Holy smokes! Nifong is a crook -- those documents show that Nifong had actual knowledge before the indictments that Crystal had serious credibility problems and unable to identify anyone, let alone do it with certainty, that the police that her story was, as they say, crappola, and on and on and on. Add to the number of things she will get destroyed with on cross a police officer saying she was faking it when he put ammonia under her nose -- right out of the Tawana Brawley playbook. THe ironic part of the police report is that it was 3 weeks after the incident and after the case began to fall apart publicly, so you know the police officer was forced to write somoething favorable to the DA, and THAT was the best he could come up. Cheshire references a third photo lineup but doesn't discuss it, so who knows what faults are there in that lineup. At this point, there is NO witness that Nifong can present without needing to discredit all or part of their testimony. Some of the cable nuts say that Nifong has to hang the cop out to dry, but at this point he needs to hang out half the population of Durham.
I found it interesting that he referenced a 2004 NC case that dismissed a number of convictions for DAs failing to disclose material information. Perhaps Nifong believes himself to be above the law. Is a prosecutor entitled in NC to be willfully ignorant? The whole discovery shows that the DA buried any effort to ascertain the truth, and we know he didn't want to hear exculpatory evidence from the defense.
My goodness, what the heck is going on there????
Good point. I've wondered if Nifong's 25 years of operating under a system that allowed the prosecutor to decide what to give the defense as "exculpatory" has made him incapable of following the new law which requires him to hand over everything. Cheshire did a great job describing what that means.
At Seligmann's hearing, Judge Stephens brushed off Osborn's motion to compel Nifong to turn over everything by saying frostily that he expected Nifong would do the right thing. Well, so much for that.
What do they mean by that? Eventually, there is only one person whom Nifong can hang out to dry if he wants to save himself and that's Mangum. He's gong to claim that he can't be blamed for having believed her.