The Duke Lacrosse Case Exposed the Rot in Higher Education, the Media, and the Justice System

The Duke Lacrosse case exposed the rot in higher education,

the media, and the justice system.

By William L. Anderson, 20 years ago this month,

the infamous Duke Lacrosse case exploded

on the Duke University campus with three members

of the university's lacrosse team falsely accused

of raping and assaulting a black stripper.

It took more than a year to exonerate those young men

but only after the false charges had ruined lives

and exposed elite higher education in the US.

As one who wrote nearly 100 articles on this case

and who was interviewed on talk shows

along with working with some of the attorneys

and families involved in the case,

I saw it from the inside.

I reported on prosecutors who lied

and knowingly filed false charges

and subborn perjury to cover their lives.

Police who lied at every turn of what turned out

to be a sham investigation and members

of the Duke University faculty and administration

who took part in framing innocent people

for crime that did not happen.

And hovering over all of the wreckage

was a combination of national and local media

whose reporters with some heroic exceptions

followed a false narrative until it drove them right over cliff.

There is a standard narrative that the media

and others want us to imagine.

Three young men were falsely accused of terrible crimes

but after diligent investigations by the authorities

and good faith efforts by others,

the lacrosse players were exonerated

while the male factors were punished.

In the end, the system worked.

That narrative is a lie and over these next few weeks.

I will deal with the different aspects of the case

from the police and prosecution to the Duke faculty

and administration and to the media.

There are numerous villains in the story

and very few good guys.

Furthermore, other than a mild punishment given

to the lead prosecutor who committed numerous felonies

during his reign of terror,

none of the others who participated in pushing this false case

faced any sanctions at all

and many of the worst actors found themselves

gaining even more power and wealth after the saga ended.

Far from being a situation in which the justice system worked,

the Duke lacrosse case was the proverbial canary

in the coal mine, a warning as to just how badly

the system would veer off course

when one of its members decided to lie with impunity.

And it wasn't just the justice system

that showed its utter corruption.

Duke's foray into what now is called diversity,

equity and inclusion, DEI,

would be a driving force in forcing attorneys

for the players to do something unprecedented

in US educational and justice history.

Attorneys filing a request for a change of venue

because the university's faculty and administration

had behaved like a lynch mob.

And even after the lies in the case were exposed,

nothing changed.

Just seven years after the players were declared innocent

Rolling Stone magazine,

which had already disgraced itself

in its coverage of the lacrosse case,

published a story alleging rape and assault

at the University of Virginia called a rape on campus,

a story that was a complete fabrication

and ultimately cost the magazine millions of dollars

in settlements against people who were liable

and even was condemned by the left wing

Columbia Journalism Review.

Of course, the national media had first accepted

the Rolling Stone piece as gospel truth,

just as it swallowed whole the Duke lacrosse account.

In both stories,

the facts quickly established that both situations

were built on lies,

but the narratives that mainstream journalists

follow rarely bow to the facts

and the so-called newspaper of record,

The New York Times,

was probably the worst offender in the Duke case

with the possible exception of the local Durham Harold Sun.

The blogosphere and other internet outlets

were a different story

while mainstream journalists

with the exception of the late Ed Bradley of CBS News 60 Minutes

were siding with the prosecution and the Duke faculty,

a number of bloggers and writers

led by Casey Johnson,

a Harvard educated history professor at Brooklyn College

whose blog Durham in Wonderland

took the case apart time and again,

exposing one lie after another.

If anything, the Duke lacrosse case demonstrated

the power of the internet

and bloggers who were more than able to match wits

with the most powerful journalists in the world

and shoot down their false claims.

Today's account will outline the fundamentals of the case,

after all, it happened 20 years ago

and most people have either forgotten it

or never heard of it in the first place.

But this story is worth remembering for no other reason

then it showed how dishonest police and prosecutors

can frame innocent people in broad daylight

and it proved that the worst of the academic world

was now run the elite universities

and there was no stopping the rocked.

As written earlier, it was higher education's canary

in the coal mine and the canary is still dying

if not already dead.

It began with the party.

On Monday, March 13th, 2006, Duke University

was on spring break,

but the highly ranked lacrosse team,

a favorite in the upcoming NCAA championships,

was on campus practicing and preparing for its next game.

Every year at this time,

the team would have a party at the on campus house

on Buchanan Street in Durham

and for the party that night,

the captains had called a local escort agency

to hire strippers for the evening.

The media insists on calling them exotic dancers.

The agency sent two black women,

one being Crystal Gail Mangum and the other Kim Roberts

and both women were prostitutes.

They were to be paid $400 each to put on a show.

But when it became obvious to them

that none of the players were going to seek

sexual favors with them,

the two quickly locked themselves in the tiny bathroom

in the house and refused to come out.

After about 30 minutes,

they walked out and left the building,

calling for a ride,

because they had spent so little time actually stripping.

The players claimed they had been cheated

and they and the two women argued back and forth

with some racially charged language spoken by both sides.

Roberts called the police,

but when police showed up later,

everyone was gone.

That should have been the end of things,

a tawdry event that should have done no one proud,

but it was not to be.

Later that night, Mangum refused to leave Roberts's car

so Roberts called the police and had Mangum removed.

The officer took her to Durham Access,

a place where she could be examined for mental disorders.

A nurse against protocol asked Mangum

if she had been raped and given that a yes

would mean she would not be committed

to a mental health facility.

Mangum answered in the affirmative.

According to federal law,

she then had to be taken to a medical facility

to be examined,

so she was driven to Duke University Medical Center.

Per an account, I wrote for an academic journal,

this followed.

After arriving at DUMC,

Mangum recanted her accusations

to police sergeant John Shelton and then reversed herself.

She told a number of conflicting stories

and Shelton loudly announced to the others at DUMC

that he did not believe her.

According to the lawsuit filed by Robert Extran,

the case almost ended there,

but was picked up by Mark Gottlieb,

a Durham police officer who allegedly had an animus

for Duke students.

Gottlieb would breathe new life into the case.

The rape exam of Mangum by an ER doctor

did not find signs of rape or a beating,

but a feminist nurse who signed the examination paper,

even though she had not done the exam herself,

wrote she saw evidence of rape and blunt force trauma.

And from there, the case got legs

and ended up in the hands of Michael Niefung,

the acting Durham County District Attorney,

who was in a contested primary for election to that office.

Police came to the Buchanan Streethouse on March 16th,

accusing the captains of rape,

but not making any arrests.

Nine days later, the news and observer,

a McClatchy-owned newspaper in Raleigh,

and had a front-page story authored by Simeha Kanna

and Anne Blythe entitled,

Dancer recalls details of ordeal,

which featured an interview with Mangum and her father

who claimed she was beaten and raped

in the Buchanan House bathroom

by three members of the lacrosse team.

From there, everything exploded.

Within six weeks, police arrested,

Reed Seligman, Colin Finnerty, and David Evans,

accusing each of them of rape, kidnapping,

and assault against Mangum.

In April, 2007,

then North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper,

after a long investigation,

declared all three innocent of all the charges.

Two months after that,

the North Carolina State Bar despired Nephong.

The first time a state prosecutor

had faced such consequences.

And later that summer,

a North Carolina judge sentenced Nephong

to spend a day in jail on contempt charges

for lying to the court.

Conclusion.

Over the next three weeks, I will go into detail

of the legal case,

the role of the Duke administration,

and faculty in promoting a false story.

And finally, the role of the mainstream news media,

in keeping a number of lies alive

in the mind of the public.

Three important institutions of our society

failed so miserably as to make it difficult

to salvage anything good from them.

But the Duke case also showed the power of the internet,

in which ordinary citizens who were not employed

by the police, courts, or the media,

could use the web to push information to the public

that ordinarily would not have been able to see at all

before the internet existed.

While some were able to use the internet

to push false accusations and theories of guilt,

in the end, the truth did prevail,

despite the best efforts of the police, prosecutors,

Duke faculty, and the New York Times.

The institutions these people represented

might be hopelessly corrupted.

But for now, at least some people can fight back.

For more content like this, visit mesas.org.