An Unbelievable Day

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

It was an extraordinary event in American legal history. Duke lacrosse teammates Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty knew that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper was going to drop the sensational sexual assault case against them. But how would Cooper explain it? Would he just say that the charges were not provable beyond a reasonable doubt-which some saw as the safest way out for the attorney general politically-and leave their reputations in limbo? Or would he say the word

It was an extraordinary event in American legal history. 

Duke lacrosse teammates Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty knew that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper was going to drop the sensational sexual assault case against them. But how would Cooper explain it? Would he just say that the charges were not provable beyond a reasonable doubt-which some saw as the safest way out for the attorney general politically-and leave their reputations in limbo? Or would he say the word they were waiting for?

Six paragraphs into his statement, Cooper ended their agony: "We believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges." Innocent. Watching on TV, the defendants and their parents, teammates and friends burst into cheers.

Cooper did not stop there. "We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night," he said. "The eyewitness identification procedu…

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