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.
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.