Posted on 01/16/2007 10:03:31 AM PST by freespirited
This week Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong could be slapped with more charges related to his handling of the Duke Lacrosse case.
This week the State Bar Council will be holding its quarterly meetings in Raleigh. During this time, the agency could add ethics charges against the Durham district attorney.
Nifong recused himself from the Duke Lacrosse case shortly after the state bar filed an ethics complaint against him last month. He's accused of misconduct for statements he made to the media last spring.
In a letter obtained by Eyewitness News, defense attorney, Joe Cheshire requested to meet with Nifong in March about the statements.
"I do not understand why you will reportedly speak to the media in such certain, condemning terms before all the evidence is in, but you will not have the courtesy to meet or even speak with a representative of someone you have publicly condemned," Cheshire stated in the letter.
Nifong could also face additional charges for withholding DNA evidence that was favorable to the accused players. Evidence that is now in the hands of the state's Attorney General.
"We accept these cases with our eyes wide open to the evidence, but with blinders on for all other distractions," Roy Cooper said.
The State Bar Council meets today.
The council will decide this spring if his public comments about the case were a violation of the professional rules of conduct. Nifong's ethics meeting is scheduled for May.
No Federal Probe
The U.S. Attorney General's office has responded to Congressman Walter Jones' request for a federal probe of the Duke Lacrosse Case.
In a letter delivered Thursday, Alberto Gonzales' office wrote that it would be, "Premature to initiate a federal investigation pending a criminal trial."
This means the Attorney General will not be getting involved in the case at this time.
See Enterprise's #66.
NC has no state laws that address the problem.
bttt
bttt
The Attorney General is in charge of the Dept. of Justice, of which the FBI is a major component of - that's what Gonzales has to do with this. Nobody expects Gonzales to handle the case himself. He is expected to direct the FBI to follow through with an investigation and direct the case to the U.S. Attorney's office for prosecution of any wrongdoing found within the scope of their authority to prosecute.
NC does not have any statutes for criminal prosecution of civil rights violations, only civil penalties. The state's civil rights division within the OAH - Office of Administrative Hearings only addresses employment discrimination.
Here are the civil rights statutes for NC - they are all civil actions, all of which I've previously posted:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_99D/GS_99D-1.html
Prosecutors don't prosecute without an underlying investigation, which is where the evidence to support the prosecution comes from.
You know absolutely zero about LE and the criminal justice system at any level, state or federal.
No, they don't. You are correct. The case is investigated, evidence is developed and is referred to the prosecutor to determine whether they have a prosecutable case for the original complaint and/or any other violations that became apparent through the investigation.
You are just wrong. Nearly all complaints criminal in nature originate from a complainant, but they don't have to. Cases can develop from observations made by officers and agents or the general public or tips from confidential informants. It doesn't matter. The question is is a crime taking place or has one taken place.
The public integrity section of DOJ has already said that, in their opinion, criminal civil rights violations have occurred that can bring forward an FBI investigation. The FBI doesn't investigate civil matters. They investigate criminal matters. Gonzales is either stalling or trying to weasel out because these boys are part of the outcast class, not the protected minority class. The attitude appears to be that their skin is white and their pocketbooks are flush, thus they deserve no justice for the attempts to railroad them into long prison sentences through scurrilous and conspiratorial attempts to deprive them of due process and other potential violations pertaining to perjury and obstruction of justice designed ti deprive them of due process. There is no evidence that a crime was committed, which is the first due process hurdle in any criminal case.
He's not behind. He's well ahead of you.
Your argument is based around your state's rights penchant while you ignore the fact that NC has no law allowing for prosecution of Nifong for civil rights violations outside the civil suit arena. The feds do, and that is why they should step in and initiate an investigation into Nifong's conduct.
If "states' rights" and ad hominem is all you got, you should justshutupandtakeit somewhere else.
No, I think they do apply.
Bump.
The USSC has ruled that the format used by Nifong to get his identifications, which led to the indictments are unconstitutional. That was a deliberate act on his part, not an oversight. The deliberateness of the act moves it from oversight to need only be undone at trial or on appeal. But when done deliberately, it is part of a scheme to indict on false pretenses known to the prosecutor at the time. That is not just an ethics violation. It is a criminal violation. Deliberately withholding exculpatory evidence, even if it's only deemed impeachable evidence, is a violation of Brady. When done without malice or deviousness - intent - and just through misfeasance, it is reversible at trial or on appeal. When done intentionally - malfeasance - it is a crime. When two or more people conspire to commit a crime, such as obstruction of justice, under color of authority, it is a criminal violation of the civil rights of the person it was aimed at because it is a denial of due process and equal protection by scheme or design, and that holds true except the conspiracy if only one person was involved. And this is happening in a case in which there was no crime at all.
You should read this case and learn just what all has transpired here before you share anymore of your idiotic ramblings and insults with those who know much more than you do about this diabolical plan of a man to get elected on the backs of three white boys by conjuring a false accusation from a black woman who was trying to avoid jail on the backs of three white boys. Nifong was 20 points behind in the polls and about to lose his job, so he took control of the accuser and ran with her hallucinatory, drastically fluctuating claims in order to get ahead by raising support from local black racists because he knew they would support him since he was railroading whitey into long prison sentences for them, much to their great satisfaction.
You don't have to be convicted to have your civil rights violated. The harm is done. That fact that it could become worse through convictions doesn't lessen the current extent of the violations. The boys have been placed in jeopardy because of the violations against them. You seem to completely misunderstand this in the classic cart-before-the-horse syndrome. Under your theory, they have to fully damaged and have lost the case, after spending hundreds of thousands on legal fees, and suffered the full effects of the violations before they can be considered violations. A perfect analogy that clearly and simply illustrates your argument is that, according to your reasoning, attempted murder is not a crime and the victim has not been fully harmed as the crime was intended, even if he loses a limb, spends months in traction, or ends up a vegetable. The act only becomes a crime if and when the killer succeeds in killing his victim, under your reasoning.
Sorry, pal. It doesn't work that way. In fact, it's a legal absurdity. :>
It's even more egregious when considering that NO CRIME OCCURRED.
They're scared of standing up for the rights of well-to-do white boys, plain and simple. They are not members of demographic favorites whom they treat as pets, also known as minorities.
When the Bush administration took office they never went in and cleaned house in the Justice Dept. they way they should have. When the Clintons came in, Hillary packed the DOJ, including the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office, with hundreds of her hand-picked leftist radicals. Same thing at the State Dept., although they were pretty well entrenched before even the Clintons got there.
Jane, why not just do the right thing and go open another border thread? None of the people involved in this case are illegal aliens, so it seems to be drastically off-topic.
It doesn't particularly bother me, but it does a lot of people. They're really sick of the subject being raised on so many unrelated thread topics.
Thanks.
New prosecutor is former colleague of Nifong
By John Stevenson, The Herald-Sun
January 16, 2007 11:47 pm
DURHAM -- One of the new prosecutors in the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case is a former colleague of District Attorney Mike Nifong, who stepped aside last week in the face of mounting public and professional pressure.
Special Deputy Attorney General Mary Winstead, who worked with Nifong for several years in the 1980s and early 1990s, is now in charge of the lacrosse prosecution along with Senior Deputy Attorney General James Coman, a former director of the State Bureau of Investigation.
The two received thousands of pages of evidence about the case from Nifong Tuesday, including 1,822 pages of forensic testing information indicating the accuser had DNA on her linked to several men, but not to any Duke lacrosse players.
Winstead gained extensive experience with sex-offense matters during her stint in Durham.
Attorney General Roy Cooper appointed her and Coman to the lacrosse case on Saturday after Nifong asked to be removed.
The litigation has threatened Nifong's career, showered the Durham legal system with unprecedented publicity and divided the community along lines of race and class.
Nifong faces N.C. State Bar charges that he made unethical comments about the Duke affair in its infancy, including an assertion that some lacrosse players were criminal "hooligans" whose alleged sexual assault on an exotic dancer last March was racially motivated.
A hearing on those allegations will be held in May and could result in anything from exoneration to a warning letter to disbarment for Nifong.
In addition, Nifong's colleagues in the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys recently suggested he remove himself from the lacrosse case.
When Winstead worked with Nifong, both were assistant prosecutors in Durham.
Nifong went on to become chief of his office by gubernatorial appointment in 2005, then won a four-year term in November's general election.
Some lawyers said Tuesday that a former Nifong colleague was an unusual choice to help prosecute the lacrosse case, since Nifong's previous handling of it is an important issue.
"She may not be investigating Mike, but she's investigating Mike's work," said attorney Alex Charns, who represents an unindicted Duke lacrosse player.
"There's no distinction," Charns added. "His [Nifong's] conduct is part and parcel of this prosecution. There's no way to untangle that."
Still, Charns said that despite appearances, he saw no outright conflict of interest on Winstead's part.
Many other attorneys agreed, saying Winstead has no conflict because she is prosecuting only the lacrosse case and not Nifong himself.
"She has had no connection with the Durham District Attorney's Office for years," said lawyer Mark Edwards. "And she never did work for Mike. She just worked with him. I see no problem."
In fact, state regulations would have allowed the attorney general -- without creating a conflict -- to let the lacrosse prosecution be taken over by someone who still works in Nifong's office. Other options were to call in a district attorney from another county or, as was done, appoint special prosecutors from the N.C. Department of Justice.
When asked Tuesday if her agency saw any possible conflict with the Winstead appointment, Department of Justice spokeswoman Noelle Talley said only, "We have complete confidence in our special prosecutions attorneys."
The lacrosse defense team had planned to argue significant motions during the first week of February. Included is a motion contending that police, at Nifong's direction, used an illegal and unconstitutional photo lineup to identify three defendants in the case: Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans.
If a judge were to grant that motion in full, it might suffice to get the case thrown out, many observers have said.
But court officials now predict that, because boxes of documentation must be reviewed, Winstead and Coman will not be ready to argue such major issues by early next month.
The schedule had not been revised as of Tuesday, however.
The three defendants are charged with restraining the accuser in a bathroom and committing a first-degree sex offense against her during an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. on the night of March 13-14, 2006. Initially, they also were charged with rape, but Nifong dismissed those allegations last month after the woman changed her story.
In 1992, Winstead prosecuted a Durham case in which Donald D. Farrow received a life prison term -- with parole eligibility after 20 years -- for raping and committing other sex offenses against a co-worker who asked him for a ride home.
A year later in Durham, Winstead got another life sentence for Sammy Lee Young, who pleaded guilty to accidentally murdering a 17-year-old girl as he sprayed a drug house with bullets. Investigators said Young was gunning for a group of narcotics dealers, but the unintended victim was not involved with drugs.
Winstead, who received an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University in 1978 and a law degree from the same school in 1981, is a former assistant district attorney for Wake County as well as Durham County. She has accumulated 12 years of experience with the state Attorney General's Office.
Cable News Network (CNN) hosted a special report on the lacrosse case hosted by Paula Zahn live from the Durham County Courthouse on Tuesday night. The special was entitled, "The Duke Assault Case: A Question of Race." The early part of the program featured the headline "Racism in America" posted prominently on the screen.
In the report, CNN released its own poll of Durham residents which found that 27 percent of all those polled believe the alleged victim's accusations, and that that number soars to 41 percent among what CNN described as "nonwhite" Durham residents.
CNN also interviewed a woman it identified only as a cousin of the accuser. The woman said the accuser's family believes the allegations the accuser has made but is disappointed with Nifong's handling of the case and expects all charges against the lacrosse players to be dropped.
"I feel [Nifong] used this as an opportunity to get elected," the cousin said. "I feel duped."
She went on to say of her cousin, "She's not the type of person to have fabricated this story."
Finally, the cousin said she expects the accuser, who has been silent publicly, to speak out soon, especially since she has retained "representation."
"She no longer wants to be Public Enemy No. 1," the cousin said of the accuser. "She wants to speak out and I think she will."
Meanwhile, it was learned Tuesday that the U.S. Attorney General's Office will not probe Nifong's handling of the lacrosse case, as U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., of Farmville, had requested. Jones was told by letter last week that it would be "premature" to initiate a federal investigation while criminal charges are pending.
But a Jones spokeswoman said the congressman didn't consider the matter ended and still planned to meet soon with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.
"He's still pushing forward," the spokeswoman said.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-809809.cfm
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/index.cfm#809712
Fire Brodhead, Nifong
I hope the residents of Durham and the alumni of Duke finally do the honorable thing and force the firing/resignation of District Attorney Mike Nifong and the esteemed university president, Richard Brodhead.
What a black eye for your city and your university. Get rid of them and go about getting your good name back.
Jackie Holfelder
Port St. Lucie, Fla.
January 17, 2007
Nifong embarrasses
After following the Duke rape case, I have arrived at only one conclusion: District Attorney Mike Nifong is an incompetent liar who has embarrassed the North Carolina legal system.
Nifong deserves disbarment and jail time for his misadventure in this matter. He has withheld known information, while reporting speculation. His future should lie outside the legal system, perhaps selling bogus diet programs to the gullible.
Robert Weber
Columbus, Ohio
January 17, 2007
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