Duke lacrosse players cleared in sex assault case

By Gene Cherry

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Three student athletes accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a black stripper at a Duke University lacrosse team party were cleared of all remaining criminal charges on Wednesday, authorities said.

Prosecutors had earlier dropped rape charges against the men, all of whom are white, after their accuser told investigators she was uncertain about crucial details of the alleged assault at an off-campus house in Durham, North Carolina, in March 2006.

Closing the book on the case, which drew national attention, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said he was dropping outstanding charges of kidnapping and sexual assault against the men due to insufficient evidence.

"We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that night," Cooper told a news conference in Raleigh, the state capital.

Some U.S. media had portrayed the case as a symbol of racial and class tensions in the U.S. South and the town where Duke, a top-ranked private university founded in 1838, is located.

But it unraveled quickly after laboratory tests found no trace of the defendants' DNA on the accuser and amid charges the original prosecutor, Durham County District Attorney Michael Nifong, had played up the case because he was seeking re-election.

The North Carolina State Bar filed an ethics complaint against Nifong in December for what it said were misleading and improper public statements in the lacrosse case.

The three players, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, held a news conference later in the day at which they expressed relief the case had been dropped.

"I'm excited to get on with my life. It's been a long year," Evans said. "I hope these allegations don't come to define me."

Seligmann said the players' ordeal showed American society had lost sight of one of the nation's most fundamental legal principles, the presumption of innocence, and had exposed flaws in the U.S. justice system.

"If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't image what they would do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves," he said.

Cooper, who took over the case when Nifong was accused of ethics violations, said the case resulted from a "tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations."

"Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges," he said.

Asked if charges would be brought against Nifong, Cooper said: "All options are certainly on the table."