Cleared Duke player will attend Loyola, Md.
Finnerty expects to play lacrosse for Greyhounds next season
 Chuck Burton / AP | Former Duke lacrosse player Collin Finnerty will enroll at Loyola, Md. |
RALEIGH, N.C. - Former Duke lacrosse player Collin Finnerty, cleared of false rape charges after being sidelined from the sport for more than a year, will transfer to Loyola of Maryland and play for the Greyhounds next season.
“I am excited to be returning to school and look forward to finishing my college career at Loyola,” Finnerty said in a statement provided to The Associated Press by a family spokeswoman Wednesday morning.
“Now that I have made my college decision, my life is my own again. I loved Duke and will miss all my friends there, especially my teammates and coaches. They are an unbelievable group of guys who stood behind me from day one, and I wish them all the best.”
Finnerty and fellow players Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans were indicted last spring on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense after a woman told police she was attacked by three men at a March 2006 team party where she was hired to perform as a stripper.
But the case steadily unraveled over the next year, and the state prosecutors who eventually took over the case from the local district attorney dropped all charges. In doing so, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper declared the trio innocent victims of a “tragic rush to accuse.”
The Durham County district attorney, Mike Nifong, later was disbarred for his actions in the case and resigned from office in disgrace.
Seligmann and Finnerty were suspended from Duke as sophomores after the allegations emerged — Evans graduated the day before he was indicted — but they were invited back once it became clear the case against them had no merit.
Neither player took Duke up on its offer to return to Durham. Seligmann said in late May he would attend Brown University, an announcement that came a day after Duke lost to Johns Hopkins in the NCAA championship game for the second time in three seasons.
“I think each of them had to make their own decisions about where he wanted to pursue future education,” said John Burness, Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. “We would’ve liked to have had them come back to Duke, but we understand they made a different choice.”
Duke coach John Danowski, who took over last summer, had said he would welcome both players but understood their decisions in “a very emotional, complex issue.”
“We’re absolutely delighted that (Finnerty) gets to move on with his life and put this behind him,” Danowski said.
In the past year, Finnerty, 21, has worked as a volunteer with children who lost family in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks while taking courses at Hofstra University. He also worked as a volunteer assistant lacrosse coach at his alma mater, Chaminade High School, near his family’s home in Garden City, N.Y.
He’ll join a Loyola team that went 7-6 this year, losing to Albany in the first round of the NCAA tournament. It was the Greyhounds’ first NCAA bid since 2001.
Loyola coach Charley Toomey said Finnerty will enter school as a second-semester sophomore. The school will investigate whether Finnerty has three years of athletic eligibility remaining, Toomey said.
In May, the NCAA granted Duke’s request for an extra year of eligibility for its players who were not seniors during the 2006 season, regardless of whether they played at Duke or another school. The decision restored the year lost when Duke canceled the remainder of the ’06 season amid the rape allegations.
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“We feel that he’s coming to the right place at the right time,” Toomey said. “We’re getting a great player. We’re just excited. ... I think he’s got a new community ready to embrace him.”
While the allegations also led Duke to accept the resignation of longtime coach Mike Pressler, the criminal case was undone by a lack of DNA evidence and the accuser’s shifting versions of an attack that state prosecutors later would determine never occurred.
The rape charges were dropped last December, and Nifong gave the case to state prosecutors the following month amid charges he breached professional ethics.
Nifong resigned as Durham’s district attorney last week, after a disciplinary hearing committee of the North Carolina State Bar found he had violated more than two dozen rules of professional conduct.
The violations included lying to the court and withholding DNA evidence that showed genetic material from several males — though none from a Duke lacrosse player — were found on and about the accuser.
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