Duke Lacrosse Case--Finally an Ending of Sorts

Several news outlets are reporting that the North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper plans to announce the dropping of all charges in the Duke Case. (Here are La Shawn Barber's Comments and links).

Of course, these three men's lives, reputations and names are completely and perhaps irretrievably damaged and for them, this case may never end. The parents of the three players have also asked Duke University to reimburse them for the estimated $3 million in legal fees the families have incurred as a result of the malfeasance and incompetence of Mike Nifong, Duke University and the DA's office. From today's Baltimore Sun:

Duke lacrosse parents have asked if the university will pay legal fees, estimated as high as $3 million, that the families incurred after a woman alleged she was sexually assaulted by three players at a party last year.

The informal request, which raises some legal issues, was made at a campus meeting of several dozen parents, Duke president Richard Brodhead and Robert Steel, the chair of Duke's board of trustees. Duke neither granted the request nor dismissed it out of hand, according to family members present.

snip

Legal fees are estimated at $3 million by the Association for Truth and Fairness, a Delaware nonprofit corporation that says it has received about $830,000 so far in donations for the Duke families' legal defense.

"Every member of that team has had to retain counsel. It reaches deep," said Sherman Joyce, a Washington attorney who is on the organization's board of trustees. He is also a trustee at Bethesda's Landon School, which Evans and four current team members attended.

It could be tricky for Duke to foot the legal bills.

"There's a slight awkwardness," said Haagen, the law professor, because the university would be contributing money "for purposes that are not clearly directed to the mission of the university."

I am not so sure about this last statement. Making right by their student is one way the university fulfills its duties as an educational institution. Several members (the so called Group of 88) publicly and repeated ridiculed these players and all but called them guilty even as evidence started to mount about the veracity of the so-called victim's claims. Make no mistake, the University failed these young men and paying their legal fees, would in some small way, put the University back on the road to redemption.

The best blogger coverage around has been done by KC Johnson at Durham-In-Wonderland