Another loss for the taxpayers

A Philadelphia jury has found the two LaSalle University basketball players (in a case I’ve posted about twice) not guilty of rape:

A jury yesterday found two former La Salle University basketball players not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman last year, but the judge rebuked the pair for their behavior.
“This court does not condone your actions, or the lack of respect you showed” the woman, Common Pleas Court Judge Shelley Robins New told Gary Neal, 21, and Michael Cleaves, 23, moments after jurors announced their decision.

Nor do I condone their actions. But to call drunken sex rape is to torture the meaning of the word.
Not only did this woman get drunk, she went to the athlete’s bedroom, refused to leave with her friends who asked her to leave, and then sat on a man’s lap and told him that she’d performed oral sex “on a basketball player they both knew.” She didn’t report the “rape” until a considerable time later, and her story changed repeatedly. According to the Inquirer, “she refused to directly answer questions. She was also combative with the defense attorneys.” The trial testimony provides ample evidence from which a jury might have concluded that, far from being a victim, she’d played a major role in setting in motion the whole chain of events:

During the graphic and explicit two-week trial, members of the La Salle women’s basketball team testified that in the days before the alleged assault, the woman had suggested that the group obtain alcohol. Earlier that day, witnesses said, she had examined a photograph of the men’s basketball team and said she wanted to meet the players. And before she started drinking that night, she got a double-shot glass from her car.
Two La Salle women’s basketball players testified that they believed that the woman was trying to “hook up” with Neal and Cleaves.

What I don’t understand is why the DA spent so much time and taxpayers’ money on such an obvious loser of a case.
(I suspect the DA saw it as a winner regardless of result.)