Look, they've put up a statue in your honor!
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.
See 18 USC 242.
L
Fine by me too. This guy went in front of cameras like a movie star when this first began because he just "knew" that these young guys were guilty. Now that all the evidence has not been found, suddenly he is being a wall flower. Plus, to think that he suppressed evidence really annoys me. Those poor mothers on 60 minutes were very upset and rightly so. Granted the boys were not angels, but give me a break...rape? I will be so happy when Nifong is disbarred and ends up in jail for awhile thinking about the errors in his ways.
mark
Ugh, rent a hat?
Gross.
Get someone else's dandruff that way. Or lice.
Yuck.
The only problem is those of his ilk still will not have learned anything.
They will have learned to railroad innocent defendants in a less public manner.
I'm curious as to how you'd be able to sue the gang of 88? I can potentially see suing Duke for the suspensions but it seems to me the gang of 88, though disgusting human beings, were simply exercising their rights to free speech.
You can sue anyone for anything.
But for a serious answer, and subject to the disclaimer that I'm not a North Carolina attorney, I'd start with defamation and false light invasion of privacy, and then would throw in some conspiracy - you would need to research NC law to see exactly how to frame those allegations.
Yes, the 'listening statement' ad is highly inarticulate, but the attempt to tar the defendants as racists should be actionable. And, of course, some faculty members have gone far beyond the group statement: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/features/lacrosse_incident/lange_baker.html
's OK.We all get in :) a hurry sometimes.
I didn't know that Dr. Bronner had a FR account....
how do we know that?.......for all we know, Nifong could have tons of "misconduct" in his past that the public will never learn about.....
like someone said, if he could do this to rich kids, what does he do to poor kids......
The woman was not predisposed to identify any real people; while it may not be kosher to claim to be raped by little green men from outer space, that's still a far lesser crime than accusing specific individuals--especially if the accusation is done in a way that any reasonable person would regard as non-credible.
Would I be opposed to charging CGM with filing false police reports? Not really. Would that net her jail time? Some time in the pokey, but not much. The real villains are in the government. And sone of those people should receive decades in prison.
Whether she was "predisposed" to name real people, or not, is so irrelevant as to not be worth mentioning. She DID names names falsely. She sot these men and their families hundreds of thousands of dollars. How many months has it been? I think she's had time to recant her story, tell the truth, and take her medicine. The fact that she refuses to do so cannot be blamed on Nifong. She is criminal in that she will let these men go to prison rather than tell the truth. She is also a coward, and a fool. I have no sympathy for her at all, nor will I have any until she has come clean.
Eventually, after the crooks in the prosecutor's office made clear that the only way she could avoid having them make her life miserable was for her to finger someone.
I don't know what CGM was threatened with, but the way the lineups were handled it's pretty clear that she fingered the three men not because she wanted to, but because the crooks in the prosecutor's office wanted her to.
Certainly a morally-upright person would have refused to attack innocent people, even if such refusal meant taking some pretty heard lumps for her earlier actions. On the other hand, I still put far more blame on the coercer than the person who succomed.
Well, I blame them both equally. She violated her probaation by being drunk. Her fault. She initially lie to cover her ass on this. Nifong did not coerce her to do this. Her fault. She stuck by her story, named names. Nifong may have pressured her, but she succumbed. She didn't have to do this.
And to spare herself a few years in prison, or whateever the penalty is, she is prepared to send 3 innocent men to prison for 30 years?? Nothing Nifong did or threatened justifies this. She is a despicable slug.
Nifong pressed this and lied for his own benefit. This is in no way different from what the woman did. They were prepared to ruin the lives of innocent people who had done them no harm simply for their personal benefit.
I've read where NIfong did it for the pension. I hope he won't need it because he is supported for the rest of his life by either the NC or Federal prison system. He is a very dangerous man, and needs to be maade an example of.
I don't know what Nifong threatened her with, and I don't know enough about CGM to know how meaningful different threats would be.
Clearly, she's not 'mother of the year' material, but that doesn't mean she'd want her children taken away. She's clearly too messed up to care for her children properly, but that doesn't mean she has no feelings for them. Even messed-up people can sometimes have strong maternal instincts, and it would not be hard for a corrupt person to capitalize on that.
If a mother is faced with the choice of either losing her children or making some baseless accusations against some strangers, what's she supposed to do? I'll admit that in this case, were CGM fully rational, she'd realize that even if she avoids losing her kids today she's bound to do something stupid later and lose them anyhow, but I would expect CGM is too messed up to realize that.
Many parents would do 'anything' for their kids. CGM is pretty messed up, but I would suspect that maternal instinct has something to do with her naming specific people.
I always thought there was something fishy about him when he said he would not bring this case to trial until the spring of 2007. So much for speedy trials.
The point is, it doesn't matter at all. She made her choice to do wrong, and should pay.
The choice, having her children taken away for something she actually did, or putting 3 innocent men is prison for 30 years for something that didn't happen? The only right choice is not to accuse the men and throw yourself on the mercy of the court for the other. that is what she was supposed to do. The right thing. Nobody ever said the right thing would always be easy. If it was,...well you figure it out. You may think that I am being unnecessarily harsh and unforgiving. Maybe I am, but I don't think so. I have paid the price of another person's lies, and I find this a despicable thing to do. In fact, God agrees.
Deuteronomy 19:
16If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong;
17Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days;
18And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother;
19Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.
In fact, He considered it so important that He used up one of the Big 10 on it.
Exodus 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Notice, it does NOT say anything about lying in general, but specifically about bearing false witness against they neighbor.
Look, they've put up a statue in your honor!
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