Duke lacrosse rape hoax

The accuser, Crystal Mangum, a student at North Carolina Central University[4][1] and part-time striptease dancer,[5] alleged that the rape occurred at the Durham residence of two of the team's captains, where she had worked on March 13, 2006.

The former lead prosecutor, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, ultimately resigned in disgrace, and was disbarred and briefly imprisoned for violating ethics standards.

[6][7][8] On April 11, 2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped all charges, declaring the three lacrosse players "innocent" and victims of a "tragic rush to accuse".

The Durham Police Department was strongly criticized for violating their own policies by: allowing Nifong to act as the de facto head of the investigation; using an unreliable suspect-only photo identification procedure with Mangum; pursuing the case despite vast discrepancies in notes taken by Investigator Benjamin Himan and Sergeant Mark Gottlieb; and distributing a poster that appeared to presume the suspects' guilt shortly after the allegations were made public.

The students also sought further unspecified damages and called for criminal justice reform laws in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the City of Durham and its police department.

[26] When that failed, Roberts drove Mangum to a nearby Kroger supermarket, went inside, and told a female security guard that a woman was refusing to leave her car.

[30][31][32][33][34] A couple of hours after the party ended, Ryan McFadyen, a member of the lacrosse team, sent an e-mail to other players saying that he planned to have some strippers over, kill them, and cut off their skin while wearing his Duke-issue spandex and ejaculating.

[38] On March 14, 2006, the day after the party, the Durham Police Department (DPD) began their investigation into the rape allegations by interviewing Mangum and searching 610 North Buchanan pursuant to a warrant.

The three team captains who lived at the house, including Evans, voluntarily gave statements and DNA samples to police and offered to take lie detector tests.

Many of these statements concerned the team members' alleged failure or refusal to provide information to law enforcement authorities, their invocation of their constitutional rights, or consisted of Nifong's own opinions that a crime had occurred, that it was racially motivated, and that one or more lacrosse players were guilty.

[41] On April 10, an attorney retained by one of the lacrosse players stated that time-stamped photographs existed which showed that Mangum was already injured when she arrived at the party, and was visibly impaired.

[43] Players' attorneys announced that DNA testing by the North Carolina state crime lab had failed to connect any members of the Duke men's lacrosse team to the alleged rape.

[59] On December 22, 2006, Nifong dropped the rape charges against all three lacrosse players after Mangum told an investigator a different version of events and said she was no longer sure about some aspects of her original story.

[63] On January 24, 2007, the North Carolina State Bar filed a second round of ethics charges against Nifong for a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion that was prejudicial to the administration of justice by his withheld DNA evidence to mislead the court.

[64] On March 23, 2007, Justin Paul Caulfield, a legal analyst for the sports magazine Inside Lacrosse, stated on Fox News that the charges against Evans, Finnerty, and Seligmann would soon be dropped.

He announced that Mangum would not be prosecuted, stating that investigators and attorneys who had interviewed her thought "she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling ... it's in the best interest of justice not to bring charges".

[53][76] In addition, because Evans lived in the house, defense attorneys contended that any DNA present might have come from the tissue paper, cotton swabs, or other hygiene-related trash that had been in the garbage can along with the fingernail.

[88] Over the course of the scandal, police reports, media investigations, and defense attorneys' motions and press conferences brought to light several key inconsistencies in Mangum's story.

Defense attorneys claimed this was essentially a "multiple-choice test in which there were no wrong answers",[104] while Duke law professor James Earl Coleman Jr. posits that "[t]he officer was telling the witness that all are suspects, and say, in effect, 'Pick three.'

On May 11, Moezeldin Elmostafa, an immigrant taxi driver who signed a sworn statement about Seligmann's whereabouts that defense lawyers say provides a solid alibi, was arrested on a 2½-year-old shoplifting charge.

[110][111] Police also arrested Mangum's former husband, Kenneth McNeil; her boyfriend, Matthew Murchison; and another friend, with the disposition of their own separate cases entirely in the hands of District Attorney Nifong.

[113] At the time the rape allegations were made in March 2006, Mike Nifong was in the midst of a difficult Democratic primary election campaign to keep his position as Durham County District Attorney, facing strong opposition.

[115] Mike Pressler, the coach of the lacrosse team, received threatening e-mails and hate calls, had castigating signs placed on his property, and was the frequent victim of vandalism in the aftermath of the accusations.

[117] Other Duke faculty members (sometimes referred to as the Group of 88[118] or the "Gang of 88") have been criticized for their "Social Disaster"[clarification needed] letter as well as individual comments and reactions which created a perception of prejudgment.

[122] Photographs of lacrosse team members had been posted prominently around Durham and on the Duke University campus with accompanying captions requesting that they come forward with information about the incident.

[citation needed] Partially obscured photos of Mangum at the party were broadcast by The Abrams Report on cable news channel MSNBC and by local television affiliate NBC 17 WNCN in North Carolina.

[citation needed] On April 11, 2007, several other mainstream media sources revealed or used Mangum's name and/or picture after the attorney general dropped all the charges and declared the players innocent.

During a December 11, 2024 podcast interview, Crystal Mangum admitted that she "made up a story that wasn't true" about the white lacrosse players who attended a party where she was hired to be a stripper,[142][143][144] and wanted to apologize for her actions publicly.

In October 2007, Pressler filed suit seeking to undo the settlement and hold a trial on his wrongful termination claim on the grounds that Duke spokesman John Burness had made disparaging comments about him.

[13] Lawyers cited three main areas of vulnerability for the city: Durham declined the settlement offer and on October 5, 2007, the three accused players filed a federal lawsuit alleging a broad conspiracy to frame them.