ABC News is reporting that, later this afternoon, all charges that had been brought against members of the Duke University lacrosse team will be dropped:

April 10, 2007 â€” The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case. Special prosecutors from the attorney general’s office took over the case after Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong recused himself in January amid charges of unethical conduct filed against him by the North Carolina Bar.

The holes in this case should have been apparent from the beginning, and yet Prosecutor Michael Nifong ignored them, charged the players with rape and related crimes, and continued to zealously pursue their conviction in the face of clear evidence that the accuser’s story just didn’t add up:

Defense attorneys have released documents detailing how the accuser changed key details in her story in the weeks and months after the alleged assault. Legal analysts and forensic experts have criticized what they call a critically flawed photo identification lineup â€” a lineup that led to the identification and indictment of Evans, Finnerty, Seligmann. No DNA evidence was found matching any lacrosse players with samples from the rape kit, while DNA from unidentified men was found on the accuser’s body and clothing.

Other reports indicated that Nifong didn’t even talk to the accuser until months after the incident and well after reports had come out calling key details of her story into question. Now, Nifong is under investigation by the North Carolina State Bar and could very well be disbarred and conceivably end up in prison and face civil liability to the players that he wrongfully accused.

The broader lesson of the Duke lacrosse case, though, should not be forgotten. Prosecutors are different from other attorneys in that the ethical rules that bind them require them to seek the truth even if that results in a dismissal of the case. In this case, it’s clear that Nifong forgot that duty and the only good thing is that he was stopped before this went any further.

One wonders how many men and women are sitting in prisons today because their Michael Nifong wasn’t caught in time.

Update @ 3:00pm: And it’s official, the charges have been dropped:

RALEIGH, N.C. — Prosecutors dropped all charges Wednesday against the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a stripper at a party, saying the athletes were innocent victims of a “tragic rush to accuse” by an overreaching district attorney. “There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a blistering assessment of Durham County District Mike Nifong’s handling of the case. Cooper, who took over the case after Nifong was charged with ethics violations that could get him disbarred, said his own investigation concluded not only that the evidence against the young men was insufficient, but that no attack took place. Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans were indicted last spring on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense after the woman told police she was assaulted at a lacrosse team party where she had been hired to perform as a stripper.

The charges are dropped but, of course, the damage is done. As someone once said, though, where do these men go to get their reputations back ?