Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong dropped charges of first-degree rape against former Duke lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans.
A motion filed today cited “insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution” as the reason behind the dismissal.
ABC News has learned that the prosecution only interviewed the alleged victim in the Duke University sexual offense case for the first time yesterday.
Nifong is still proceeding with two other charges of kidnapping and first-degree sexual offense against the three indicted men.
We’ve previously written about how the Durham County prosecutor’s office was dragging its feet in interviewing the alleged victim.
You know, only if this woman has positive role models to look up to, maybe she wouldn’t have turned to this lifestyle.
You know, like beauty queens.
This prosecution has been a sham from day 1. I imagine in the end all the charges will be dropped and Mr Nifong will end up disbarred and possibly indicted. Nifong’s malicious prosecution was nothing more then a political move to court the black vote and incite class warfare between the well to due Duke students and the lower class Durham residence. All for his benefit.
This is why I can’t stand law enforcement personnel, judges and lawyers. They don’t care about the truth, just closing cases and convictions. They kind of get bent out of shape when some one requests a trial by jury and don’t knuckle under to a plea bargain. If there was any justice that prosecutor would be sent to prison for what he put those boys through.
This wasn’t a law enforcement issue here, it was a shady DA who was up for re-election and was trying toget his name in the paper with a big-time case, and, as the above poster noted, trying to court the black vote and take on Duke.
Duke is a predominantly white university, smack dab in the middle of a predominantly black area of the state. There is a great deal of racial tension due to the disparity of income between the students and the surrounding residents, and the DA jumped on this in a ploy to garner votes and get re-elected.
I, too, suspect the remaining charges will be dropped.
#2. Unfortunately, prosecutors who institute or pursue criminal cases in bad faith are very rarely disciplined, much less prosecuted. If the Duke defendants are, in fact, innocent, the best case scenario is that they shake a lot of $$$ out of the county for wrongful prosecution. Not a dime will come from Nifong himself.
#5 At least one GOP congressman is going to try.
http://rdu.news14.com/content/headlines/?ArID=96218&SecID=2
It would be nice to be Gonzalez go after this scumbag instead of politically correct bogeymen he and his office have be chasing in the past.
Even if all the charges were dropped these guys will still have to deal with this long after its over.
#6, c’mon gq, this is just as much a publicity stunt as what the prosecutor is accused of. The Federal Government has no jurisdiction in investigate.
#8. Tsk, Mr. Fusion, don’t be so cynical – don’t you know Republicans from the Old South are always in the forefront of defending the rights of those accused of crimes?
The ACLU is positively jam-packed with them ….
#8…Mr. Fusion….it may be a publicity stunt by the Congressman, but if the Feds decide these boys civil rights have been violated, then they have jurisdiction. And you can bet your house on the fact that if Gonzales pushes, a Federal Judge for that district will act. The reason, many believe, the local Congressman hasn’t acted is because of their both being in the same party.
This case is a travesty…..unfortunatly it’s not all that unusual, but the victims are usually minorities and others who can’t afford the top lawyers that these boys have.
Nifong’s first mistake was pissing off the families of some wealthy boys. When he finally drops all the charges, these boys will have had their reputations smeared all across the country. 2 of them were suspended from the University, and have not been able to continue their education. A lot of peoples lives and reputations have been ruined here by a woman and a District Attorney, neither of whom has been honest from the start.
Nifong has pissed off some rich and powerful people. They’re out for blood, and they’ll get it.
#10, joshua
There can’t be any civil rights violations. Everything was done according to law. The students were arraigned, and bail was granted.
And you are also quite correct, this happens every day and the police and prosecutors very rarely ever are sanctioned. I blame this solely on the “Law and Order” crowd that believe the police and prosecutors are incapable of error. This is the same crowd that claim it is OK to taser a handcuffed person or beat a drunk driver senseless. It happens, we know it happens, it is wrong, yet the fear factor that want the police to protect us and prosecutors to put away criminals justify this by saying it is better to just get them off the street.
I agree that this is a travesty. Because of the notoriety surrounding this case though, is what got the charges dropped before the trial. If there wasn’t the publicity, then I sincerely believe they would still be facing trial on all charges.
To help stop this, I would really like to see prosecutors and Judges that abuse the system to be disbarred or sanctioned by the American Bar Association. It might not be a requirement to be a member of the bar to be elected District Attorney, it wouldn’t help their re-election to have been disbarred or to retain staff that have been disbarred.
A few years back, we had a State Police officer that refused an assignment because it went against his religious principles. He was fired. After many tribunals and court appearances, the firing was upheld on the grounds that the police are neutral and may not take sides in a dispute.
So the recently elected Republican South Bend District Attorney hired him as an investigator. The DA was in the news quite often, prosecuting old cases, going after dead beats, etc. Mostly good news. Next election, in 2004, he was defeated mostly because he had hired a biased investigator that put religion ahead of his job even though the Republicans swept many of the races that year.
There can’t be any civil rights violations. Everything was done according to law.
I beg to differ. Withholding key discoverable evidence from the defense for several months could be considered a violation of their civil rights.
#14. That would be a surprise to many criminal defendants, who are routinely given discoverable materials only days or even hours before trial – or sometimes in the middle of trial, with only a recess to examine the new evidence – and whose convictions are routinely upheld on appeal.
Everyone should keep in mind that any prosecutorial misconduct that comes to light in a high-profile case is only a flicker of what goes on every day in American courthouses.
Of course, to the “law and order” types, these are only “technicalities” that should not stand in the way of speedily grinding defendants through the justice mills.
#15, thank you Doug. My thoughts exactly.
You resident racists really can’t contain themselves when it comes to this case. Having missed the lynching decades, you guys get reminiscent about what your grandfathers got away with. Rankles that the ‘white is always right’ perspective is sometimes challenged these days, doesn’t it?
What happened is basically procedural. The rape statute in North Carolina requires penetration by a penis. The alleged victim says that she was held in a way that prevented her from seeing what she was penetrated with. So, now the charge is sexual assault because of uncertainty about penile penetration. Seems to me that the young woman is unusually honest, since she admitted her uncertainty.
These very wealthy and privileged defendants are getting better treatment than 99 percent of those accused in any criminal matter. Their whining is because they don’t believe the criminal justice system should apply to them at all.
“These very wealthy and privileged defendants are getting better treatment than 99 percent of those accused in any criminal matter. Their whining is because they don’t believe the criminal justice system should apply to them at all.”
I agree if your talking about OJ, or some others. To quote someone “You are a racist”. I think the person I am quoting is a racist also.
# 17 she is not being extremely honest. she is just showing again she has no crediability. She has changed her story more times than I care to count. These boy’s lives have been riped apart by a woman who can not remember her own lies, but she can pole dance. Even right after telling a chapel hill hospital that whe was in extreme pain. You think maybe she just wanted the drugs?
I know that these boys are not saints , they were dirinking, they hired strippers, and some at the party said crude racist statements after a disagreement about money and the show. God, if that warranted prison terms half the country would be in prison.
Here we go again a bunch of snottie nose silver spoon fed punks get off because daddy spent money to buy copper. I hope they do it again and go to trial. They are animals Just like the blacks they think woman are for raping and beating. Hey maybe they can rap with snoop dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!