That Night at Duke

Nifong got a boost from The New York Times in August. On the front page of the Friday paper, a long article featured a confidential report—a Durham policeman's summary of his interview with the accuser. Though he didn't take notes during the interview, he said she'd described someone with Finnerty's distinctive tall, thin looks as her assailant. The newspaper treated the report unskeptically, even though notes taken during the interview by the other officer present indicate that none of her descriptions fit the player. "We were so blown away," says Mary Ellen Finnerty, Collin's mother. "We were just so furious."

Finnerty was living at home on New York's Long Island, taking a course at Hofstra University and doing some charity work. But he was often alone in his room, playing pop music and classic rock on his plugged-in acoustic guitar. His brother and sisters began to worry. A shy teenager, he had come out of his shell at Duke, but now he appeared to be retreating back into it. At his home in New Jersey, Seligmann did a little lacrosse coaching, but he missed school and his friends. "Going to the mall with your parents on a Friday night is, like, not the coolest thing you could possibly do," says Seligmann.

In December, he got a lift while sitting in court. The defense team dismantled a DNA expert on cross-examination. When one of the lawyers got the expert to admit that he had agreed with Nifong to withhold potentially exculpatory evidence (the DNA of several men, none of them Duke lacrosse players, found on the accuser), the courtroom burst into applause. For a moment, Seligmann recalls, he forgot that he was a defendant; he wanted to become a lawyer.

Under growing criticism from the legal community, Nifong by this time had granted an audience to Seligmann's lawyer, Jim Cooney. When they met on Dec. 5, Nifong was feeling sorry for himself, says Cooney. Nifong complained that he'd done a lot of good in his career—but would now be remembered for his controversial role in the Duke rape case. Still, Cooney recalls, Nifong insisted that no one was going to intimidate him. If the plan was to intimidate the dancer, whom he referred to as the "victim," well, she didn't scare easily, either. Nifong "doesn't take issue with that account," says David Freedman, Nifong's lawyer.

At Christmastime, Seligmann was in London with his family, brushing his teeth in his hotel bathroom, when his brother got a message from his girlfriend via Facebook that the rape charges were being dropped. The news was exciting, but puzzling. Why hadn't Cooney called? Then he learned that Nifong was dropping the rape charge—but going ahead with charges of kidnapping and committing a sexual offense. "That was the most frustrating point in the case, because you're, like, 'This man will not let it go, no matter what we do'."

As the story roller-coastered along, week after week, Seligmann and his parents became dependent on the reassuring monotone of Cooney. "He'd tell us: The case. Is going. To. Be. Dropped," says Seligmann. Facing ethics charges, Nifong had recused himself in late December, but Seligmann was too suspicious to believe that a new set of prosecutors would give them a fair shake.