Brendan Nyhan

Duke lacrosse update for April 19

Here’s the latest from Duke, where supporters of the players are wearing shirts that say “Innocent” around campus:

-WRAL says the players may have been identified using shirtless pictures that revealed scratches on their bodies:

An exotic dancer who says three Duke lacrosse players raped her may have identified two of them based on photographs that show scratches on their bodies, a defense attorney said Wednesday.

The attorney said that when 46 members of the lacrosse team submitted court-ordered DNA samples last month, they were also photographed without their shirts.

The attorney said that is possibly how Reade Seligmann, 20, and Collin Finnerty, 19, were identified by the alleged victim, who told police she was gang-raped, sodomized and beaten for 30 minutes at a lacrosse-team party on March 14.

-Also, the second round of DNA results are on the way:

The results of more DNA testing in the investigation of a reported rape at a Duke University lacrosse team party are due any day, the lawyer of one of the two indicted team members said.

Bill Cotter, who represents Collin Finnerty, said he is expecting as early as today to receive the results, which prosecutors are required to hand over by law. After a first round of tests, which compared DNA taken from the 46 white members of the team with evidence collected from an escort service dancer who was hired at the party. The woman, who is black, told police that she was raped by three white men.

-Via Chris Lawrence, the N&O has a very useful graphical summary of the timelines of the night in question.

-Finally, NBC 17 has posted some of the pictures that defense attorneys have been touting.