The Duke Case: Innocent

(CBS)  The dismissal of all charges against three white Duke lacrosse players on Wednesday ended a year-long nightmare for David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty that began when an African-American stripper accused them of gang-raping her at a team party.

In no uncertain terms, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said his review of the case made it clear that they had been the victims of a troubled woman's false allegations and a rogue prosecutor's rush to accuse.

In two previous reports, 60 Minutes raised serious questions about the case, and now the three young men tell correspondent Lesley Stahl about the agonizing ordeal of being charged with a crime they didn't commit.

And Attorney General Cooper explains in new and explicit detail why the charges never should have been brought in the first place. Cooper concluded there had been a miscarriage of justice and with one word – "innocent" – gave three young men their lives back.

---

"We had heard that he might say, as we refer to it now, as the "i" word – innocent. But when he first said there's insufficient evidence to go forward, we were saying, 'Oh my God,'" remembers David Evans.

"Because he didn't say it right away," Stahl remarks.

"He didn't say it, and then all of a sudden, there's this crescendo, and you can see where he was going with his speech," Evans explains.

"I never heard 'innocent' because everyone in the room jumped up and starting cheering," Evans adds, referring to the moment State Attorney General Cooper made the announcement that all remaining charges had been dropped.

"We were waiting for it from the very beginning. And the moment he did it, I completely broke down. I don't even remember who I ended up hugging. Everyone was jumping up and down and we knew then that was when we got our lives back," Reade Seligmann said to Stahl.

"I feel, you know, weight off my shoulders, feel a lot better. Everything, you know, it still hasn't sunk in completely but I think I just try to remind myself that it's over," Collin Finnerty says.

---

The late Ed Bradley first talked to the students in October 2006; in January 2007, Stahl also interviewed their parents.

---

For Seligman, Finnerty and Evans it was, to say the least, a relief, after 395 days of hell.

"The possibility of going to jail for 30 years was very real. That was very real for us," Seligmann tells Stahl.

"And you thought about it … have you seen yourself in a prison cell for 30 years?" Stahl asks.

"You know, I pictured how they'd react when they said guilty, you know, having jurors say guilty. And to know everything was taken away from me for nothing," Seligmann says. "And one of my biggest fears was that it would go to trial and that it would be a hung jury and I would be stuck in limbo for the rest of my life."

"It's almost impossible to put your head in a place where you know you didn't do something and you're accused and you can't get up from under it," Stahl remarks.

"You don't want to be there," Evans says, laughing.

And Evans says the whole experience was surreal. "I don't believe my life over the last year is actually mine. I mean it, you kind of see yourself on TV. You see all of these people talking about it. But when you know you haven't done anything it's so difficult to grasp with the fact. I mean, I'd be with some of my friends at a restaurant and all of a sudden one of them would be like, 'You're out on bail.' And I'd be like, and it hit me. And I'd be like, 'Oh my God,'" he says.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• Next Page »

[faithnomoor]

part one with part two to follow:

He's not a 21 year old boy from Duke but we love him. He's a 51 year old man that has held the same job for 30 years: He's a 32 year old man who is the first in his family that completed college and landed a law job with the state: He's a 25 year old man that married 3 years ago and has a 2 year old son: He's a 14 year old boy who just had his first sexual experience with a 15 year old girl behind the dugout in the local park: He's a 17 year old that had *** with his 35 year old teacher: they are all one in the same:

FALSELY EXCUSED OF RAPE AND VIOLENCE.

I want to know, how many of you have been put into the position to prove our innocence? Not only in rape cases but in other domestic violence cases.

When you don't have millions to fight it, when you can't afford to go months without an income, when you live(d) in the house that your accuser also lives in, when you've been court ordered to vacate the premises,your bank accounts are frozen, your suspended from your job, your forbid from contact with your children, what do you do?

You loose your job, you loose your home, you loose your life savings, you loose your families life savings, you loose your life.

When this drags on for months and the DA refuses trial, he refuses evidence, when after a few months they offer you a plea, what do you do?
You take the plea to end this all only to find out everything you thought you temporarily lost is gone for ever.
You're innocent - but plead guilty....

[faithnomoor]

part one with part two to follow:

He's not a 21 year old boy from Duke but we love him. He's a 51 year old man that has held the same job for 30 years: He's a 32 year old man who is the first in his family that completed college and landed a law job with the state: He's a 25 year old man that married 3 years ago and has a 2 year old son: He's a 14 year old boy who just had his first sexual experience with a 15 year old girl behind the dugout in the local park: He's a 17 year old that had *** with his 35 year old teacher: they are all one in the same:

FALSELY EXCUSED OF RAPE AND VIOLENCE.

I want to know, how many of you have been put into the position to prove our innocence? Not only in rape cases but in other domestic violence cases.

When you don't have millions to fight it, when you can't afford to go months without an income, when you live(d) in the house that your accuser also lives in, when you've been court ordered to vacate the premises,your bank accounts are frozen, your suspended from your job, your forbid from contact with your children, what do you do?

You loose your job, you loose your home, you loose your life savings, you loose your families life savings, you loose your life.

When this drags on for months and the DA refuses trial, he refuses evidence, when after a few months they offer you a plea, what do you do?
You take the plea to end this all only to find out everything you thought you temporarily lost is gone for ever.
You're innocent - but plead guilty....

[nbookerii-2009]

I am delighted the innocent have been exonerated. Fortunately, they had the financial resources to prevail. When they commented about facing the reality of going to prison for a crime they did not commit, they expressed a real fear and frustration. Think of the many innocent poor who are languishing in prison, now. I recall seeing where an African American has just been released recently for a rape charge he did not commit, after serving over years in prison. How many cases have we seen that have been recently overturned due to DNA and over zealous prosecutors. I do not want to imagine how many we were innocent have been executed in Texas, after it was revealed that the DA's office in one of the Texas counties had a manual on how to keep African Americans off of the juries. For the first time in its history, this county has an African American DA, who is reviewing many of the cases. Too often and unfortunate, justice is not the motivating force for many prosecutions; it is to have a high hit ratio of guilty verdicts compared to acquittals.

[questionnews]

Agmin=Fanatic

Someone who can't change his mind & won't change the subject.

[questionnews]

Agmin

[katstew]

To me the saddest part of this case is that- thanks to the DA it has just gotten harder to get rape cases to trial. As if it wasn't hard enough already to get DA's to prosecute rape.

[olemiss85]

"Now they are trying to claim that because a drugged woman cannot recall her experiences, the johns, and their faces with precision, and her side kick has been either paid off or intimidated into capitulation, then there is no case!" posted Agmin

That is the exact defintion of no case you complete and utter idiot. If you can't prove anything,there is no case. Please promise me you will come back after the civil suits show no change in the evidence or outcome and take your medicine.

[olemiss85]

How do you think that women who are drugged and "date raped" come to know they were drugged?
You think they will recall the male face(s) and s-exual objects and s-exual strokes with precision?Agmin

You moron. if you accept your assinine premise that she was drugged (which she wasn't and you don't have one shred of proof she was. the rape exam would have turned it up if she had been because the doctor and nurse would have detected her "strange demeanor") you just said in your own words "...you think they will recall the male face (s)..." Any identification she makes as to the boys is inherently unreliable. By your argument, she can't recall faces with any precision. if she can't identify her assailants how can their guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt? These boys are guilty because they were there? There were 46 men on the team and 45 were white and at the party. If by your own admission, she can't identify the boys who drugged her, then it's okay to just pick any three and convict them because they happened to be at the party? One of them was 12 miles when she said she was raped in her first statement. He was standing in front of an ATm machine 12 mils away. If he's there, he can't be raping her at the party. I don't care how stupid you are, even you have to admit that he can't be in two places at one time. So if she is wrong about him (and you said we should go with her first statement as your proof)why can't she be wrong about the other two?

[cbse3]

As far as New Orleans, I watched for days after Katrina while thousands Posted by redhoffer at 06:06 PM : Apr 16, 2007
You don't even begin to have a clue of what did and what still is , or should I say isn't going on. Both bk & wh were and still are being affected by Katrina. All levels of Parish, State, Federal have and still are failing New Orleans(NOLA).Top 3 city for murder rate, most of which is black on black. Nola was a predominately black city, with a majority black city consul,police dept, judicial system and crime stats. Most crimes were/are black on black and black on white and are usually in or near concentrations of black neighborhoods. Only now are other cities like Houston, Dallas, Beaumont and others are comming to grips with the caliper Nola's finest residents of color. For several generations, Nola has barely endured their crime laced prasidic behavior that has sucked the citys' welfare and social service system dry while over burdening a malfunctioning criminal justice system. This is enough to give any city a black eye or two. Go ahead, check around an see how crime stats , in the the previously mentioned cities are double digit directly attributable to ex-Nola-ites. So with a black DA Jordan and his dis horrorable Mayor chocolate Milk Dud Nagin......da people in charge with no coheasive viably accepted plan to rebuild paradise. no raceism intended, just the facts. unfortunately, there isn't enough time and space to finish ....the rest of the story...page 2

[agnim]

"So if she was drugged, and she gives us a story, by your own definition set out above, precise recognition of particular facts can't be expected to be reliable. So anything precise this drugged womans says therefore can't be reliable.
Posted by olemiss85 at 09:08 PM : Apr 16, 2007"

How do you think that women who are drugged and "date raped" come to know they were drugged?
You think they will recall the male face(s) and s-exual objects and s-exual strokes with precision?

Everyone at the outset had valid reasons to believe that chit happened with those preppy PUNKS in that ENVIRONMENT OF DRUG, DRUNKENNESS, DISORDERLY CONDUCT, S-EX/STRIPPING.

Now they are trying to claim that because a drugged woman cannot recall her experiences, the johns, and their faces with precision, and her side kick has been either paid off or intimidated into capitulation, then there is no case!

Well, I'm daring those preppy PUNKS to sue!

In this way, we will be right back to square one when there was REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF GUILT due to the circumstances of debauchery on that faithful day, and the HISTORY OF BEASTLY BEHAVIOR by those preppy PUNKS!

When the females in your family get drugged and "date raped", let's hope you will also be taking up for their 'fine and innocent' rapists too! LOL