Three Duke University men’s lacrosse team players — Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans — were accused of rape in 2006. The case’s “hot-button issues” included race and class as the players were white and the accuser, Crystal Mangum, was an African-American college student who was working as a part-time stripper. The DNA collected from the lacrosse players did not match the DNA found on Mangum. In 2007, all of the charges were dropped, but much damage had been done.
Seligmann later graduated from Brown University in 2010 and from Emory University School of Law in 2013. He is an associate at the New Jersey law firm of Connell Foley and is an active supporter of the Innocence Project. Finnerty graduated from Loyola College in Maryland in 2010 and works as an equity salestrader at Deutsche Bank in New York. Evans (already a Duke grad before being charged with rape), received his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 and works for Apax, a venture capital firm in Manhattan. The ESPN program 30 for 30 will air a two-hour special titled “Fantastic Lies” which will look at the case ten years after. It will air on March 13 at 9pm on ESPN.
