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Prosecutor, step down

In the case involving gang-rape allegations against three members of the Duke University lacrosse team, the central characters couldn't have been better scripted for social combustibility. On the one side was the accuser, an African-American single mother who stripped for money while trying to earn a degree at a predominantly black university. On the other were the accused, three white athletes from privileged families who attended a prestigious school and played for a team with a reputation for big-men-on-campus attitudes.

So it is not surprising that the rape charges emerging from a team party in March that included underage drinking and strippers performing became a national cause and have riven the Durham, N.C., community along racial, gender and class lines. The surprise has come from the irresponsibility of the district attorney. Michael Nifong first tried the case in the media, fanning the flames of social discord, and has refused to reconsider the case as evidence emerged that strongly pointed to the innocence of the accused. Nifong has behaved irresponsibly and significantly compromised this case. He should hand it off to an impartial prosecutor.

From every vantage it appears that Nifong grandstanded this tragic case as a way to build voter support in Durham's African-American community. When Nifong told a local television station that the lacrosse players were "a bunch of hooligans" whose "daddies could buy them expensive lawyers" when they got into trouble, he was pandering to a set of well-established prejudices that local Durham residents have about Duke University athletes. Nifong won a full term in office in Tuesday's election.

The CBS News show 60 Minutes recently did a thorough review of the evidence available and found that there is little to corroborate the accuser's story. The DNA of the three accused men failed to match that found on the accuser's body. One of the accused, Reede Seligmann, has cell phone records that show he made nine phone calls when the crime was alleged to have been committed. He was also photographed by a bank security camera at an ATM machine about that time. The other exotic dancer at the party that evening says that she didn't see an attack and was with the alleged victim nearly the entire time. The accuser has apparently changed her story a number of times and reportedly went back to performing even while going to hospitals to say she was racked by pain from the attack.

The lives of the three young men accused, Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, are on hold until their trial next spring. Yet Nifong, the man who has upended their lives, seems increasingly uninterested in the facts of the case. He recently said that he has not ever talked with the alleged victim, and he has refused to consider the alibi evidence from one of the accused.

Nifong has a prosecutor's obligation to be open to new evidence that might challenge original conclusions. His primary goal should be to seek justice, not keep his job by fanning public outrage and playing on racial and class bias. Only an outside, independent prosecutor can bring some sense of fairness to a prosecution that has been terribly mishandled from the beginning.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 01:34:02]