The Duke Lacrosse Scandal: What Really Happened?

In the early afternoon of April 13th, 2007, David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty finally received the news they had been waiting for for almost a year…they were innocent.  Although all three men had been declaring their innocence from day one, media speculation, public opinion, and one over-enthusiastic prosecutor had already found them guilty.  It was the case of the Duke Lacrosse players against one less-then-credible stripper.  In a statement issued by David Evans shortly after the verdict was announced, “It’s been 395 days since this nightmare began.  And finally today it’s coming to a closure.  We’re just as innocent today as we were back then.  Nothing has changed.  The facts don’t change.”  The facts may not have changed, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t manipulated to fit the nation’s preconceived notions.

Fueled by  prosecutor that was up for reelection and in need of votes from the black community, the three lacrosse players found themselves in the midst of speculation when “Precious”, a local dancer hired to perform at the boys spring break party, picked the young men out of a lineup claiming theyhad raped her “anally, vaginally, and orally while they hit, kicked, and strangled me over a 30 minute period.”  With virtually no evidence to support such claims, the prosecutor, Mike Nifong, instead relied on the stripper’s ever-changing story and that infamous police line-up, which contained ONLY men from the Duke Lacrosse team.  In an attempt to add fuel to the fire, Nifong created intense public outrage by announcing in dozens of interviews that “with absolute certainty the Duke Lacrosse players had committed a horrific crime”.  Without much of the evidence gathered, news coverage of Nifong’s comments helped to feed the public’s suspicions, finding them guilty without trial. 

The public’s sentence?  All three men were no longer allowed to set foot on campus unless they obtained written permission from the Univerity, they were forced to move from their homes near campus due to mobs out front burning candles, placing signs in their yards, and fellow students asking them to get a conscience and show character.  The team’s coach was also forced to resign once he publicly announced that he not only supported his players, he believed there was no crime committed.  The three men also began receiving threats of death, drive-bys, acts of violence, and assaults.  The University also decided to cancel the remainder of the 2006 season, taking away the last opportunity for one of the men to play Lacrosse with his team again before graduation.

After reading all the facts in this case, one is left to wonder just how this could happen.  Much of the fire came from the prosecuting attorneys’ questionable tactics.  Using the media as a catapult for his own personal agenda, Nifong declared the athletes “a bunch of hooligans” stating that the DNA evidence would prove these three privileged men had committed such travesties.  However, when the DNA evidence came back clearing ALL lacrosse players from any wrong-doing, Nifong instead turned the public’s attention to the fact that “For most of the years I’ve been doing this we didn’t have DNA.  We had to deal with sexual assault cases the good old-fashiond way–witnesses got on the stand and told what happened to them”.  Statements like that kind of make you wonder how many innocent people there are behind bars.  To further dispute the charges, the “victim” herself kept changing her story throughout the entire investigation. 

What began as a victim positive of the story she was telling, quickly became a women unsure of everything, whom at one point even stated she was no longer sure there was even penetration.  Yet the witch hunt continued to drag on over the next twelve months.  Luckily for the players, the pivotal point came when the prosecuting attorney was thrown off the case due to his “misleading and inflammatory comments to the media about the athletes under suspicion”.  With Nifong removed, the accused where finally able to bring to light mounds of evidence they were once told wasn’t necessary…like one of the players having time stamped and video proof of his whereabouts when the “attacks” were to have occurred, proving there was no way he could have been on of the “attackers”. 

With the three men finally cleared from the crime that was never committed, many people began asking how this whole thing got so out of control.  Backed by racial tensions from two opposing groups, the publics rage was fueled with debates over race, sex, and social status…leaving some wanting justice from the elite, whether or not they actually committed the crime.  The biggest lesson learned from this case is the understanding that the media is good at taking all injustices of our legal system and manipulating them in order to find people either guilty or innocent, with little to no facts, in the court of public opinion.