The co-captains of the men's lacrosse team were sprawled on couches in their Trinity Park house at 8:30 p.m. last night, half-watching "Mr. Deeds" on TBS.
Just an hour earlier, senior Matt Danowski and Ed Douglas-a graduate student who earned a biomedical engineering degree from Pratt last May-were watching former teammates David Evans, Trinity '06, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann defend themselves against rape charges on the newsmagazine "60 Minutes."
The double-length segment, reported by 19-time-Emmy-winner Ed Bradley, was a broadside against the case and the professional ethics of Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong.
Duke law professor James Coleman told Bradley that Nifong had committed prosecutorial misconduct.
"This prosecutor has set out to develop whatever evidence he could to convict people he already decided were guilty," Coleman explained.
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Nifong declined repeated requests for comment, Bradley said.
Students crammed in residence halls and media rooms to watch the show. Some said the program appropriately vindicated the lacrosse team, while others complained it was "one-sided" and let the players off too easy.
The team's response
Danowski and Douglas said the broadcast ought to make the district attorney's prosecution politically untenable. Nifong is being challenged for his post in the upcoming November election.
"Everyone hopes that this will make some impact within Durham, specifically within the DA's case," Douglas said.
Eight other players, including three from the Class of 2010, joined the pair at their house to watch the program.
The veterans said the freshmen could never grasp what it was like to be a lacrosse player last spring-when talking heads skewered the team on cable TV and the New Black Panther Party menaced players-but noted the program was informative for the new players.
"There were times during the show when the three freshmen would look at us and say 'Could you clarify that? Could you explain that?'" Douglas said.
He added that he had spoken to Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann in recent days and said the three were happy to have their side of the story told.
"[The segment] was well done," Danowski said.
"I hope people watched it," he added.
On-campus reaction
"This woman has destroyed everything I've worked for in my life," Evans said in the interview, which was broadcast on a plasma screen in the Bryan Center. "She's brought shame on a great university."
The 15 students sitting in the BC media room sighed collectively. One undergraduate placed his head in his hands and miserably raked his fingers through his hair.
Although "60 Minutes" seemed to discredit the rape charges against the indicted players, the program did not steer away from the tawdry behavior at the team's party.
The ad hoc group of BC viewers watched uncomfortably as blurred images of exotic dancers flashed across the screen and Bradley graphically described witnesses' accounts of racial slurs and the gang rape charged by the alleged victim.
"They produced a very compelling, but one-sided, account of the issues," senior Malik Burnett, Black Student Alliance president, said of the show, which did not interview either the alleged victim or any representative of the district attorney's office. "It seemed very sensationalized."
Sophomore Mike Muniz said he appreciated the comprehensiveness of the "60 Minutes" report, and said Bradley's reputation lent credibility to the program's criticisms of Nifong, a Democrat.
"Ed Bradley has a very liberal reputation," Muniz said "To have him support the team like he did was very telling."
One Durham resident watching in the BC said the truth was more complex than "60 Minutes" portrayed.
"There's nobody who's innocent here," William Dixon said. "They should not have had a party like that. This is a school of standards."
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