The results of the DNA tests were finally made public on April 10 : The tests had failed to link any of the lacrosse players to the alleged rape victim. Avram expected the District Attorney to abandon the case at this point, but Nifong insisted that even without a positive DNA match, he still had enough evidence to move forward with an indictment. The alleged victim could now recall details of the rape with more clarity, he said, and had identified her attackers from photographs of the lacrosse team. “Any time that you have a victim who can identify her assailant... you have a case that the judge must let go to the jury,” Nifong explained to a forum at North Carolina Central University on April 11 .

At this point, however, news coverage of the alleged rape grew more skeptical. For one thing, Nifong’s motives came under scrutiny. The district attorney was in the midst of a heated re-election campaign and had staked a great deal on the Duke case. He had decided to prosecute the case himself rather than assign it to another attorney in his department. He had also served as the primary spokesperson for the D.A.’s office. On several occasions, he had told reporters he was “confident that a rape had occurred” and described the lacrosse players as "hooligans” ^[22] whose “daddies could buy them expensive lawyers.” ^[23]

Shifting blame. Lawyers for the lacrosse players expressed outrage at Nifong’s decision to pursue the case without DNA evidence to support the accuser’s claim. “There is no evidence other than the word of this one complaining person that any sexual assault took place,” remarked one of the attorneys. ^[24] In response, the defense team took the gloves off and went public with information intended to discredit the accuser. They told television crews outside the courthouse that she had been arrested for stealing a car and leading police on a high-speed chase three years earlier. She had been drunk, they continued, and had spent six days in prison.

In fact, Avram and his team had learned about the accuser’s criminal background soon after arriving in Durham. The information was common knowledge among reporters on the scene. In keeping with the widely-held policy to refrain from putting an alleged victim “on trial” by reporting unsavory details about her life, no major news outlets—ABC included—had previously chosen to report this information. But when the defense lawyers released the information in the form of a public statement, some networks did air it. ABC did not, choosing to stay with its policy.