The Duke Three should go free

It has become plainly obvious that a gross miscarriage of justice has been perpetrated against the three Duke University lacrosse players who were charged last spring with raping a stripper at a raucous house party.

Enough evidence has unfolded to conclude that Collin Finnerty of Garden City, L.I., Reade Seligmann of Essex Fells, N.J., and David Evans of Bethesda, Md., are the targets of an irresponsible prosecution by a race-baiting, politically craven district attorney.

Durham, N.C., DA Michael Nifong played the race card early and often in branding Finnerty, Seligmann and Evans, who are white, as having gang-raped a black woman. He called them "racists," and "hooligans" whose "daddies could buy them expensive lawyers."

"I'm not going to allow Durham's view in the minds of the world to be a bunch of lacrosse players at Duke raping a black girl," he said on his way to winning reelection with solid black support.

But last week, Nifong dropped the rape charges after defense lawyers proved he hadn't turned over exculpatory DNA evidence, probably deliberately. Even so, Nifong outrageously let stand sex abuse and kidnapping charges that any jury would dismiss out of hand.

His one witness - the accuser - a single mom who danced at an adult club, was a student at North Carolina Central University and has a history of bipolar disorder. She is reliable only in saying that she and another dancer performed at a March team party. Consider:

She said nothing about being raped until cops sent her, under the influence of alcohol and a muscle relaxant, to a mental health facility. Then she recanted. Then she claimed she was attacked by two to 20 players. In some versions, she said the other dancer helped them.

She failed to identify her alleged attackers when twice shown photos of the lacrosse players, all the while saying she was sure a player named Dan Ross was at the party. He was actually 24 miles away. It was only when she was shown photos a third time that she picked out Evans, Seligmann and Finnerty. In that session, she was presented only with pictures of the team - in violation of federal, state and local guidelines requiring inclusion of nonteam members.

Further undermining the woman's credibility: Cell phone and other records indicate Seligmann wasn't present at the time of the alleged rape; the second dancer calls the accusations a "crock," and the newly uncovered DNA tests found genetic material from several men, none of them the defendants or teammates. Most damning, the woman said she had been forced to her hands and knees and violently penetrated. Now, she says she's not sure what happened.

Despite all this, Nifong says he's proceeding, but clearly, he is desperate. The North Carolina bar yesterday accused him of misconduct when speaking to the press about the case, which is the least serious of his offenses. Yes, there was a crime here. And Nifong committed it.

Postage pending

The negative consequences of derailing the plan to convert the Farley General Post Office building into a new Penn Station are playing out. The state's option to buy the grand edifice expires with the end of 2006, so it's no longer clear what it will cost to buy the place.

More - perhaps a lot more - seems the likely answer.

Whatever the increase, the added expense will stem directly from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's wrongheaded decision to veto a project that was the brainchild of the late Sen. Pat Moynihan and has enjoyed the backing of Presidents Bush and Bill Clinton, Govs. Pataki and Mario Cuomo and Mayors Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani.

At the eleventh hour, Silver asserted that he had discovered financial questions of sufficient seriousness to prevent him from giving the okay to developing the front of the massive post office as the entrance into the train station and the rear as a commercial enterprise - as had been decided through competitive bidding.

But everything hinged on buying the building from the U.S. Postal Service, which had been bludgeoned into selling and had settled on a $230 million price. With the purchase option set to run out Sunday, state officials have been forced into negotiating for an extension.

No doubt the USPS sees dollar signs because the developers who won the project, Stephen Ross and Steven Roth, have floated very, very big new plans, including moving Madison Square Garden into the structure and erecting a 90-story tower where the Garden now stands. The merits of that deal are not yet available even for study, while the merits of building Moynihan Station have long been settled. New York should have taken title in 2006. That it didn't is a shame.