, a school with a national reputation for academic excellence -- and one supporters say has been unfairly portrayed as preppy and snobbish.

Inflamed by Nifong’s public charges that the supposed rape was racially motivated, some African Americans -- joined by some Duke professors -- accused the university of tolerating racists and misogynists. Durham City Council members called the lacrosse team “a ticking time bomb that has not been dismantled.”

Details of the purported rape, based solely on the allegations of a party stripper, were amplified by wall-to-wall national news coverage. The woman’s story was shocking: Drunken young white men forced her into a bathroom, choked her and repeatedly penetrated her while screaming racial slurs.

Adding to the graphic and sensational allegations were statements by a second stripper hired for a team party that one man -- not one of the accused -- threatened to sodomize the women with a broomstick. That stripper also said partygoers shouted racial slurs as she left.

Evans’ lawyer, Joseph B. Cheshire, said Nifong “tore his own city apart in a race-class divide ... and his acts hurt the reputation of one of the great universities in this country. What this man reaped is unconscionable.”

Cheshire also chastised the news media for fanning both the woman’s accusations and Nifong’s incendiary quotes. He said reporters failed to carry out dogged reporting that could have exposed holes in the case early on.

Cooper called Nifong a “rogue prosecutor” and said the case highlighted “the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor.” He proposed a law that would allow the state Supreme Court to remove a prosecutor from a case in certain circumstances.

“There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado,” Cooper said.

Asked whether Nifong should apologize to the three men, Cooper replied: “I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to other people. I think those people ought to consider doing that.”

Nifong, an appointed district attorney then making his first race for elective office, last spring called the defendants “a bunch of hooligans.” He said they had shown “a deep racial motivation” and “contempt ... for the victim, based on her race.”

Nifong faces ethics charges filed by the state bar association for his actions, which included withholding DNA evidence that showed the three defendants were not the sources of genetic material found on the accuser’s underwear and body; the DNA came instead from several unidentified males. Nifong could be disbarred.

Cooper said he had not ruled out filing criminal charges against Nifong after the bar association case is completed. Defense lawyers said they might file civil suits against the district attorney.

Nifong was not available for comment. David Freedman, Nifong’s attorney, told ABC News on Wednesday, “He pushed the case as long as he did because at that point he believed in this case. Sometimes it takes time for false accusations to get resolved through the legal system, if that is what happened in this case. It doesn’t mean the prosecutor was wrong to go forward.”

Cooper said he had considered criminal charges against the accuser but decided not to charge her. He said investigators concluded after long interviews with the woman that “she may actually believe the many different stories she has been telling.”

Asked whether the accuser had psychological problems, Cooper said court records possibly addressing the issue were sealed. A doctor who examined the woman the night of the supposed attack said she had a history of bipolar disorder and was “at very high risk of narcotic abuse,” according to court documents.

At the height of the uproar over the charges, even Nifong conceded that there was no scientific or eyewitness testimony implicating the students. There was only the word of a woman who removed her clothes for money and entertained strangers in hotel rooms. An escort agency driver told police he drove the woman to several “appointments” in hotel rooms and had sex with her himself the weekend before the March 13, 2006, team party.

Witnesses said the woman was drinking heavily and acting erratically the night of the party, held in an off-campus house.

After he was indicted last spring, Evans told reporters: “You have all been told some fantastic lies.”

On Wednesday, he reminded some of the same reporters: “It’s been 395 days since this nightmare began.”

Finnerty said: “I knew justice would prevail ... knowing I had the truth on my side.” In a wry aside, he added: “There seem to be some flaws in the legal system.”

Seligmann said he wondered how other innocent suspects, who did not have well-to-do-parents to hire high-priced lawyers, could prove their innocence while pursued by an aggressive prosecutor. “This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed,” he said.

Seligmann said Nifong should understand “the pain and heartache you’ve caused our families.”

The young men were greeted with a standing ovation when they entered the hotel ballroom in downtown Raleigh. The gathering was supposed to be a news conference, but it resembled an awards show. Defense lawyers repeatedly thanked one another and their clients’ families for their roles in the defense.

At each condemnation of Nifong, scores of supporters rose up and cheered. Cheshire, Evans’ lawyer, was interrupted by applause as he said of Nifong: “This is a man who appealed to racial and class hatred.”

James P. Cooney III, Seligmann’s lawyer, called Nifong a coward. “If Mike Nifong had had his way, Reade Seligmann would have spent 30 years in jail,” he said.

The lawyers refused to allow the men or their families to answer questions, saving them for a “60 Minutes” interview that CBS said will air Sunday.

In December, Nifong dropped rape charges after the accuser changed several key details of her account. The state took over the case from Nifong in January, with the three men still facing charges of sexual offense and kidnapping.

Finnerty and Seligmann were suspended from Duke last spring, and the season was shut down for the lacrosse team, then ranked second nationally. The team’s longtime coach resigned under pressure.

Duke has since allowed the team to resume play and has invited Finnerty and Seligmann to return. They said Wednesday that they had not decided where they will resume their studies, but both said they would like to play competitive lacrosse again.

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david.zucchino@latimes.com