Duke Justice Demands Nifong's Removal (Susan Estrich on DukeLax

FoxNews ^ | December 18, 2006 | Susan Estrich

[abb]

his is not the way the system is supposed to operate. Prosecutors are supposed to be out for justice, not blood; committed to the truth, at all costs, not winning, without more.

Prosecutors aren’t just morally obliged but legally required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense.

Prosecutors aren’t just one side in a battle.

You can’t come across the smoking gun covered with fingerprints on it – come across it because you have the power of the state to collect all the evidence – and then decide to ignore it because they don’t match the fingerprints of the guy you’re prosecuting for the crime. You certainly can’t file the report from the lab for your eyes only.

You have to tell the defendant that the smoking gun has someone else’s prints on it. He has a right to know that, and the prosecutor has a duty to tell him.

There is a reason that the rules are such. The prosecutor represents the people. The people’s goal is winning, which doesn’t have to mean a perfect conviction rate.

The goal is supposed to be to convict the guy who did it, not frame the guy you’ve got.

Somebody should tell that to Mike Nifong. Or to the judge who is in a position to do something about who prosecutes the Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.

What is going on in the prosecutors’ office in Durham North Carolina is disturbing in ways that go beyond the ugly allegations that started this case.

The District Attorney has clearly lost sight of his mission, and with it the last remnants of any ethical compass. The case has been characterized, since the outset, by a clear failure to follow the office’s own procedures and practices.

[maggief]

I thought Nifong suffered from erectile dysfunction ... or is that electile. Perhaps both. ;o)

[JLS]

the Woody Vann guy on Greta last night spoke as if there is no legal way the judge can dethrone Nifog or dismiss this case, historically....

Vann is a very slow very unimaginative guy. A creative judge might be able to do a lot to derail this case. For example a real judge might have:

1. held Nifong in contempt and jailed him for laughing and smirking while the defense lawyers we speaking in the early hearings. I don't know how long a judge can hold someone in NC on contempt. But if a Judge in this case did that to Nifong every time he misbehaved in court, I wonder just how long it would take Nifong to drop these charges?

2. held a supression hearing by now and thrown out the ID. [BTW, this is a separate oppourtunity to hold Nifong in contempt and putting him in jail for lying to the court to get that order.]

3. held a hearing cocerning whether or not Nifong had spoken to Mangum about her allegation. This would be another opportunity to throw Nifong in jail for contempt for lying to the court.

If every few days the Judge had a hearing to establish that Nifong was in contempt and sent him back to jail each time, I bet Nifong would get the hint real quickly.

The judges in the case have greatly fallen down in their duty to protect the NC criminal justice system. NC proceedures are not great for doing it, but a creative judge could find a way to get the message to Nifong that he is not the ruler of the world.

[Boiler Plate]

if I was the father of one of those boys

First, I would beat them senseless for being so incredibly stupid as to hire a hooker to come and entertain me in my cozy rich kid frat house. Then I would go after Nifong with everything I had.

[samadams2000]

Incalculable damage.

[monday]

"As an absolute minimum, Nifong should be permanently disbarred."

He should be prosecuted for misconduct and sentenced to the same time in prison he wanted to give the lacrosse players. Twenty years without chance of parole should do.

[Hat-Trick]

Wonderfully refreshing. Thanks for posting.

[Constitutions Grandchild]

"Then they will all make lots of $money$ as they appeal every case that Nifong or that lab ever came in contact with."

That's the bad news.

The good news is that he spent most of his time in traffic court, didn't he?

[Fido969]

I'm not painting all LE with the same brush, I don't think CG is either.

[JoanOfArk]

It's typical HS gloss to leave out any mention of DNA found inside the accuser. They didn't mention anal, oral, or vaginal findings.

"And as we learned in court Friday, the director of a DNA lab in Burlington at first withheld results showing the accuser had DNA from other men -- not the lacrosse players -- in her underwear and on her pubic hair."

[Jezebelle]

Notice that little "at first" the writer slipped in there. It wasn't "at first." It was supposed to be "forever." The defense had to file a motion that Liefong objected to in order to get it.

[Jezebelle]

I have mentioned to you in the last couple days that the Meehan thing makes a case for obstruction of justice and appears to be actual criminal conduct, that an extensive investigation should be conducted and that we then would hear the legal community, specifically former prosecutors, begin to speak of obstruction charges. I was wrong. Of all people, Hammer brought it up on Greta's show last night. He said Nifong's conduct of withholding the full results was outrageous, ILLEGAL, and enough to remove him from the case. A few minutes later, in total disgust, he said that between the DNA results issue and the line-up issues (as to Nifong telling the police to violate their own policies), it's looking like Nifong was trying to obstruct justice and that the whole thing is just outrageous.

I wasn't pointing this out to you as a defense of Hammer, but rather that chatter among your "insiders" about actual criminal charges against Liefong have been started (in a small way) by Hammer, of all people.

[webheart]

When an knee-jerk Clinton apologist and general left-wing dim-wit like Susan Estrich turns on you the situation ain't good.

He is mentioned in the same paragraph as smoking and guns, so you know he's toast to the liberals.

[Enchante]

From what I read about LIEfong, his career had been seriously sidetracked a few years ago and he was relegated to traffic court, more or less. Then he suddenly found himself bumped up to acting DA with the chance to be elected to the real DA's position, and his ego went maniacal..... hey, what a chance to cement the black vote in Durham for a left-wing charlatan posing as a DA, just frame a few white boys....

This case should be thrown out with prejudice (never to be brought again), this LIEfong DA needs to be disbarred and prosecuted, and every race-hustling pimp who jumped on this without knowing the facts, including the charlatan Duke U. officials who threw these kids to the wolves without evidence, should suffer severe professional and personal disgrace.

[Jezebelle]

I don't think Vann is slow. I don't know about unimaginative. When he was talking on Greta last night (Greta wasn't there - a non-lawyer, Martha, sat in for her) he was trying to answer Martha's question by explaining the mechanisms in their criminal procedure by which the current motions as to the line-up, the DNA debacle and the motion to preclude Mangum from identifying the suspects in court would lead to the unraveling of the case - die of its own lack of substantive evidence, and that a judge cannot just fismiss the case on a simple motion to dismiss. He was trying to give a legal explanation to her answer, but she wasn't getting it at all. Her follow-up questions made that clear. There was no context in which he would have had an opportunity to go on about what the judge or the defense could further do creatively to dump the case because he wasn't asked an open question. It was a technical question that Martha asked (even though she probably didn't realize it was a technical question).

Anyway, Vann said he just cannot imagine that the judge won't throw out the line-up identification and it's quite possible he won't allow the in-court identification. If that happens, he said, Nifong would have to dismiss. Vann also said that it isn't likely the judge would remove Nifong from the case, and that doesn't surprise me, given NC's prosecutorial structure established by law.

I think it's inaccurate to consider him slow or that he's not seeing what Liefong is doing. Rather, he's reflecting what's possible or not under NC criminal procedure law which, as I've said before, is a scary thing in itself and often incomprehensible by other standards we see in other states. He also explains how NC courts have handled matters at issue in this case in the past.

[Jezebelle]

LOL! :> :>

[Jezebelle]

Very, very well said!

[Jezebelle]

"According to Garry Frank, president of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, however, other district attorneys have also expressed concerns about Nifong's conduct.

'It's premature to comment while the court is still contemplating," Frank said. "I think the conference will adress this at some point.'"

This what I've been hoping for - a drumbeat started by the legal community in the region.

Although not in my excerpt, the article was more about what UNC Chapel Hill law prof Kennedy said about the whole Meehan lab thing, and he doesn't have his facts right. He thinks Meehan and Nifong tried to hide the results of the DNA testing as to the three boys, but that wasn't it. It was the finding of DNA of other, unidentified, men that they withheld. Jeanine Pirro made the same mistake on Greta last night. Vann corrected her.

People, especially lawyers, should really get their facts straight before they comment publicly. Doing otherwise simply gives ammunition to the other side to undermine the argument for an investigation into Nifong's conduct. If someone takes position "A" that Nifong should be investigated and prosecuted, and that position is supported by Fact A, and Fact A is erroneous, then position "A" is undermined, even if the fact is corrected because it lessens the impact of the corrected fact.

[Jezebelle]

No.

Nifong and his accomplices should be thoroughly and completely investigated and then arrested and charged with at least obstruction of justice, assuming the evidence bears that out, which I think it will. I fantasize about the Nifong perp walk.

Taking the action you advocate makes us as bad as Nifong because it's essentially the tactic he is using on the three boys - abandon justice altogether.

Nifong's support in the national and now even local legal community is beginning to crumble. That was his last bastion of protection.

Just give it time.

When the Duke lax team becomes competitive again has absolutely nothing to do with this subject. Perhaps your remark was an attempt at sarcasm? If so, it missed its mark because lax competition isn't remotely related to prosecuting Nifong.

[ml/nj]

When the Duke lax team becomes competitive again has absolutely nothing to do with this subject. Perhaps your remark was an attempt at sarcasm? If so, it missed its mark because lax competition isn't remotely related to prosecuting Nifong.

Note to self: Don't post to, or reply to, people who really don't have a clue.

ML/NJ

[San Jacinto]

The Motion to Suppress is set for hearing the week of February 5, 2007. If the Court grants the motion and prohibits the FA from making an in-court identification of the Defendants, then the charges must be dropped. In order to grant that motion, the Court would have to find that the photo ID process was so flawed in this case that it is unreliable as a matter of law and that any in-court ID would be so tainted as to amount to a violation of the Defendants' rights of due process. It's a tough burden to meet because there is a presumption that the weight to be given to the identification of the accused by the FA is a matter within the province of the jury. However, reading the Defendants' motion leads one to believe that a fair judge might very well grant it, because the problems related to the FA's eventual ID of the Defendants are truly mind boggling.

If the hearing goes forward, every cop who had contact with the FA could be called to discuss the description, or lack thereof, which the FA gave of her attackers. The failure to ID anyone on the first go around; the descriptions of a "chubby" attacker, one with a mustache, the fact that one of the Defendants is so far removed from any description given by the FA that he was not even included in the first photo line-ups; the fact that she apparently eventually named 4 attackers and just left it up to the DA as to which 3 to charge--all of this would be part of the hearing-- and I bet the FA will make a very poor witness.

There has to be some likelihood that the DA and the FA will try to find a way out of this mess before Feb. 5. Maybe it will be just too traumatic for her or something like that--or health considerations related to pregnancy--or whatever--that will allow Nifong to "relunctantly" drop the case. Of course, if he does so and thereby leaves a cloud over the LAX players, they probably would still go after his ass in every way possible, so he's got problems at this point no matter which road he takes. He may decide his best bet is to just push ahead. The only thing I'm sure of is that the Number One consideration in whatever decision Nifong make will be --What's best for Nifong.