Nifong apologizes and tries to explain

The Durham DA says he hopes the case's dismissal helps serve as a remedy and that he should get credit for inviting a review

DURHAM -- District Attorney Mike Nifong on Thursday apologized to three wrongly accused former Duke University lacrosse players, but said also that he had lacked access to important evidence.

Nifong said state Attorney General Roy Cooper was able to review the case and dismiss it only because he asked Cooper to.

He issued his statement a day after Cooper called him a "rogue prosecutor" and a day before a hearing at the State Bar, which has accused Nifong of ethics violations that threaten his law license. Nifong's lawyers are seeking to have one of the most serious charges against him dismissed.

Nifong's statement seemed unlikely to change the minds of legal experts, lawyers and residents who said Thursday that the prosecutor should resign. But it was the first time the defiant district attorney has publicly abandoned his assertions that the lacrosse players were guilty.

Nifong said his prosecution was based on the information available to him. His statement does not address allegations from the lacrosse players' lawyers that he ignored and withheld evidence to support the conflicting and shifting stories of the accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum.

"To the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three students that were wrongly accused," Nifong said. "It is my sincere desire that the actions of Attorney General Cooper will serve to remedy any remaining injury that has resulted from these cases."

Dave Evans, 24, of Bethesda, Md.; Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y.; and Reade Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J.; were in Raleigh on Wednesday to hear the attorney general tell the world that they were victims of a prosecutor who favored bravado over justice.

Finnerty told Lesley Stahl for an episode of "60 Minutes" to be aired Sunday that Nifong's statement didn't make up for the year he and his former teammates spent as criminal defendants.

"It may be an apology, but it doesn't make me feel any better ... for what I've gone through," according to a CBS News release. "It was his actions more than anybody's that caused the harm. I don't think anyone is going to feel better after that apology."

Cooper told Stahl that Nifong's conduct was "offensive" to more careful prosecutors. "All of them were offended by a prosecutor who didn't take the time to make sure that he had all of the facts straight before leveling charges," he said.

Nifong's statement contains hints of how he might justify some of his actions in the lacrosse case. Nifong said state prosecutors and investigators had access to information that he did not.

"This is not an apology," said Joseph B. Cheshire V, an attorney for Evans. "This is another attempt by Mr. Nifong at revisionist history, the same thing he has done with the facts throughout this entire case. ... He had access to all the evidence in this case except that which he chose to ignore because it did not comport with his version of what he wanted the case to be."

One of Nifong's attorneys, David Freedman of Winston-Salem, defended the statement.

"I don't know what could be more direct to say, 'I apologize to these three students,' " Freedman said. "There are people out there, who regardless of what Mike Nifong can say, they're not going to accept it."

Self-serving?

Much of Nifong's statement is devoted to defending himself. He wrote that he agreed with the decision to dismiss the charges, especially because the special prosecutors had access to additional information. But Nifong also said the attorney general "had the opportunity to review this investigation and to make this decision because I requested that he do so."