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By Laurence Viele Davidson and Thom Weidlich
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Three former Duke University lacrosse players, falsely accused of rape in a racially charged case that ultimately cost a district attorney his law license, sued the former prosecutor and the city of Durham, North Carolina.
The players today sued ex-District Attorney Mike Nifong, the city, police officers and lab personnel in federal court in Durham, asking for unspecified damages. State law allows punitive damages of three times actual damages, law professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond said.
``Defendants knew that these charges were completely and utterly unsupported by probable cause, and a total fabrication,'' the players said in their complaint, calling the case ``one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial and scientific misconduct in modern American history.''
Nifong was removed from the practice of law this year for unethical conduct in the 2006 investigation. He served a night in jail for lying to a judge about the evidence.
The prosecution of players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann began with a stripper's accusation that she was attacked after she danced at a team party. The authorities mishandled the investigation and withheld evidence that supported the athletes' denials, the athletes said in their complaint.
The players used a law that lets people sue public officials in federal court for violating their constitutional rights.
Players' Lawyers
They are represented by lawyers including Brendan Sullivan of Washington's Williams & Connolly, New York's Richard Emery and Barry Scheck, a cofounder of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to exonerate people wrongly convicted.
Kim Grantham, Durham senior assistant attorney, said the city will ``vigorously defend'' the case. The city self-insures for as much as $500,000 and has coverage beyond that, she said. Nifong couldn't be reached for comment.
Emery said the lawsuit is intended to reform the system of prosecution in Durham, as well as win money damages for the men.
``The city can save itself a lot of money if they want to agree to reforms,'' said Emery, of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady. He said there is no immunity for Nifong or police officers if they knew they were violating constitutional rights.
The athletes claim the officials violated their rights under the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause to issue warrants, and the 14th, which guarantees equal protection of law.
The district attorney was running to stay in office in March 2006 when the dancer, a 27-year-old black woman named Crystal Mangum, reported she was raped by white team members at a party in a rented house where she went to perform.
Photo Lineups
The players were arrested and indicted on charges that could have sent them to prison for as long as 20 years. The arrests were based partly on photo lineups criticized by defense lawyers because they contained only pictures of team members.
In March 2006, the district attorney conducted almost 100 media interviews in which he said he had ``no doubt'' that three members of the team had engaged in a vicious, racially motivated rape, according to the complaint.
``This case, where you have the act of rape -- essentially a gang rape -- is bad enough in and of itself, but when it's made with racial epithets against the victim, I mean, it's just absolutely unconscionable,'' Nifong told ABC News, according to the complaint.
The players' lawyers said the district attorney was using the woman's false allegations to win the election.
``With a community and a nation thus inflamed and clamoring for indictments of Duke lacrosse players, but with no evidence that any players had actually committed a crime, defendants set about to fabricate such evidence,'' they said in the complaint.
DNI Evidence
Defense attorneys said during the investigation that DNA evidence proved the three couldn't have raped the woman. They accused Nifong of hiding evidence that might clear their clients.
The lawyers' claim was upheld in a Dec. 15, 2006, court hearing, when Brian Meehan, who ran the DNA lab Nifong used, admitted that he and the prosecutor agreed to withhold evidence that probably would show that none of the team members raped the woman. Meehan is a defendant in the suit.
Nifong dropped the rape charges, leaving accusations of first-degree sex offense and first-degree kidnapping.
State Attorney General Roy Cooper took over the case in January and dropped the charges in April. The innocent players were caught in a ``tragic rush to accuse,'' and no crime occurred, Cooper said.
``It was clear that there was no credible evidence that these crimes occurred,'' his office said in a report.
Changing Story
Mangum ``changed her story on so many important issues as to give the impression that she was improvising as the interviews progressed, even when she was faced with irrefutable evidence that what she was saying was not credible,'' according to the report.
Finnerty and Seligmann left the house shortly after the dancing, according to Cooper's report. Evans lived there.
After the case unraveled, Nifong, 56, was investigated by a North Carolina State Bar panel. He broke rules of professional conduct and should lose his law license, the panel concluded.
Nifong resigned. The players reached an agreement not to sue the university. The president of Duke, Richard Brodhead, apologized for what he called the university's ``failure to reach out'' after the students were accused.
Mike Pressler, the team's coach, resigned in August 2006 and now coaches at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Players Move On
None of the three players is still at Duke. Evans, the former team captain, graduated the day before the arrests and is a Morgan Stanley analyst.
Finnerty transferred to Loyola of Maryland, and Seligmann went to Brown. Both are playing lacrosse.
Lin Wood, the Atlanta lawyer who represented Richard Jewell, falsely accused in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, called the suit ``a multimillion-dollar case'' for each player.
``The damage they have suffered is permanent,'' Wood said. ``This may very well be the defining event in their lives.''
On CBS's 60 Minutes earlier this year, Seligmann's mother, Kathy Seligmann, praised Cooper for ending the case.
``He's giving these boys back their reputation and their dignity,'' she said.
Her words recalled the reaction of Raymond Donovan, a former U.S. Labor secretary, when he was acquitted of fraud and theft connected with a construction business after he left the Reagan administration.
``Which office do I go to get my reputation back?'' Donovan said.
The case is Evans v. Durham, 07-00739, U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina (Durham).
