Posted on 01/15/2007 9:50:37 AM PST by freespirited
Forced by allegations of prosecutorial misconduct to recuse himself, the district attorney who drove the Duke lacrosse sexual-assault case could end up losing much more than the opportunity to try a case he still supports.
For Mike Nifong, the missteps of the past 10 months have the potential to end a career that started nearly 30 years ago.
"You don't easily recover from something like this," said James Coleman, a law professor at Duke University and a frequent Nifong critic. "That's what's so unfortunate about this. He had a career - a long career, a reputation of being an honest and fair prosecutor - and for some reason, his conduct in this case was inconsistent with that.
"It's just bizarre," he said. "This is the biggest case by far that he's handled, and he didn't do a very good job, and I think that's going to haunt him."
When Nifong asked the N.C. Attorney General's office Friday to take over the case of three lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a woman hired to strip at a team party, he was less than two weeks into his first full term as Durham County's elected district attorney.
Now he must defend himself against ethics charges that could lead to his disbarment. If N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper dismisses the case against Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann - and legal experts have said that there appears to be little evidence to support the charges - their families might try to file a civil lawsuit against Nifong.
If and when he returns to the courtroom, Nifong will have to rebuild a reputation tainted by the vast attention generated by the lacrosse case.
"Nothing happens in a vacuum," said Garry Frank, a district attorney in four North Carolina counties and the president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys. "It's something that he and his office will have to work through. It will be a challenge for him."
The conference offered Nifong assistance in September - an offer that went unanswered. Frank said that Nifong appeared surprised in December that his colleagues were concerned about his handling of the case. They later formally called on Nifong to recuse himself.
"Folks that have to do the things we do on a day-to-day basis quickly learn to take good advice when you can get it," Frank said.
A more immediate concern for Nifong is the pending ethics charges that accuse him of making misleading and inflammatory comments about the lacrosse team, including calling them "nothing but a bunch of hooligans." A hearing on those charges is scheduled for May.
John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University, thinks that more ethics charges are forthcoming. The director of a private lab has said that he and Nifong agreed to keep out of a report given to the defense results of DNA testing that found genetic material from several unknown men on the accuser's body and underwear, and found that none of the DNA matched that of the three indicted players.
While the defense was eventually given the test results, as required by state law, it wasn't until months later.
Joseph Kennedy, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said that the accuser's Dec. 21 interview with an investigator, in which she changed several key details in her description of the attack, is also a concern.
Among the changes, the accuser offered a new timeline that put the attack outside of the apparent alibi window established by Seligmann's attorneys. She also said she could no longer be sure that she was penetrated vaginally by a penis, which could have helped Nifong explain to a jury why there was no DNA evidence.
"It's just troubling that ... nine months after the event, there's an interview and the interview reveals this fact, which minimizes the importance of the evidence they didn't turn over," Kennedy said.
As a prosecutor, Nifong enjoys broad but not absolute immunity from civil litigation, and the families of the indicted players have hinted that they plan to sue. Asked in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes what she would say to Nifong if they met, Evans' mother said, "Mr. Nifong, you've picked on the wrong families ... and you will pay every day for the rest of your life."
Some of Nifong's harshest critics have also suggested that he face criminal charges, but Kennedy said that those charges "should only be reserved for the most egregious types of misconduct. And it's too early to say whether this might be one of those cases."
Nifong has no plans to resign and is intent on carrying on with cases as the district attorney in Durham County, said his attorney, David Freedman.
True, true.
You’re just completely missing the point. They were FALSELY accused of committing a crime. A serious one. It didn’t matter whether Crystal was a stripper, an Avon lady, or delivering pizza. It would have been all the same. She made a false allegation. A university president & members of faculty made a rush to judgment in order to cater to a segment of the community. An overly ambitious DA took advantage of the situation to get elected. The fact that she is a stripper has nothing to do with it.
Those boys were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong women. Poor choices, bad consequences...UGH
Wrong place wrong time happens to all of us at one time or another.
"Some of Nifong's harshest critics have also suggested that he face criminal charges, but Kennedy said that those charges 'should only be reserved for the most egregious types of misconduct. And it's too early to say whether this might be one of those cases.'"
Regrettably, there is no allowance in the law for hanging this SOB.
You’re just completely missing the point. They were FALSELY accused of committing a crime. A serious one. It didn’t matter whether Crystal was a stripper, an Avon lady, or delivering pizza. It would have been all the same. She made a false allegation. A university president & members of faculty made a rush to judgment in order to cater to a segment of the community. An overly ambitious DA took advantage of the situation to get elected. The fact that she is a stripper has nothing to do with it.
____
You are correct.
CGM accused three other men years ago of raping her.
Guess what? She wasn't a stripper at the time and the guys were not at a "stripper party."
Lawyers have their "standards", the rest of the human race has ours.
I think Nifong is scum, but she made her accusations before it got to him. He didn't manipulate her into making any accusations. She did this on her own.
In fact, we might find that the accusations she made bear little resemblance to the charges Nifong came out with.
Which accusations are you talking about? She's given many stories, so you need to be specific here.
The guy is unethical, but also an idiot. No one questioned him initially due to political correctness, but he offended a lot of powerful people here by taking on Duke athletics and showed his misconduct in a very public case. You wonder how many poor people he has railroaded like this to get a conviction rate or for political or corrupt purposes.
I still think this is what's gonna happen.
DA, "I object Your Honor! The rape charges have been dropped. Any testimony or evidence regarding those charges are no longer pertinent to this trial."
Little early for such heavy drinking, isn't it? Then again maybe you guys on the planet Zeenon routinely drink your breakfasts..
This case sure has a way of bringing out the cockroaches.
His "career" should be over and he should be in jail.
Different actions have different ranges of possible natural consequences. Should a person who decides to juggle flaming torches in a sandpit, without any particular idea of how to catch them properly, complain if his hands or arms get burned? No--such injuries would be a natural and expected consequence of his actions. Should he complain if the BATF declared that a stick with a burning rag on the end was a "destructive device" and decided to shoot his dogs and burn down his house with a pyrotechnic tear gas grenade? I'd say he should. While it's true that juggling flaming torches isn't exactly prudent, that doesn't mean one shouldn't complain if the consequences go well beyond any reasonable causal relationship.
She accused non-existent people. It wasn't until she was pressured be Nifong et al. that she changed her allegations to point ot real people.
Justice.
God knows what Nifong said or did to her to manipulate her to make the accusations she did.
She made her accusations of rape before Nifong came into play.
She deliberately accused non-existend people of rape, for the purpose of avoiding being confined in detox. She had no intention of those accusations particularly hurting anyone (since it's impossible to hurt people who don't exist) nor any fear of anyone countering the accusations (since non-existent people can't fight back).
It was only Nifong et al. got involved that her accusations changed to point to real people. And given the transcripts of the photo ID session there's a pretty clear causal relationship.
If Nifong were still prosecutor and the case went to trial, I would expect something like that. Though I'm not sure whether the defense attorneys would get a chance to respond before the judge bellowed out "OVERRULED!"
The goal of rape-shield laws is to prevent a defense attorney from arguing that a woman who is 'easy' lacks the moral fiber to be a truthful witness, and to prevent a defense attorney from salting the wounds of a woman who (if the charges have any merit) has already been through Hell.
Had CGM told the truth from the start about having turned tricks shortly before going to the party, the prosecution might have been able to argue for the exclusion of those statements and the DNA supporting them. But CGM lied. While being a loose woman might not relate directly to CGM's credibility, lying about it certainly does.
Further, if Nifong introduced any testimony about CGM's "injuries", that would make relevant any alternate explanations for how she got them. I'm not sure what the rules would be if Nifong declined to introduce any discussion of "injuries" but the defense wanted to introduce it to show how trivial they were.
In any case, the rape-shield laws aren't going to protect CGM from embarassment, but that doesn't mean Nifong wouldn't have tried, were he still the prosecutor. I would hope, though, the case would be dropped before trial rendering the issue moot.
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