http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/farmer/in...6170.xml&coll=1
Why isn't the legal profession on the case?
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The Bush presidency isn't the only American institution that has fallen on tough times. The legal profession (and maybe legal education as well) has acquired a pair of black eyes in re cent days.
Beating up on lawyers is like shooting fish in a barrel. As icons of American life, lawyers rank right down there with used car salesmen and newspapermen. They don't have a big following. But what two of our legal brethren -- North Carolina District Attorney Michael Ni fong and Charles Stimson, a Pentagon official overseeing detainee af fairs -- have lately been guilty of should not be allowed to pass without appropriate notice.
If Nifong is not disciplined severely, maybe even disbarred, then the notion of "legal justice" is an oxymoron. And Stimson is simply another Bush right-winger whose understanding of constitutional protection for civil liberties is so shoddy that he should never again be allowed any role in American government.
Nifong is pretty well known by now. He's the runaway DA who had a trio of Duke lacrosse players indicted for rape and other charges despite a glaring lack of evidence and a complainant with a checkered record for the truth. To add to his improper behavior, Nifong publicly branded the players "hooligans" in a transparent attempt to poison the potential juror pool against them, staged a lineup that violated all guidelines for fairness and objectivity and withheld from defense attorneys the fact that DNA evidence showed the woman complaining of rape had indeed had sexual contact -- but not with any of the lacrosse players.
Nifong's case, bad as it was from the beginning, has gotten worse. The alleged victim has changed her story about the rape more often that the Bush administration has changed its rationale for attacking Iraq. Now she's not sure she was raped at all -- and if she was, it was by two, not three, of the players.
Why did Nifong do it? Apparently to salvage a sinking political career. The players were white, the alleged victim was black, Nifong was facing a tough re-election and the black vote was critical. Now Ni fong has asked the state attorney general to take over the case. But that's more chicanery -- he knew he was about to be removed from the case in any event. Nifong's a classic example of why prosecutors at any level should not be elected.
Stimson's offense is, if anything, even worse. Citing a list of private attorneys from major firms who represent Guantánamo detainees, Stimson, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, suggested in a radio interview that American corporations should dump these at torneys and their firms. Stimson's statement, as quoted in several newspapers, was crudely political and constitutionally grotesque:
"Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there? And you know what, it's shocking ... I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001 (actually, most detainees had nothing to do with 9/11), those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have a major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."
Indeed, we do want to watch it play out -- if only to make sure these law firms, doing the kind of pro bono work that is a glory of the legal profession, are not subjected to the ham-handed government pressure that Stimson seems to favor and that is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes rather than a constitutional democracy.
What is most disturbing about the Nifong and Stimson cases is the tardy and timid response by those in authority who should have spoken out in protest at once.
Nifong finally has been removed from the Duke case, and the North Carolina Bar Association has begun an inquiry. But what took so long? Let's hope that when the bar association gets done with him, Ni fong will be reduced to writing wills for paupers.
Stimson has drawn some fire from legal scholars. But where are the state and national bar associations? Surely they're still committed to the right to an adequate defense and understand it's something burned into the very begin nings of this country and the whole concept of lawyers and the law.
No example of the role the law and great lawyers have played in the evolution of the American ideal of justice is more legendary than John Adams' defense of the British regulars who shot and killed civilians during the Boston Massacre. Guess Stimson never heard of him.
John Farmer is The Star-Ledger's national political correspondent. He may be reached at jfarmer@starled ger.com.
http://www.cherokeesentinel.com/news/2007/...pinion/017.html
To the Editor
Duke U. scandal
If you've followed the Duke University Lacrosse sexual assault case, (and because of national media attention, it's difficult not to...) you've probably come up with some opinions of your own. My main source of information on that case has been the print and electronic media. Frankly, I've cultivated a healthy distrust of the media, nevertheless, I do have an opinion. I've felt that D.A. Nifong's politically motivated grandstanding, behavior, and conduct bordered on negligence. His comments and actions have brought discredit on that state of North Carolina, himself and the legal profession. The full impact of his actions may be difficult to measure but undoubtedly contributed to additional pain, expense and suffering of the accused and their families. At the same time, he poorly served the state's judicial interests on behalf of the alleged victim. At some point one should've asked, has this district attorney caused irreparable damage to this case? Also, where was the NC Attorney General while D.A. Nifong was running amuck on national TV and elsewhere?
I was glad to see the North Carolina Bar Association step up to the plate and file these charges against prosecutor Nifong. In so doing, the watchdog group moved to uphold high standards of the law profession and accountability to the citizens of the great state of North Carolina. Unfortunatly, some folks may have the opinion that the NC Bar Association acted only after the threat of investigation by the U.S. Attorney General's office. While true that there was a request for the Attorney General's office to look into the case, the NC Bar Association apparently had opened the case against D.A. Nifong slightly more than two weeks after he became involved with the case. It's too bad it took so long to file the ethics charge, but sometimes the wheels just turn slowly.
J.R. Cassady