Duke University officials suspend the men’s lacrosse team for two games following allegations that team members sexually assaulted a stripper hired to perform at a party. Three players were later charged with rape. The case became a national scandal, impacted by issues of race, politics and class. In April 2007, all charges against the young men were dropped due to lack of credible evidence and the district attorney was eventually disbarred for his mishandling of the case.
On March 13, 2006, the Duke lacrosse team held a party at an off-campus house and hired two strippers to perform. The following day, one of the dancers, Crystal Mangum, told police in Durham, North Carolina, that three white lacrosse players forced her into a bathroom and raped her. On March 23, the team’s 46 white members provided police with DNA samples and were photographed. On March 28, Duke suspended the team for two games; soon after, their coach was forced to resign and the school’s president cancelled the rest of the lacrosse season.
On April 10, defense attorneys revealed that DNA test results showed no match between the players and the accuser. Nevertheless, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, who labeled the players “hooligans,” vowed to continue investigating the case. On April 17, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were charged with rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. On May 12, defense attorneys announced a second round of tests found no evidence of any player’s DNA on the accuser’s body or clothing on the night of the party.
On May 15, a third lacrosse player, David Evans, the team captain, was indicted on charges of rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. All three players maintained their innocence and had cell phone records and time-stamped photographs to demonstrate they couldn’t have committed the crimes.
The case raised issues of class and race because the accuser was a poor, black, single mother from the Durham area and the three lacrosse players were out-of-staters from affluent backgrounds. Nifong, who was running for district attorney when the rape allegations were first made, was accused of aggressively pursuing the case to gain favor with Durham’s African American community. Additionally, the case sparked a national debate about the behavior of college athletes.
In late December 2006, the accuser altered several key details of her story and Nifong dropped the rape charges but kept the kidnapping and sexual offense counts in place. On December 28, the North Carolina State Bar Association filed a prosecutorial misconduct complaint against Nifong. In January 2007, Nifong, facing growing criticism, asked North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the case.
In April of that year, the attorney general announced Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann had been wrongly accused and dismissed all charges against them. Nifong was heavily criticized for his rush to judgment and his heavy reliance on the faulty testimony of the accuser. He was disbarred in June and later convicted of criminal contempt for making misleading statements to a judge. The three accused players received an undisclosed financial settlement from Duke University and later filed a lawsuit against Nifong, the city of Durham and the investigating police officers.
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The district attorney didn’t miss handle the case, he knowingly allowed evidence to be mishandled at a DNA lab, then presented as pure fact by an expert witness.
One of the police investigators later committed suicide, apparently for his role in the frame job.
All this according to ESPN
Durham NC is a shit-hole, on par as Detroit.
Blacks and homosexuals running the place, democrat heaven.
Just last night a pizza delivery guy was shot.
Magnum,the stripper in this particular case, later was found guilty of murdering her boyfriend.
https://www.wral.com/mangum-found-guilty-in-boyfriend-s-stabbing-death/13143246/
Well, at least she performed some civic duty.
Great minds think alike.
Until the social welfare policies of the US, the state of North Carolina and locally change nothing will. The democrat will always treat these people as their chattel to keep them voting for the status quo and continually being told that they desperately need the great white democrat to take care of them.
The said part is those Dem voters think their elected leaders actually care about them.
They are so ignorant, they can’t figure it out.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of Republican voters.
Fortunately for the falsely accused their families were able to finance a more than adequate defense . Nifong the scumbag was hoping the court of public opinion would force the accused to cop a plea and that backfired big time . Remember if the three were kids from less affluent financially secure families they would be convicted felons and registered sex offenders the rest of their lives and Nifong would have written a book .
How many cases did this prick mishandle intentionally for his personal political gain .
You have to say every single case he ever prosecuted and all needed to be examined with relentless scrutiny
In the end, Nifong was still eligible for his full retirement benefits from NC.
Ultimately getting justice from the justice system is down to money and luck. It never means that “the system worked”.
One of the players charged was on video footage in a bank 3 miles away at the time, but Nifong wouldn’t drop the charges…The DA also withheld other exculpatory evidence.
Liberal Progressive SJW con job. Thank God that one kid had a good lawyer that figured out how to prove he wasn’t there.
“Liberal Progressive SJW” prosecutor???
Now that’s something I’ve yet to encounter.
Nifong was without question corrupt, unscrupulous, duplicitous. egomaniacal. But he was devoid of any ideals, progressive or otherwise. His only goal was self-interest, and he engaged in a scorched earth policy riding roughshod over the innocent for his own aggrandizement.
Nifong’s level of corruption is rare, but the tactic he employed is not.
Had these been poor defendants, they would have sat in jail until their court date when the state would offer “plead to a misdemeanor, be sentenced to time served, and go home today”, or “go to trial, face felony charges, and the state will ask for a minimum of 10 years.”