It was a crime of vengeance: a 15-year-old girl was pissed off at a 16-year-old boy, so she lied that he raped her. But it never occurred to the authorities to consider the possibility that this was a nothing more than a teen tiff. Instead, here's what happened to Brian Banks:

*He was arrested the day the charge was made.

*The school where he was a star football player announced he would not be permitted back regardless of the outcome of his case.

*The police work was sloppy, and the investigation failed to discover what an Innocence Project attorney discovered ten years later -- that the accuser's story made no sense.

*Brian's mother was forced to sell her house and her car, and to borrow additional money from family, to pay for a lawyer to represent Brian; the accuser's mother, on the other hand, sued the school district for the "rape" and collected $750,000.

*Brian was facing 41 years to life if convicted, but his lawyer worked out a plea deal, which she urged Brian to accept: plead no contest and likely just serve an additional 18 months. Why take the deal? Brian's attorney told him that even though it was a he said/she said dispute and no other evidence supported the accuser's claim, when the jury sees a big black teen male, he automatically loses.

*Brian claims his own lawyer denied his request that he be permitted to consult with his mother about the plea deal, and that he was given just ten minutes to decide. Brian sat down and cried and took the deal.

*When it came time to sentence Brian, the judge decided to impose a harsher penalty than the one Brian had agreed to -- Brian was incarcerated for more than five years; then he was on probation for five years; and he was put on the sex offender's registry -- for life --with a tracking device on his ankle akin to the ones they slap on animals.

*Brian's accuser contacted him on Facebook and told him to "let bygones be bygones." Brian set up a meeting and she finally told the truth on a video Brian's private investigator made -- "No, he did not rape me," she said. But then she refused to tell prosecutors the same thing because she didn't want to give up the $750,000 she'd been awarded by the school district. Then she lied again and claimed Brian had bribed her to say he didn't rape her.

*L.A. prosecutors have said they have no plans to charge the accuser for making false accusations, saying it would be a tough case to prove, even though there is considerably more evidence to charge her than there was to charge Brian for rape.

*The accuser was awarded $750,000 from the school district for a lie while Brian will need to fight to collect $200,000, the most the law will award him for being wrongly convicted.

*The school district has no plans to seek recovery of the $750,000 paid to the accuser, even though she was unjustly enriched and obtained the money by fraud.

-We've written a detailed account of the case at COTWA: http://www.cotwa.info/2012/06/bygones-be-bygones-unspeakable.html