CBS Investigation of Duke Lacrosse Rape Case Raises Questions

By Linda Orlando

Three members of the Duke University lacrosse team rape who are facing charges of rape appeared on CBS’s "60 Minutes" Sunday night, each questioned individually by Ed Bradley. The interview was the first for Reade Seligmann, 20, and Colin Finnerty, also 20, since their indictment in April on charges of rape, kidnapping, and sexual offense. In May the grand jury indicted David Evans, 23, and he adamantly proclaimed his innocence to reporters outside the Durham County jail after posting bond.

Bradley opened the show by saying that CBS had spent six months poring over documents related to the case, talking to people connected to the investigation, and unearthing as much information as they could about the case before interviewing the three players. Their investigation, Bradley said, turned up even more unanswered questions and perplexities than the ones people in the Durham area have been wrestling with since the charges were first filed months ago.

The woman who accused the players is a student at North Carolina Central University, and she was hired along with another woman to perform as a stripper at an off-campus party on March 13. The woman has not been named in the press, but that night she went by the name of "Precious." The accounts of the events that took place that night vary slightly from one person to the next, but "Precious" claims that three of the players took her into a bathroom and raped her repeatedly for 30 minutes. Her claim has not been proven by any evidence so far, and the other stripper, Kim Roberts, who was at the house the entire time, will not even corroborate her story.

When "Precious" called police to report the alleged rape after leaving the party, an investigation was immediately launched, and all the players on the team cooperated from the very beginning. District Attorney Mike Nifong, however, seemed to latch on to the case rabidly, taking advantage of the national attention to make as many media appearances and give as many interviews as possible. He complained initially that the team was not cooperating, and he demanded DNA samples from all of the players to find a match for samples collected from the clothes and body of the woman who claimed she was raped.

The players were all eager to comply with requests for DNA samples. Nifong told reporters confidently that the DNA tests would reveal who committed rape and who was innocent. "We were told it would help to clear everything up," said Finnerty. "So we were happy to go." The players said they were certain that the testing would clear them of the charges for a crime they did not commit.

Yet when the tests—two separate tests—failed to find a definitive DNA match, suddenly Nifong told reporters that DNA evidence is rarely used in most sexual assault cases anyway, and the case would continue to move forward. Indictments against the three players soon followed.

"It’s so frustrating because that was an opportunity for us to exonerate ourselves," Seligmann told Bradley. "And we were told that if we cooperated, those that were innocent would be shown to be innocent. It didn’t play out that way."

Seligmann is the player whose indictment is particularly puzzling. Records from his cell phone show that he made nine calls from his phone over the course of several minutes after the strippers stopped their performance, with the last call to a taxi company at 12:14 a.m. The taxi arrived five minutes later and took him to an ATM machine, where a security camera recorded him withdrawing money. The taxi company’s records show that the taxi then took him home. So there is clear, incontrovertible evidence that Seligmann could not have even been at the house during the time that the accuser says she was raped for 30 minutes. Yet he was still indicted.

Evans, who says he regrets that he even hosted the party, told Bradley that he began cooperating with police from the minute they came to his house. "It was scary," he told Bradley. "I woke up from a nap to 10 police officers in my living room with a search warrant. I went through every part of it, told them where they could find things and that we'd fully cooperate and answer any questions they had." Evans said that his life has been torn apart by the allegations and his arrest. "In five months I’ve learned more than I did in 22 years about life," he said.

In the initial stages of the investigation, black civil rights leaders from all across the country were up in arms, trying the case in the media, saying that these white boys of privilege had taken advantage of a black stripper. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton showed up immediately, with Jackson declaring to reporters that "Precious" was the victim of a racially motivated hate crime, and his Rainbow Coalition was going to pay the remainder of her college tuition.

The city of Durham and the university have been torn apart intentionally, primarily by Nifong, who appears to be an overzealous district attorney who took advantage of the publicity to help him get re-elected. The accuser is black, the players are white and wealthy, and Durham has a large black population. Nifong was all too eager to talk to the media when he was still stumping for re-election, calling the players "hooligans" and saying he wouldn’t let their rich fathers pay lawyers to get them off. But he is curiously silent now that his re-election has secured his job and questions about his ethics are starting to gather.

The case is already being tried in the media and everyone has an opinion to offer, but the facts so far are incontrovertible. "Precious," the accuser in the case, has a criminal record, she had been drinking before the party, and she changed her story several times during questioning by the police. Roberts, the other stripper, will not corroborate the allegations of a rape and says the two were separated for only five to ten minutes, not thirty. Roberts said that "Precious" could barely stand up and take part in their act because she was so tipsy. It was only during the accuser’s third review of a photo lineup that she picked out the three players who were indicted—a lineup that legal experts say violated local, state, and federal guidelines because it contained only pictures of team players and no one else.

The accuser told police she had been beaten during the rape, yet photos taken of her during the party show that she already had cuts and bruises on her legs when she arrived at the house. During the weeks after the alleged attack, "Precious" returned to the hospital complaining of neck, back and knee pain she claimed was a result of being raped. Yet the "60 Minutes" staff was able to obtain a video of her dancing at a strip club two weeks after the alleged attack. The club manager told "60 Minutes" that she had consistently performed her routine normally.

The three players charged in the case immediately cooperated with investigators, did not object to searches and seizures of property, and readily submitted DNA samples when asked. David Evans asked his lawyer for a polygraph, which showed him to be innocent, but Nifong wouldn’t hear of it. Reade Seligmann has ironclad physical proof that he wasn’t even in the house at the time "Precious" said she was being raped for thirty minutes, but Nifong isn’t interested. In fact, during the entire investigation, not a single police official has interrogated Seligmann or questioned him about that night. Despite Nifong’s statements to the press that the DNA tests would reveal who was innocent, when the tests came back negative the DA suddenly changed his tune.

The case will not come to trial until sometime next spring, and in the meantime Finnerty, Seligmann, and Evans have no choice but to put their lives on hold. "I never expected anyone to get indicted, let alone myself," Finnerty said. "It's changed my life, no matter what happens from here on out. It's probably going to be something that defines me my whole life."