Posted on 06/16/2007 1:28:45 PM PDT by stinkerpot65
Edited on 06/16/2007 4:05:02 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Nifong Accepts Disbarment David Freedman, Mike Nifong's attorney, has just announced that Nifong has accepted that disbarment is an "appropriate" penalty, and has accepted both disbarment and waived the right to appeal.
(AP) RALEIGH, N.C. District Attorney Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, a disciplinary committee decided Saturday. Even the veteran prosecutor said the punishment was appropriate.
"This matter has been a fiasco. There's no doubt about it," said committee chairman F. Lane Williamson.
Nifong sat motionless, one hand resting over his mouth, as Williamson recounted how he engaged in dishonest and deceitful conduct. He said Nifong's early comments about the case — which included a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl" — were purposefully designed to boost his campaign for district attorney.
"At the time he was facing a primary, and yes, he was politically naive," Williamson said. "But we can draw no other conclusion that those initial statements he made were to further his political ambitions."
Nifong will not appeal the punishment, his lawyer said.
"He hopes this helps restore some of the confidence in the criminal justice system of North Carolina," said attorney David Freedman.
"On one hand, it's very devastating. On the other hand, he's been going through this process for a long time, so you always have some semblance of relief when the process is over with regardless of the outcome."
The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.
The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour on Saturday, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge — including the most serious allegations — that Nifong's actions involved "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."
State Bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker told the committee that as Nifong investigated the allegations that a stripper was raped and beaten at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team, he charged "forward toward condemnation and injustice," weaving a "web of deception that has continued up through this hearing."
"Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice," Brocker said.
The verdicts and the punishment did not appear to surprise Nifong, who acknowledged during sometimes tearful testimony Friday that he would likely be punished for getting "carried away a little bit" when talking about the case.
During Saturday's closing arguments, Williamson repeatedly interrupted Nifong's attorney, Dudley Witt, as he discussed the DNA testing.
Williamson questioned why it took several months for the defense to get DNA test results that found genetic material from several men in the accuser's underwear and body, but none from any lacrosse player.
"It wasn't just one little oversight," Williamson said later. "This was conduct over an extended period in a very high-profile case."
Aware of those test results, Nifong pressed ahead with the case anyway and won indictments against Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. State prosecutors later concluded the three players were "innocent" victims of a rogue prosecutor's "tragic rush to accuse."
Nifong made "multiple, egregious mistakes" as he pursued the charges, but not intentionally, his attorney said in closing statements.
"It didn't click," Witt said as he tried to explain one of his client's errors. "His mind is just his mind. That's the way it works. It just didn't click."
Brocker said Nifong had to have known he was making improper comments to reporters. Nifong said he regretted some of his statements, including a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl."
He also focused on when Nifong learned about the full extent of the DNA test results and when he shared that information with the defense.
Nifong gave defense attorneys an initial report on the DNA testing in May 2006 that said private lab DNA Security Inc. had been unable to find a conclusive match between the accuser and any lacrosse players.
But lab director Brian Meehan testified this week that he told Nifong as early as April 10, 2006 — a week before Seligmann and Finnerty were indicted — about the more detailed test results.
Nifong testified that when he gave the defense the initial report, he "believed at the time that I had given them everything."
The disciplinary hearing committee had the choice of suspending Nifong's law license or taking it away entirely.
Nifong told the panel hearing the case Friday that he would resign from his post as Durham County district attorney over his handling of the rape charges.
The players' attorneys have pledged to seek criminal contempt charges next week in Durham.
Add the lying ho who started all of this mess in the first place.
Personally, I don’t care about a few youthful indiscretions if someone has proven their mettle otherwise. If it takes looking over youthful idiocy to get good and decent people into office then I suggest we all learn to let bygones be bygones.
The media will slam and smear people even if they have to make things up, Rathergate was more than enough proof of that. We’re just going to have to grow thicker skins and tell the media to bugger off.
Otherwise we’re going to get keep getting greedy, power mad liars who will keep running the country into the ground.
White men can’t dance.
What do y’all think?
Could they have done more than disbar him? What further penalty should there be?
How is this different than what Libby purportedly is in jail for: lying to a grand jury?
I hope so. I would like to see one of the crooked BATF agents busted, along with the crooked judges and federal prosecutors they have in their pockets.
Any change Nifong HAS $10 million? Might as well sue him for a couple million more for lap dances cuz they won't see a dime from him. Now Duke on the other hand.....
This party began when boomers were teenagers. The next party is going to be when the last nail is nailed in the last coffin of the world's most destructive generation. It is not so funny that this is the generation that began with the view that the system is corrupt and end, holding the levers of power, with the view that you must trust the system. What about the Constitution, god-given morality and judgment based upon leading a useful life.
Absolutely....I have been praying for even one of our elected leaders to do this....just ridicule stupid questions from the media...stop being so PC ..it is getting embarassing....past embarrasing...getting dangerous, like getting a lot of us killed. The muslims have promised to kill us all, and I, for one, believe them.
The greedy, power mad liers that we are saddled with at the present don't seem to believe that the U.S. is in grave danger from mohammadians...so will we have the right to capture them and take them to Gitmo when the muslim attacks finally come?
I guess my point of all of this is that I hold out a small hope that decent people of honor and courage will choose to risk the political rectal exam that is our political process today.
Just witness the people that the 'rats have trotted out to run for pres. so far...all socalist/communists running the gammet from far left to lunatic left....
I don't even have confidence that our one man-one vote system will be descerning or even caring enough to tell the good guys from the bad guys....
more furniture may be looted from the White House.
That’s her name! Thank you :) I haven’t watched soaps in a long time, and I’m getting bad at names. She’s a very talented actress, and I can’t imagine how she felt through her son’s ordeal.
What goes around comes around...Always!
If Nifong is disbarred, it will give him something in common with Mr. Clinton.
And the accuser herself needs to be fully prosecuted for her false allegations. She started the whole mess.
I have heard the asking price starts at 20 mil. After seeing Mr. Evans testimony and a bit of Mrs. Seigleman’s there ain’t going to be a trial over civil damages.
I never made the connection between libertarians and lawyers. It would make sense, especially for the few remaining lawyers intent on upholding the law as our founders intended.
I think he's already settled.
(and it's lacrosse --the sport, not LaCrosse --a town in Wisconsin)
Oh hoho, the BATF. Stormtroopers of the Republic.
I suppose it’s only your kind of ‘karma’ when a jaywalker gets killed by the getaway car of some bank robbers.
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