Resolution in the Duke rape case
YOUR BRIEF observations on the dismissal of the remaining charges against the Duke lacrosse players read as a petulant swipe at the outcome ("Duke lacrosse case: Prosecuting a stereotype," Editorial, April 13).
When you write that "three members of the Duke lacrosse team may have been louts, but all the evidence suggests they were not rapists," you have effectively labeled them using stereotypes in the same way that you caution prosecutors against.
Employing the word "suggests" intimates doubt as regards to evidence, when the North Carolina attorney general made it excruciatingly clear in his comments that there was no evidence worth pursuing and that these three were essentially railroaded by an overzealous and overreaching prosecutor.
Your greater point that our legal system is hardly fair to the accused who lack the means to employ talented and high-priced counsel is a fair one. However, it would have been better served without the dismissive depiction of the Duke three as "affluent" and as having the "resources to get on with their lives."
It can hardly be the job of the Globe editorial board to wave away the very real suffering these men and their families have endured for the last year at the hands of a politically motivated prosecutor, a university all too willing to sacrifice them at the altar of false race reparations, and a media hungry to portray the selfsame stereotypes the Globe decries.
ANDREW St.PIERRE
Hamilton
THE DUKE lacrosse players found themselves entangled in a legal mess resulting from a party where there was drinking and to which a stripper was invited. The news reports that they are relieved and innocent ("All charges dropped in Duke rape case," Page A2, April 12).
Any mother could have told those boys a party with alcohol, young men, and a stripper of unknown origins had the potential for trouble . It would have been a sign of some growth if, before holding the party, any one of them had reflected on its possible consequences.
Let's hope others will learn from this legal nightmare .
MARJORIE MORGAN
Longmeadow 
