The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case.
The three players, Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, were facing charges of first degree kidnapping and first degree forcible sexual offense. The charges stem from an off-campus party on the night of March 13, 2006.
What else can be said.
Walker
Two years? Is it 2008 already?
Andrew
They are still guilty of being huge dicks, and for that they deserve to never have an emotionally satisfying relationship.
Rape charges, not so much.
John Cole
Fixed. Sure seems longer than just a year.
They are guilty of nothing, and your saying this backs up precisely why these bullshit charges should cost Nifong, and not the youg men.
Andrew
I think Nifong should be in jail. I’d like to see massive public shaming of the dumbass Duke profs who declared these kids guilty, and some harsh sanctions as well.
But the lacrosse team was full of huge assholes, including these guys. I personally know many people who have interacted with the Duke lacrosse team and report that they are, in fact, huge dicks. They are are huge dicks that invite black strippers over to a party and hurl racial invective. They are huge dicks who gather at a bar right after the incident and lead drunk chants and send misogynist emails about killing strippers to each other.
It was completely justified that the Duke lacrosse coach lost his job. His team was out of control.
Like I said, these three need to be absolved of charges and should win huge damages from Duke and Durham. But they are still huge dicks. Such things are not mutually exclusive.
There are few good people involved in this incident.
Mark Venture
But Imus said mean things about some college girls. It’s so unfair.
Sirkowski
They’re jocks, they probably should be in jail anyway.
jake
No snark intended John, but if the thought of people being accused of a crime they did not commit for a year upsets you I strongly suggest you not think of this issue at all. It seems that every other day I read about some guy who was convicted and sentenced for a crime he did not commit who is only getting out of jail after a couple of decades because DNA showed he was innocent.
I also have a relative who spent half his life on death row because the DA decided to squirrel away some exonerating evidence. (No it was not Nifong.) But even my cousin is lucky compared to the poor SOBs who are cleared post-humously.
But maybe that’s something to think about. One year of undeserved infamy v. 25 undeserved years in a high security prison, or even undeserved death.
The same? Not so bad after all? Worse? You decide.
p.lukasiak
hey, Nifong was just following the lead of the Bush Department of Justice here….
at least in the Duke case, the injustice stopped before the case went to trial — while in Wisconsin an innocent woman spent four months in jail before the Appeals Court overthrew the conviction immediately after oral arguments (something that almost never happens)because the case was complete bullshit. (and it should be noted that two of the three judges were Republicans).
lard lad
Having attended a Deep South high school and college, I can attest that upper-crust southern jocks tend to be an insufferably arrogant strain of shithead… has something to do with them being the Good ol’ Boy equivalent of eighteenth-century earls who beat their servants for amusement. That said, these guys got a seriously raw deal, and Mike Nifong should be disbarred at the very least.
On the other hand, it blows that we get to hear reactionary limp dicks like Dan Riehl screech, rend their garments and generally get the vapors about the Poor Picked-On Rich White Guy:
Yeah, too bad for these Duke guys that they weren’t, say, a inner city basketball team, accused of the same crime… because you just know that lower-income black athletes wouldn’t have done a single day in stir for that kind of thing. Why, they’d have been back on the streets in minutes, with a handwritten apology from the police.
ThymeZone
You’re right, that appears to be the case.
Good question. Probably, “We’re sorry” would be a good start.
ThymeZone
I wish I could explain how and why I know this, but for reasons of anonymity, I cannot, but I assure you, prosecutorial abuse is much more common in this country today than is widely known. It’s a serious problem and I hope that it gets the visibility it deserves.
chefrad
Does this mean our Volleball bash is still on? Bring on the abducted nubian women!
Just rememember, no unequivocal gang rape in the toilet this time, and, failing that, wear Carolina jerseys.
Martyrs these little Dukies, the lot of them. Victims of unrealistic standards of decorum. Long live the University of New Jersey at Durham, where the school anthem is by Carl Orff.
Jimmmm
Here’s your prosecutorial overreach, you weirdos. Get your f*&ing heads out of the ground:
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/overblown_personnel_matter_/2007/04/just_in_case_you_were_wondering_.php
Fuck the Duke Lacrosse players. Sorry, but my compassion reserve has run dry. This sort of thing only matters when it’s privileged white guys who get caught [likely] doing the wrong thing at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Seriously, John, I love your blog–it’s near the top of my morning must-read list. But l’affair Dukie falls somewhere below deadly pet food and Segway scooter disasters.
Tlaloc
“They are guilty of nothing,”
No, they *ARE* guilty of being huge dicks. Don’t forget the circumstances of how this charge arose. The charge itself is bogus but nobody has denied that hese guys had a typical frat party complete with racism, sexism, and classism.
But being a dick isn’t a crime, and they shouldn’t go to jail for it. They should, however, be ostracized by polite society and hopefully they will be as a result of this whole ordeal.
Justin
Yeah. I have very little sympathy for these guys.
They just experienced a taste of what it’s like to be poor and black in America.
I hope they learn from this experience, but I doubt it.
ThymeZone
Amazing. People should have their lives thrown into the toilet by self-serving prosecutors because they aren’t fully in touch with “what it’s like to be poor and black in America.”
I hope that was spoof, because that is about the stupidest damn thing I’ve seen around here in a long time.
If you are going to promote prosecutorial vindictiveness, I can assure you that poor and black people are going to take the brunt of it. I should say, continue to take the brunt, because they do now.
Justin
No spoof.
Those kids deserved to be prosecuted. And they deserve to have the charges dropped if they are innocent.
The media blew this story out of proportion, and it’s their fault. Not the prosecutors.
Again. Those kids deserved everything that has happened to them. I hope they learn from it.
ThymeZone
Actually, unless the trickle of information has been completely misleading, it’s the asshole DA who deserves to be presecuted, IMO.
We will definitely not find agreement on this. That guy is a single-handed threat to the integrity of the justice system. He is your worst nightmare as a presecutor AFAIC.
ThymeZone
That’s “procescutor,” although “persecutor” would also have worked here.
ThymeZone
Arrggh. PROSECUTOR. Damned Dell keyboard.
Andrew
I hate the Dook assholes with the fiery passion of 12 supernovas, but this statement is pretty ridiculous. I guess I think it means that you’re a bad person and/or stupid.
Justin
When a group of lacrosse players holds a house party with booze, invites strippers into the home, makes racist statements and then takes the strippers into the bathroom for some one-on-one time, they are asking for trouble.
When the stripper contacts the police and says she has been raped, I think the prosecutor needs to follow through with the case. It’s a he-said/she-said case. The prosecutor believed the stripper. And he prosecuted the boys. I’m okay with it.
The media is at fault here. They blew it out of proportion. The media ruined the boys here, not the prosecutor.
Andrew
I think you’re missing a pretty major distinction between investigation and prosecution.
Andrew
And the fact that there was fairly compelling evidence, available early in the investigation, that some of these Dookies had strong alibis, to say nothing of the fact that some of the “evidence” used in bringing the charges was produced illegally.
Justin
Perhaps. But the strongest evidence was the testimony of the raped woman, and the prosecutor rested heavily on that evidence in bringing the case.
The prosecutor probably should have dropped the case earlier than he did. But at that point, the lives of these players were already ruined. They had already been kicked out of Duke, and much like bar in Cheers, everyone knew their name.
The media is so intent on protecting rape victims by never producing their name. Maybe the media should be equally as careful about revealing the name of the alleged rapist as well.
Andrew
If by “strongest,” you mean self-contradictory, factually incorrect on many points, and at odds with physical evidence, then you might be onto something.
Justin
Heh. Well, maybe you’re right. I’m not really here to defend the prosecutor.
I just don’t have any sympathy for the Duke players.
The problem with the case is that it got blown out of proportion by the media. If the media is looking for someone to blame, they should look at themselves. And that includes this blog.
Jake
Is it me or do comments like “They deserved it,” and “They were asking for trouble” sound like the sort of things usually said of rape victims? If this is progress, pardon me while I puke.
OT: John or Tim, could you please trim the link posted at 10.29 am?
Justin
Just an fyi, but when you fuck a stripper, you’re asking to be prosecuted for something.
And I know. I’m hijacking this thread. I’ll shut up now.
Paul L.
If feminists hate Fox News, the rage will increase to the
Crystal Gail Mangum: Profile of the Duke Rape Accuser
Not that she does not deserve it.
Duke Non-Rape Case Statement
tde
It is always touching to see rightwingnuts getting all sensitive about prosecutorial overreach.
This a.m. I was listening to some Fox news affiliate and they interviewed some sports agent type – apparently in hopes of drawing on his vast expertise to detail the ruinous financial implications of the prosecutions. I guess the pre-producer didn’t vet the interviewee beforehand because he said that the professional lacross market is very small and that most of its players make in “the low five figures.”
So think of the tragedy ladies and gentlemen, here are these fine young men who after graduating from Duke where they (or their parents) have plopped down about 100K in tuition – they might be prevented from making $10 or $20K a year as lacross players. What will they now do with the rest of their lives?
Jake
Warning to all people dating or married to strippers: Keep your hands to yourself!
Hijacking is fine, the babbling, not so much.
Jeff
Where is the shithead coward of a Coach who resigned immedately after the players were charged?
He showed absolutely no backbone…..