Posted on 10/30/2006 1:29:49 PM PST by SmithL
DURHAM, N.C. - The prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse rape case has heard the criticism from experts and armchair lawyers, and said Monday he is comfortable with nearly all the decisions he has made and confident about taking the case to trial.
"I think that I have a responsibility to prosecute this case," District Attorney Mike Nifong said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think that really nothing about my view of the case and my view of how the case ultimately needs to be handled has been affected by any of the things that have occurred."
Nifong, running for election against two challengers who have attacked his handling of the case, obtained an indictment against three athletes accused of raping a stripper at a team party in March. They have strongly declared their innocence.
In the early days of the case, Nifong granted numerous newspaper and TV interviews, at one point calling the players "hooligans" and declaring that DNA would identify the guilty. DNA failed to connect the players to the accuser.
Nifong said Monday that granting so many interviews was his only regret.
"You do the best you can based on what you have," he said. "You can always second-guess an investigation."
The latest questions about Nifong's handling of the case came last week, after he said he and his staff have yet to interview the accuser about the facts of the case, leaving that work to police. He said Monday his responsibility is to direct the investigation, not conduct it.
Experts differed on the wisdom of Nifong's decision.
Former Denver prosecutor Norm Early, who now works with the National District Attorneys Association, said: "It's not standard to talk to the victim in every case. The police department generally has a conversation with the victim and the law enforcement relays that information to the district attorney."
But for a case generating as much public scrutiny with such strong claims of innocence from the defense, it makes sense to have a prosecutor involved, said Yale University law professor Ronald Sullivan Jr.
"Those claims of factual innocence alone should trigger some duty in the prosecutor's office to evaluate the merits of this case," he said.
Nifong declined to comment on an interview, aired by ABC on Monday, with Kim Roberts, a second stripper at the party. Roberts said the accuser was clearly impaired and "talking crazy" after they left the party and drove to a grocery store.
Roberts said she was unable to get the accuser to leave her car, and pushed on the woman's arm and leg to try to force her out. Roberts quoted the accuser as saying: "Go ahead, go ahead. Put marks on me. Go ahead. That's what I want. Go ahead."
"And it chilled me to the bone," Roberts said.
Roberts said she is worried such detail will lead people to make assumptions about what happened at the party.
"It's going to solidify their opinions so much, that they're not going to want to hear the other aspects of the case, which I think are just as important," she said. "It's going to make people not listen to any other part of the story."
I wonder what the voters of Durham are going to do next Tuesday?
"Armchair lawyers"?! The AP reporter couldn't manage to get through even one sentence of a "news" article without editorializing.
I would guess they will RE-elect him since it's mostly Dems.
The whole point of the case was winning the primary against his fellow Democratic opponent.
This is the grossest lawyer misconduct I have have ever seen by a corrupt prosecutor. Nifong belongs behind bars for a long, long time.
The News & Observer and WRAL-TV poll asked 600 likely voters in Durham County whom they would vote for in the district attorney's race. Of those polled, 46 percent said they would vote for Nifong. 28 percent of respondents who said they would vote for county Commissioner Lewis Cheek. Two percent of those polled said they planned to vote for write-in candidate Steve Monks.”
“The poll, conducted between Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, found that 24 percent of those surveyed remained undecided, enough to change the outcome of the election.
That ole' "might have", "may have intended", the symbolic picture of all those guys and one innocent little college girl.. just makes him stand all the firmer with his finger pointed in air and in everybody faces. It's the classic Democrat "statuette" pose.
Dems only use the index finger so as to not alert the public.
"The prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse rape case has heard the criticism from experts and armchair lawyers,"
DOH!! What about the ACTUAL lawyers that have been saying the man is an idiot. Find me one credible person who thinks Nifong has a snowball's chance in hell of getting a conviction. The freakin' AP.
"The whole point of the case was winning the primary against his fellow Democratic opponent."
Yep. Nifong followed many of his constituents advice. Even if they didn't do it, they need to be convicted just to send a message. I saw that comment quoted from numerous local residents of color. If the races were reversed, it would be the deep south in the 50's.
Ain't it the truth. What scolds. Can you imagine what fun the zot kittens would have with them and their tiny little mousey fingers, too?
There is a non-trivial percentage of the population in some areas that would vote to convict just about any white person for a crime against just about any black person, no matter how non-existent the evidence of guilt and overwhelming the evidence of innocense. Getting twelve such people on a jury would be extremely unlikely (even if half the population was like that, there'd be only a 1 in 4,000 chance of picking twelve such people at random; if it's a quarter of the population, the likelihood would be 1 in 16,000,000). On the other hand, the odds of getting two such people on the jury would be significant.
I don't think Nifong's necessarily trying for a conviction. But if he can manage a hung jury and then drop the case, he'll call that a "win". Actually, for him a hung jury may be better than a conviction, since a conviction could be appealed and overturned while a hung jury could not. A hung jury would aid Nifong's defense against prosecutorial misconduct far more effectively than would a conviction that was overturned.
There have been cases where juries have nearly voted to convict even in the absence of any incriminating evidence. See: "Satanic ritual abuse" hysteria from early 80's-mid 90's. Despite a total lack of actual evidence in all of the known cases, instead almost unbelievably unethical, coercive and suggestive interviews with children were relied on. Public opinions in those cases often ran over 90% in favor of conviction.
Luckily there's enough here that even if they were convicted there has been enough malfeasance by Dipfong to get any convictions overturned on procedural grounds alone.
LOL! They look just like twins separated at birth, don't they? Can you put them side by side?
I agree. That's why I personally suspect Nifong doesn't really want a conviction. If he gets a hung jury and then drops the case, nobody will be able to appeal the hung jury, and Nifong will still be able to claim he had a case but the boys got out on a "technicality". Further, the case against Nifong is a slam-dunk if it can be shown that he couldn't possibly have reasonably believed that he had a case. If he scores a hung jury, however, he could argue that the fact that some jurors thought he had a case would show his belief was reasonable.
sure, he can call the three accused names and have their pictures on poster board, and rant like the idiot he is, but in the end he just claim that he wasn't in the "loop".
forget about this case being fairly adjudicated.....the black folk of Durham will not even read the evidence and they will ignore the testimony or lack of testimony, and convict just because....I don't trust them one iota.....
Found this quote in another article on the same interview yesterday:
"His tone was decidedly aggressive, as Nifong called the players "hooligans" used to having "expensive lawyers" get them out of trouble. He denounced what he called a "blue wall of silence" that had supposedly formed around the perpetrators."
What a pompus, socialist pig of an elected official.
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