Excellent piece @ FODU by Jason Trumpbour
http://friendsofdukeuniversity.blogspot.com/
Posted on August 22, 2006
On August 5, the N&O published an article by John Schwade entitled By staying on the sidelines, Cheek shows no bravado. Below is our spokesperson's response to the N&O article.
Guest Column
by Jason Trumpbour
Friends of Duke University
In a recent opinion piece in this newspaper, John Schwade weakly defends Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case. Schwade can find little positive to say about Nifong. Instead, he devotes most of his efforts to personally attacking Nifong’s critics, among them Lewis Cheek and the organization I represent, the Friends of Duke University. Cheek he dismisses with ridicule. As for FODU, Schwade borrows a page from Nifong and attempts to exploit or create prejudice within the community by using unfair caricatures. He compares us to the mafia and darkly suggests we are using “money”, “influence,” and “friends in the national media” to disrupt Nifong’s prosecution. Our sinister agenda that he finds so threatening: “to ensure that these three Duke students receive justice through a fair process.”
Far from some criminal underworld and hardly rich or influential, we are a group of alumni and parents who are deeply concerned about what is happening to three members of the Duke Community. We want to see justice served, not frustrated. I myself am a former attorney in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s office. I now teach law, jurisprudence and legal practice to law students and students in a graduate program in legal and ethical studies. In fact, I am supposed to be spending this summer working on a project to promote the rule of law in Nepal, not Durham County, North Carolina.
The source of our concern is Nifong’s egregious and systematic misconduct. Nifong has made false and prejudicial extrajudicial statements in violation of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct. He has invited the public to disregard the civil rights of the accused and made appeals to prejudice. He has a continuing conflict of interest due to his political alliance with another attorney who hopes to profit from the Duke case. He has manipulated witnesses. Worst of all is his violation of NCRPC Rule 3.8 which prohibits a prosecutor from avoiding “pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor’s case.” As recently documented by the News and Observer, Nifong ordered police to try to find evidence that supported the indictments he wanted to bring. He later pitied himself when it was not forthcoming. He also refused to even look at the exculpatory evidence offered to him by defense counsel. In making personal attacks on Nifong’s critics rather than squarely confronting their message about Nifong’s conduct, Schwade and others like him effectively concede these issues.
Corruption is defined as the conversion of what belongs to the public to private use. From the very beginning, Nifong has treated this case as a personal opportunity for himself. What even his most ardent supporters fail to notice is that many of the choices Nifong has made—assigning the case to himself, co-opting the police investigation, racing to obtain indictments before the primary election and conducting an unconstitutionally suggestive lineup that is likely to be suppressed—all undermine the case he insists is a personal mission for him.
The United States is the only western nation where local prosecutors are popularly elected and select their own assistants. In every other nation, prosecutors are selected by merit. They are centrally trained, supervised and evaluated according to exacting professional standards. Our system of elected district attorneys can work, but only if legal professionals do their part to educate the public about the proper standards for evaluating their conduct and citizens do their part to educate themselves about the issues rather than adopt the hear no evil, see no evil approach that Nifong’s defenders have done.
It was, therefore, appropriate for Cheek and the petitioners who supported him to challenge Nifong based on his conduct. Cheek showed a great deal of integrity and courage in putting aside his ties of friendship to Nifong and taking a politically risky position by first confronting Nifong about his misconduct and then working to defeat him. Cheek has made it painfully clear that he will not serve as District Attorney. He simply does not want Nifong to be District Attorney. If Nifong is defeated at election time, Cheek will have fought the good fight and won. If the people of Durham County are willing to look past the diversionary issues Nifong and his supporters are throwing up and critically examine Nifong’s conduct in light of all of the relevant legal, ethical and professional standards, then they can effectively exercise the unique power given to them and ensure their community’s well being.
Woody Vann?