DUKE LACROSSE: 43 CERTIFIED NOT GUILTY
by Alex Charns (copyright 2006 by Charns & Charns)
Imagine this front-page headline: "DA Clears 43 Duke lacrosse players of gang rape cover-up". Keep imagining.
A false allegation lasts forever. Exoneration is fleeting and often hidden from view. The falsehood gets front-page news and vivid photos splashed on the television news. Innocence comes inside the newspaper, after the cut line on page 14A, and not at all on TV.
So it was last week with the Duke University lacrosse-stripper-student mom-alleged gang rape scandal in this former tobacco town, a city where I practice law, raise my children, and where my kids and I play one of those so-called "helmet sports".
Last week, my client and 42 other Duke lacrosse players were cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Durham County District Attorney. It was a backhanded apology for earlier accusations of cover-up and stonewalling that he had made against them.
DA Mike Nifong wrote in a press release: "At the outset of this investigation, I said that it was just as important to remove the cloud of suspicion from the members of the Duke University lacrosse team who were not involved in this assault as it was to identify the actual perpetrators."
"For that reason, I believe it is important to state publicly today that none of the evidence that we have developed implicates any member of that team other than those three against whom indictments have been returned."
As welcome as this press release was, it can't overcome the earlier, repeated, nationally publicized statements accusing the players of "covering up for a bunch of hooligans."
And what of the Durham Police crime posters pasted around town accusing the guys of covering up a known, not alleged, gang rape and sodomy? The same Durham Police Department who wiretapped its own employees in years past due to a fictitious "call-girl ring" and spent close to a million dollars litigating instead of apologizing has offered only silence.
Neither have the sports pundits apologized after blaming the "helmet sport" gang mentality for the "code of silence" and maligning all who play lacrosse, hockey and football.
The three young men charged will have their day in court, and will clear their names in a public and highly publicized trial. Their 43 teammates, falsely accused without being formally charged with anything, received a one-sentence exoneration buried inside the newspaper.
-Alex Charns, a partner in Charns & Charns, is author of "How Hockey Saved the World". An edited version of this op-ed essay appeared in the Raleigh, NC News & Observer.
