Posted on 09/01/2007 2:45:08 AM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
DURHAM - Judge W. Osmond Smith III sentenced disbarred District Attorney Mike Nifong to 24 hours in jail for intentionally lying in court, an action designed to serve more as a deterrent than a punishment. Nifong, already stripped of his law license for his misconduct in the Duke lacrosse case, is to report to the Durham County Jail at 9 a.m. Friday and stay behind bars until 9 a.m. Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
If he's been stripped of his law license, he will never again be in a position to lie to the court like he did in this case, so there's nothing to deter. It's not like he's going to be a practicing attorney again, and certainly not a prosecutor.
What deterrent?
I believe the schadenfreude is a full portion. It reads to me like it will be served next Friday.
The judge may have meant a deterrent to others.
Strictly speaking, you are right. But I judged that the N&O would have been explicit if that was the case.
I noted that the story carries today's date. Usually, they do not post items from the new day until 6 a.m. so I'm not sure what to read into that.
More than anything, I am guessing that Nifong would choose to deny us the real-time schadenfreude by willingly serving his day before we could get on top of it.
I was planning to watch the situation to try to confirm/clarify if my interpretation is accurate.
It makes one wonder if Mr. Nifong will be applying for a job with NCIS .... or if NCIS will join Mr. Nifong in his little red wagon.
Look who isn’t under oath in the court room...
The judge and the lawyers...
Very good points. Keep me up on any development?
Second thought....I believe that you are right.
It was ~already~ past 9 a.m. Friday when the sentence was handed out.
I hate if I jumped the gun, but I could not stand to see him have already put it behind him before we knew that it was happening.
Maybe so, but 24 hours in jail would not be a deterrent to anyone who is so desperate to lie and misrepresent a case in order to win. People do that either because they think they can get away with it or because they don’t think past the lies.
Either way, there is no deterrent. The judge has a lofty view of himself and his own judgments, IMO. Some people think their offal don’t stink.
Sweet, thanks.
Son of a b**** deserves a lot more jail time than that.
Ah well, the civil suits are on their way.
It’s a bunch of code words and mumbo jumbo to the lawyer community.
Corruption in lawyer tongue is: To be “slow dealing with cases”: ie. means selective prosecution based on politics via delaying certain cases, speeding up others, fishing around or outright waiting for bribes.
Judges will never say there is corruption in the system, deep corruption. They will use mumbo jumbo like “deterrent” or “slowness”.
The US justice system is such a catastrophy, if the truth came out, there would not be a single lawyer left alive. I am not joking.
Instead of judgment call and due process of the law at every step, from cops to prosecutors, it’s all corruption and selective prosecution. Heck, who protects the store front is the mafia boss. Now you know why they want to ban certain bullets and guns, so we can be hit and we can pay up for sure our “taxes”.
yup , . .
.. and , talk about offal , .. ..
I hope he was in a kinda “Central Lockup” ,.. but I doubt it, ..
. . . would’ve been nice , for him to be in with some “stank muthaF*CKuhzzzz”
Schadenfreude stand-down/reschedule:
“Nifong will serve his time beginning 9 a.m. September 7 and will end 9 a.m. September 8.”
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=5621847
And by the way, isn’t it strange that Hitler practiced pogroms, ie. the democratic right of a society to kill a bunch of people who wrote books, and then gave himself the power of determining history, who was a jew or a true German and what not... it really were up to him and not “scientific” at all...
and now we see so many liberals joining in political pogroms, asking to sue gun manufacturers as a mean to pogromize gun owners etc... gun taxes etc... but, hey, it does not bother bloomberg when drugs come from terrorists in Afghanistan or in FARC owned territories... that’s no infection getting into NY to him, it’s nothing to sue about... but what can I say, the guy’s a pot smoker.
So there goes the loyalties and paranoias of pot.
What Nifong did is so common, as a mean of pogrom and politics, it indeed is not a deterrent, but a warning to the lawyer community to not be high profile next time. Nifong only screwed up technicaly, but not in spirit according to them.
So the pogrom can continue but not so high profile.
OH, and so ironic that 2 weeks after the Nifong issue, we had the Imus-gate coming out the woodwork... like a media tit for tat of political points... justifying their pogroms for “n headed girls”, like that little prostitute who falsified the suit with the help of Nifong and the gang behind him... still hiding and sneakering.
so , .. he can still be put in a big holding pen ,..
. . . with folks he was pandering to during the runUP to Election Day
I think that means that the judge is saying Nifong is getting away with contempt of court but he's serving one whole day in jail to warn YOU not to do it--just kinda' a Public Service thing, ya' know. Nifong can prolly use it as a tax deduction.
Please see my #12.
The Lax boys seemed pretty admirable for the most part. But the idea that beer could make them wish to see this naked...frightening.
(Of course, my "quitting" has not been absolute...no need to be rigid about a thing.)
. It's not the day in jail that's the deterrent, but is a powerful symbolic gesture to cuff and stuff a prosecutor and put him in the tank. For NIfong punishment has included public humilation, disbarrment, ruination of his career, and sure to come civil suits. I'm satisfied. Magnum, the Duke Prof's and various media outlets are the one's who have yet to receive justice.
Usually I take the side of the “victim” of a crime, but this case smelled to high heaven from the first day. It looked like she was out to get money from the frat boys.
I also used it as a teaching lesson for my kids, and myself. Don’t go into a dangerous situation and expect to come out safely. Don’t be a stripper at a drunken frat boy party. Seems to me that even IF there had been a rape, I don’t know whom I would blame. It isn’t like she went to a bar and was drugged by a jerk. She knew what she was going in to, a den of lions!
Nifong got off easy. He’s probably chilling the champagne...well, the Two-Buck Chuck, which will hafta be his splurge drink from now on.
Just one more example of the outrageous level of corruption so prevalent in the legal system. The black-robes routinely favor their cronies, accept money under the table, and throw out popular votes when it serves their PC agenda or pays back the highest bidding constituency with a deep pocket. Nifong deserved 5 years. He also may get a $500 dollar fine after costing the “legal system” hundreds of thousands to support his phony charges meant to build his career by destroying the lives of innocent men.
Will he be in the general population or in protective custody? I suspect the latter. If so, where's the punishment or deterrent? He'll sit around, get some chow, read a few magazines and leave the next day.
In my view, the deterrence is only partially the loss of liberty. It's also the neighbors one has in jail. Nifong probably won't even see another prisoner.
>>It makes one wonder if Mr. Nifong will be applying for a job with NCIS .... or if NCIS will join Mr. Nifong in his little red wagon.
I’m thinking Nifong will likely apply for a job as an investigator in Ronnie Earle’s office.
Another example of our insane legal system. These kids came within a heartbeat of doing serious time because of this perjuring bitch and this career whoring prosecutor and she gets a pass he does a lousy day! His sentence should have been measured in years. He corrupted his office and sought to put innocent kids in prison for his miserable political advantage. Sorry bastard!
He would fit right in.
Wow, remarkable. He gets what he deserves. I have to wonder if he is the only one in his office though, or if others on his staff are also partly culpable.
And yes, if Nifong has to go to prison, so should Earle and others who abuse their powers. Lefties scream we are somehow being denied our rights from the Bush admin. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Meanwhile out of control prosecutors can imprison innocent people, and they Bush bashers remain silent.
While they’re at it, they should bring charges against Janet Reno too. Wasn’t she responsible for putting innocent parents and child care workers in prison in the 1980s in the big witch hunt over false accusations of child abuse?
I agree with all you said but the difference is there are no ambiguities with Nifong. He has had his day in court and he’s guilty. To slap his hand is just ludacris. He was an officer of the court for crying out loud and used his position for the worst of causes , to further his election. He is beneath contempt.
He got off lightly. He lied in an attempt to get a racially charged jury to put three young men in prison for long terms and ruin their lives. He's already had a better life than he deserves.
He got off lightly. He lied in an attempt to get a racially charged jury to put three innocent young men in prison for long terms and ruin their lives, for personal gain. He's already had a better life than he deserves.
That sums it up nicely.
Times 3.
Yes, better that way.
It is to deter others from doing the same thing, not meant to deter him.
Bill XClinton lied to a judge.
I doubt that. The NAALCP, the Nation of Islam, et al, will be sponsoring the Minority Stripper Discrimination Lecture Series. Guess who will be the head lecturer?
I would show a little compassion for the guy if he was not SO DAMN ARROGANT at the beginning of the investigation. I mean we all make mistakes by listening to people who do not give a truthful story (like he did with that stripper). I think he meant well but he was so damn ARROGANT that I just don’t care what happens to him.
While they’re at it, they should bring charges against Janet Reno too. Wasn’t she responsible for putting innocent parents and child care workers in prison in the 1980s in the big witch hunt over false accusations of child abuse?
She was not even in the White House in the eighties. You must be thinking someone else. I don’t know who President Reagan’s Attorney General was but maybe you are thinking him or her.
Being located close to Ground-Zero, I watched this thing closely from the beginning. Although I usually join lustily with the crowd that would like to see him drawn and quartered at the Big Grand Stand during the State Fair, I think your analysis is just about right.
IMO, political calculation came strongly into it. But I don't think there was any conflict there...he is a self-righteous, PC leftie, and he immediately bought into the Tawana Brawley-style version the way the infamous 88 and so many others on the Left did.
A fact now largely lost is that members of the local bar were pretty much uniform in regarding him as a fair and reasonable guy before all this happened.
But there is something badly missing in his character that kept him from ever revisiting his first assumptions. And then the ARROGANCE -- as you said -- became breathtaking and led him into Captain Queeg territory where he was utterly impervious to reality.
But when I see a vicious snarling Pit Bull, I don't first inquire into what misfortunes made him that way. I say, "put him down."
Re: Janet Reno, I was referring to her tenure as prosecutor in Dade County FL. I think even PBS ran a special some years ago about people falsely accused in the wake of the McMartin Pre School case in CA that drew tremendous publicity. It was determined some people in FL ended up in prison when they didn’t belong there thanks to Reno. Meanwhile I’m sure plenty of violent criminals went free thanks to her left leaning views.
Excellent.
That’s a bit gross.
I was being sarcastic.
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