Nine 'œhellish months' ago, Reade Seligmann's life changed forever, said Susannah Meadows in Newsweek. The telephone rang with the news he'd been dreading: Along with Collin Finnerty and David Evans, two of his teammates on the Duke University lacrosse team, he was being charged with raping an exotic dancer at a team party. The lurid case, featuring privileged white jocks and a struggling black woman, became a national obsession'”and quickly started to fall apart. The accuser changed her story several times, and then changed it again. It emerged that at least two of the accused could prove they were elsewhere at the time of the alleged assault. Most disturbingly, it appears that Durham County, N.C., District Attorney Mike Nifong failed to disclose exculpatory DNA evidence. The rape charges have now been dropped, but Seligmann and his friends are still scheduled to stand trial for kidnapping and sexual abuse in April, the first anniversary of their 'œyear in purgatory.'
If anyone goes to jail as a result of this case, said Thomas Sowell in the Baltimore Sun, it will be Mike Nifong himself. A laboratory chief already has testified that he and Nifong agreed to keep the DNA results secret after they revealed that the dancer's panties contained semen from at least two men'”none of it matching the DNA of the Duke lacrosse players. Why would Nifong continue to prosecute such a bogus rape allegation? Because the case was the cornerstone of his re-election campaign as district attorney. Duke is a bastion of white privilege in predominantly black Durham County, and Nifong'”who had been trailing in the polls'”realized he could use the case to show black voters whose side he was on. The tactic worked, but now Nifong faces ethics charges from the bar association.
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