Lingering Lessons From Duke

The lives of three privileged young white men were almost destroyed by false testimony, a ruthless prosecutor and a rabid public fueled by the media.

Emphasis on almost .

For Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, justice prevailed. The former Duke lacrosse players were cleared of rape charges. Their accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum, was outed as a liar. And the public outcry on their behalf led to North Carolina's disbarring District Attorney Mike Nifong.

These young men are a year older but decades wiser.

They now know that at least 203 other wrongly accused men never had their swing at justice because they had no family members armed with the means to wage the costly fight for their freedom.

They know that prosecutors are seldom punished for misconduct.

They know this means something is very wrong with our system of justice.

And so, less than two weeks after their ordeal ended, the three young men who could have closed the book on this horrific chapter in their lives chose instead to meet some of the men whose stories mirror theirs in ways they could never have imagined a year ago.

There was scant media coverage of this encounter because the Duke players insisted they weren't the point. I only found out after calling Eric Ferrero at The Innocence Project, which works to free the wrongly incarcerated through post-conviction DNA testing.

"You know, they came to our benefit," he said. "We invited them, and we knew they bought tickets, but we didn't know if they would attend."

The first-ever fundraiser was in New York on April 24. Before the event, Ferrero stood next to the project's co-founder, lawyer Barry Scheck, who was holding a news conference outside. That's when Ferrero spotted the lacrosse players.

They started to walk toward the entrance, then darted out of view when they saw the cameras. Ferrero quietly escorted them to their table.

"The media went a little nuts when the three of them walked in, but they didn't want to talk to reporters," said Ferrero.

"We had about 20 exonerees at the dinner, and they (the former Duke students) kept saying the focus should be on those men, and what they went through. They kept mentioning how they would have gone to prison if they hadn't had the money to fight."

So far, The Innocence Project has helped to free 203 innocent men. Fifteen of them spent time on death row. Most were indigent upon their release.

In the first 74 cases alone, 33 involved prosecutorial misconduct, Ferrero said. Current numbers aren't available because the Project is trying to figure out how to codify the misconduct to avoid legal challenges.

"The problem is, even when DNA proves their innocence, we're still in a position not to antagonize district attorneys because they can decide to retry the case," he said. "Or they can drag their feet for a year or more, delaying release."

As for public outcry, it tends to be muted.

"Usually, there's an initial outpouring of support for the victims," Ferrero said. "People send clothes and canned goods, offer jobs and computer training. The public feels bad, but they don't tend to go after the prosecutors because they want to believe these are aberrations. They don't want to believe there could be more of these."

Journalists drop the ball, too, Ferrero said. "They don't challenge the prosecutors because they don't want to alienate the sources on their beat." Any reporter more worried about contacts than coverage is a reporter in need of a new beat.

Currently, The Innocence Project has 160 active cases. Roughly 200 new requests for help come in every month. The future is grim for nearly all of them, including those who are innocent.

I never joined the bandwagon against the lacrosse players, and I part company with those deifying them now. They hired strippers to dance at their party, which hardly qualifies them for sainthood.

But they didn't deserve what happened to them, and they are willing to acknowledge what most of us don't even want to think about:

Yes, money talks.

And when it comes to justice, money walks, too.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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