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North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said at a press conference: "The result of our review and investigation shows clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed on any of the charges. Today, we are filing notices of dismissal for all charges."
He continued, "We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges."
The accuser, a 28-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, had told police she was attacked by the men in a bathroom at a March 13 Duke lacrosse team party where she was hired to perform as a stripper.
The accused players, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and team captain David Evans, also held a news conference Wednesday.
It's been "an amazingly difficult few days, an amazingly difficult year," their defense attorney Joe Cheshire said, adding that the case was full of "great, fantastic lies."
Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans were indicted on charges of first-degree forcible rape, sexual offense and kidnapping.
But the case rapidly fell apart, and prosecutors dropped the rape charges in December after no DNA evidence was found linking any of the men to the accuser.
"It's been 395 days since this nightmare began and finally the day has come for closure," said Evans when he took the podium. "We are just as innocent today as we were back then...We have never wavered in our story."
Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, who had been the driving force in the investigation, was recused in January and Attorney General Cooper took over the case.
Nifong has been accused by the state bar of ethics violations in connection his handling of the case, the Associated Press reports. He faces trial in June on charges of making misleading and inflammatory comments, withholding evidence from defense attorneys and lying to the court and bar investigators.
