Americans like to think that few innocent people are arrested, much less charged or convicted, and that rogue prosecutors are the stuff of fiction.

Not so, the nation learned Wednesday , when the already shaky sexual assault case against three former Duke University lacrosse players collapsed entirely.

An independent investigation cleared the three athletes who had been accused of raping a stripper hired for a team party last year. The athletes were victims of a "tragic rush to accuse," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper found , and were indicted despite a total lack of credible evidence. They were guilty of nothing more than raunchy behavior.

*Rush to judgment. The sensational case began in March 2006 when the stripper, a 28-year-old black woman, told police she had been beaten, raped and sodomized by the white Duke students. Her accusations ignited race and class tensions among residents of Durham, N.C., and within the elite university. Too many commentators and academics who didn't know the facts were hasty to believe the "privileged jocks gone wild" scenario. Too many civil rights leaders seemed to draw the wrong lessons from the days when young black men in the South were convicted or lynched based on flimsy rape accusations from white women. Due process and the presumption of innocence got lost in the uproar .

*A runaway prosecutor. Instead of carefully gathering the evidence, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong threw gasoline on the fire . Nifong shamelessly exploited the racially charged atmosphere to help his election campaign, calling the accused men "hooligans" and likening the incident to cross burnings. Ignoring a lack of DNA evidence and the accuser's constantly changing stories, Nifong obtained grand jury indictments against players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann. Even as the case grew ludicrously weak, the D.A. refused to drop the charges. It is a telling lesson in the ability of prosecutors to manipulate grand juries.

The damage from the Duke case goes beyond that done to the three students. It might hurt the cause of legitimate rape victims. It could persuade some not to come forward, fearing their allegations wouldn't be believed. It also could lead some police, prosecutors and even jurors to doubt women's true charges of rape. Just 42% of victims, on average, reported rapes and sexual assaults to police from 2000 through 2005, according the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The Duke case could set back hard-won improvements in the treatment of sexual assault victims.

If any good is to come of the fiasco, it will be new checks on the power of prosecutors such as Nifong, who appears to have put ambition above the pursuit of impartial justice. The North Carolina State Bar has filed ethics charges against Nifong, accusing him of making inflammatory comments, withholding evidence from defense attorneys, and lying to the court and investigators. Cooper, who took over the case in January, wants the state Supreme Court empowered to intervene quickly if a prosecutor goes off the rails. The students and their lawyers called for more transparency in the grand jury process.

This is all helpful, but it's of little consolation to the students whose lives were thrown into turmoil for more than a year. At their news conference Wednesday, the young men said the experience had opened their eyes to the fact that innocent people in America can be railroaded. Seligmann said it exposed him to "a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed." And they acknowledged that without talented and expensive lawyers, they might well have ended up spending 30 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit.

The players no longer face the prospect of years behind bars. They finally have a measure of justice. They can get on with their lives. The damage, however, is done. It all brings to mind the question that former Labor secretary Raymond Donovan famously asked 20 years ago when he was acquitted of fraud and larceny charges: "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

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