http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/534648.html
Published: Jan 21, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 21, 2007 02:40 AM
Winstead thrust into spotlight
Low-profile second-in-command in lacrosse prosecution known for dedication
MARY DOMBALIS WINSTEAD
BORN: Dec. 25, 1956
FAMILY: Married with three children. Her parents are Floye Dombalis and the late John Dombalis, owners and operators of the Mecca Restaurant in downtown Raleigh. She has two brothers. Her older brother is also a lawyer, and her younger brother runs the Mecca with their mother.
EDUCATION: Associate in arts, St. Mary's College; bachelor of arts, Wake Forest University; J.D., Wake Forest University.
WORK EXPERIENCE: Assistant district attorney, Wake County, from October 1981 to December 1986; assistant district attorney, Durham County, from April 1987 to March 1994; has worked in the special prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office since April 1994.
Benjamin Niolet, Staff Writer
Mary Dombalis Winstead has kept a low profile throughout her 25-year career as a prosecutor. That's over now.
A week ago, Attorney General Roy Cooper appointed Winstead, 50, as a special prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case. She will work with the lead prosecutor, Jim Coman.
Winstead's friends, family and colleagues say she is an ideal choice to handle such a case.
"She is a very competent and able lawyer," said Bill Thomas, a Durham lawyer who represented an unindicted lacrosse player and knew Winstead when she was a Durham prosecutor. "I found her to be most professional in her dealings with other lawyers and would certainly think with her expertise, she would be well-qualified to assume responsibility for the prosecution of a case like this."
Through a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Winstead declined requests for an interview. Associates, friends and family members described Winstead as a competitive person who was headed for the life of a prosecutor early on.
They also say she is a compassionate person who bakes a serious pound cake and can run people out of a room with her overenthusiastic cheering for Wake Forest University sports.
When she was 5, Winstead was already talking about being a lawyer, said her mother, Floye Dombalis. Winstead was one of three children born to Floye and her husband, John Dombalis. The couple ran the Mecca Restaurant, the downtown Raleigh institution that for 76 years has been popular with lawyers and justices of the state Supreme Court.
At home, the Dombalis children followed a strict set of rules. Their mother typed them out. Bedtimes were absolute -- Mary's was 8:30 p.m. in 1964. TV was forbidden on school nights. Failure to abide by the rules, Floye Dombalis wrote, would result in revocation of privileges. There weren't any to revoke, her children would later joke.
Young Mary, the middle child, was concerned with the rules. She documented the times her brothers would get home and gave the information to her parents. Later, at St. Mary's College in Raleigh, she was chairwoman of the Honor Board, the organization concerned with campus discipline.
After receiving an associate's degree from St. Mary's, she enrolled at Wake Forest. After graduation in 1978, she enrolled at the university's law school.
Marilyn R. Forbes, who has been friends with Winstead since law school, said Winstead is a gifted lawyer who could easily pursue a lucrative career in private practice. But she has remained a prosecutor.
"I have a lot of respect for people who really dedicate their career to the public sector, to serving the needs of the justice system, the people of North Carolina," Forbes said.
In 1981, she got her law degree and went to work as an assistant in the Wake County District Attorney's Office. In three months, she became an assistant prosecutor. In April 1987, she went to work in the Durham District Attorney's Office. In Durham, Winstead prosecuted rape, vehicular manslaughter, murder, armed robbery and trafficking cases.
Winstead and District Attorney Mike Nifong worked together. Although Winstead will not be charged with investigating Nifong, part of her job will be to review his actions in the lacrosse case. Alex Charns, a defense lawyer in Durham, said the fact that Winstead and Nifong were colleagues in Durham could raise eyebrows. Charns said he thinks Winstead can do the job, but in such a highly scrutinized case, the link seemed an unnecessary risk.
"I don't understand why the attorney general would do that, to put Mary Winstead in that situation," Charns said.
In April 1994, Winstead moved to the special prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office. She was responsible for handling cases that were referred to the office as well as cases before the state appeals court.
She has handled high-profile cases including a scandal in 1999 involving a Wayne County Sheriff's deputy who was accused of having sex with inmates at the county jail. In 2005, she prosecuted an insurance fraud ring in which several people were accused of staging car wrecks for money.
Winstead is a warm friend, wife and mother, say her friends and family. But when a case is approaching, they all know to leave her alone, her mother said.
"When she has a trial or she is going before the Supreme Court justices for oral arguments, her nights and days are completely dedicated to that," Dombalis said. "I think she blocks everything out when it's time to go to work."
Staff writer Benjamin Niolet can be reached at 956-2404 or bniolet@newsobserver.com.
http://www.newsobserver.com/114/story/534740.html
Published: Jan 21, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 21, 2007 02:41 AM
Duke prosecutor treads familiar ground
JAMES J. COMANSpecial deputy attorney general
WORK: Greensboro police attorney, 1973-1978; Greensboro assistant district attorney, 1978-1985; N.C. Department of Justice, 1985-present (senior deputy attorney general, SBI director, special deputy attorney general).
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree, St. Anselm College, Manchester, N.H.; J.D., Wake Forest University.
FAMILY: Married, two daughters, two granddaughters.
HONORS: Twice awarded North Carolina's highest civilian award, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, by Republican Gov. Jim Martin and Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt.
Joseph Neff, Staff Writer
In the coming weeks, the new lead prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case can expect a deja vu moment when he meets with defense attorneys who will argue that charges should be dropped.
Special Deputy Attorney General Jim Coman had a similar meeting in 2003 with some of the same lawyers when they tried to persuade Coman to drop charges against former death row inmate Alan Gell.
Gell had been convicted in 1998 after prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office withheld evidence that could have proved his innocence. In some respects, Gell's case foreshadowed the one against former Duke lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty. Previous prosecutors had withheld evidence favorable to the defense. There was no physical evidence against the defendant. The timeline had major holes. There was a solid alibi.
Coman chose to retry Gell.
It was just the most recent high-profile case for Coman, who has spent a career in the spotlight. He prosecuted members of the Ku Klux Klan after the fatal shootings of five Communist Workers Party members in Greensboro in 1979. He served as former Attorney General Lacy Thornburg's "junkyard dog," was outspoken as director of the State Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted or investigated many public officials.
Coman was appointed Jan. 13 by state Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the highly charged case in which the three defendants are accused of sexually assaulting an escort dancer at a team party in March. A day earlier, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong had recused himself amid a storm of criticism and ethics charges from the N.C. State Bar.
"I've heard others say he [Coman] is a bulldog and mean and tough, but my experiences have always been very pleasant," said Joseph B. Cheshire V, one of Gell's attorneys who now represents one of the lacrosse defendants. "He's always been reasonable."
A retrial for Gell
Cheshire, his partner Bradley Bannon, and Jim Cooney of Charlotte are lawyers in the Duke case who represented Gell in his second trial. When Cooney helped win him a new trial in 2002, Gell had already spent seven years behind bars, four on death row.
In spring 2003, Coman met with Cooney, Cheshire and Bannon.
Cooney tied together the evidence of innocence in a PowerPoint presentation that foreshadowed many elements of the lacrosse case. Coman chose to go forward, but the opposing lawyers still speak highly of him.
The Gell case differs from the Duke case in several key respects, Cooney said. A crime had definitely occurred: The murder victim was found in his bedroom riddled with shotgun pellets.
"You had two girls who testified that they were eyewitnesses to a murder, and a jury believed them,'' Cooney said. "And the victim's family was pushing for a retrial.''
Coman was lead prosecutor at Gell's 2004 retrial. The jury quickly found Gell not guilty.
"It was a difficult case for him to retry," Cooney said. "He and [assistant prosecutor] Pat Murphy tried as ethical and honorable a case as I've ever seen."
Coman, 64, declined to be interviewed for this story. Colleagues say the prosecutor can spin a yarn when he has a mind to, usually in salty and colorful language.
"Jim is fun to talk with; he can tell some tales," said Steve Royster, a Mount Airy defense lawyer who has faced Coman in several cases. "He loves to tell war stories, and that is very entertaining when you represent the other side. Now, he may be very personable, but he doesn't cut you any slack.''
A life in law
The son of a Rahway, N.J., police chief, Coman has been in law enforcement his entire life. His first job as a lawyer was as an attorney for the Greensboro police. In 1978, he became an assistant district attorney.
One of his first, toughest and highest-profile cases was the murder prosecution of Ku Klux Klan members in Greensboro in 1980. Five members of the Communist Workers Party were killed during a "Death to the Klan" rally. TV cameras captured the 88 seconds of mayhem: Some party members rushed the KKK and Nazi convoy as it arrived and pounded on the cars. Klansmen pulled guns and fired, and several communists fired back. Five communists were killed.
Coman was one of three prosecutors on the case caught between hate groups. The victims' families refused to cooperate with the prosecutors and actively undermined the trial. On the first day of jury selection, dozens of party members rushed the courtroom, caused a riot with security and pulled fire alarms as they fled the building.
Widows of the victims were gagged and removed after they denounced the trial as a sham devised by the bourgeoisie. Someone poured skunk-scented oil on the floor. One party member testified, but he refused to identify photographs of his bullet-riddled colleagues and launched into a tirade that revolution was imminent.
An all-white jury acquitted the Klansmen. Coman and his fellow prosecutors discussed the case and their frustrations at length in a 2005 interview with the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which published a summary of the interview.
According to that summary, the prosecutors said the communists, by refusing to humanize their loved ones, reduced themselves to cardboard caricatures of rabid Marxists. Coman primarily blamed the communists: They were the provocateurs, he said, and the KKK members were so foolish to need to establish their manhood that they fell into a trap.
"To me, the conduct of the CWP -- as reprehensible as the Klan was -- that they won't even admit they did anything wrong, for me, they bear much more responsibility for what happened,'' said the summary of Coman's interview. "If just one of them has the moral fiber to get up and say publicly that they have regrets for what they did, you can call me up and say I am full of [expletive]."
Coman moved to Raleigh in 1985, when Thornburg, then the attorney general, hired him to work in the special prosecutions section. Thornburg, now a federal judge, used to refer to Coman as "my junkyard dog." Colleagues presented him with a "buzz saw award" -- a saw blade mounted on a plaque.
In 1993, Attorney General Mike Easley -- now governor -- named Coman as SBI director. Coman oversaw the investigation of Alexander Killens, director of the Division of Motor Vehicles, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He also supervised the investigation of Rufus Edmisten, then secretary of state and a former state attorney general. Edmisten resigned.
Coman returned to the Attorney General's Office in 1999 at Easley's request, in part because Coman made blunt remarks to a News & Observer columnist about a case in which two Hispanic men languished in jail for eight months, awaiting SBI lab tests that would exonerate them.
"Those guys oughta be thanking us," Coman said. "Six years ago there wouldn't have been any damn tests. Do I feel sorry for the guys? No. Is it fair? No. No one ever said life was fair."
For the most part, Coman has avoided speaking with the media since then. He has focused largely on prosecuting public officials, judges and law enforcement officers.
Gell aftershocks
After Gell's acquittal, the N.C. State Bar brought misconduct charges against the two assistant attorneys general who withheld the evidence at Gell's first trial, including a tape recording of the state's star witness saying she had "to make up a story" for police.
Coman appeared as a character witness and supported the prosecutors' decision not to give Gell's attorneys the tape. The tape could be used to "impeach" the witness or undercut her credibility, Coman testified, but didn't have to be turned over.
The U.S. Supreme Court first ruled in 1972 that prosecutors must turn over impeachment material in criminal trials.
This interpretation of constitutional law from the lead prosecutor in the Attorney General's Office proved controversial. At a State Bar hearing in 2005, Coman defended himself under close questioning by Cooney, his adversary in the Gell and Duke lacrosse cases.
"The mere fact that something can be impeaching in and of itself does not automatically require that it has to be turned over," Coman said.
Coman conceded that Cooney, Cheshire and Bannon used the tape to great effect on the jury, who twice listened to it during deliberations before finding Gell not guilty.
"The tape came in, and I certainly do believe that it had an influence on the jury," Coman said. "For me to come in here and say, 'No, it wasn't impeaching' would have been ludicrous."
Staff writer Joseph Neff can be reached at 829-4516 or jneff@newsobserver.com.