Posted on 01/24/2007 6:38:29 AM PST by FoxRun
Just heard via Fox News Alert that additional charges have been levied against Nifong. Charges are that he failed to disclose and/or hid the DNA evidence (that exonerated the 3 players charged).
Don't forget, the Bar filed charges and then expanded the charges. VERY UNUSUAL. So much for character.
Abb put a link to it in post 292 on this thread just above ours. If you are not on their pings lists you need to freep mail abb and howlin and have them add you. [Each has a separate ping list so you want to be on both. There are others but I am not sure who keeps them.] Abb also usually does put a link to the next thread when he pings us all to migrate over. [There was so much news this week that it was hard to get everyone on the same thread.]
Here is another link to the new thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1773908/posts
Lying to the committee is covered under F.
Nifong hasn't been ordered to make restitution yet.
Regardless of who stepped forward to help them, they still have competent representation. The resources affording that representation don't have to be their resources. The question is did/do they have it? Yes, they do.
I see on lying being covered under F.
As far as restitution, aggrevating circumstance would be before anyone was ordered to pay restitution. It would be a matter of showing willingness to make good. Of course this is probably meant more for cases were lawyers have looted estates or similar financial ethical violations.
Well, partly. But it usually means that the lawyer was ordered to make restitution as part of a previous sanction from the bar, and didn't do it. But yes, I think it also means that if a lawyer misappropriates monies from his trust account, comingles, overbills, bilks a client into gifting the lawyer money or property, bills for services not actually provided, or refuses to refund unused fees, those kinds of violations would be the basis for a complaint, and would occur before a disciplinary order was entered against the lawyer.
I really don't see how it would apply in this case.
Paying some restitution before a disciplinary action is commenced could be a mitigating factor, I would think, unless it was paid as a result of an administrative decision entered after forcing the client/victim into some sort of arbitration.
Baines case ends in mistrial
By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Jan 30, 2007 : 10:11 pm ET
DURHAM -- Jurors were unable to decide Tuesday whether Ricky Eugene Baines attempted to kill six teens outside MetroSport Athletic Club in 2005, but Baines will be tried again on those charges and also faces an unrelated charge of first-degree murder.
Superior Court Judge Osmond Smith declared a mistrial in the MetroSport case at midday Tuesday after jurors indicated they were hopelessly deadlocked at 7-5 and saw no chance of reaching unanimity.
It isn't known which way the jury was leaning.
A new trial date hasn't been set.
Baines, 22, is accused of shooting and wounding six young people at a private MetroSport swim party -- on Douglas Street -- in August 2005.
Evidence indicated that he and four others drove to the party, got into an altercation with rival gang members and opened fire after someone threw a rock through the window of the sport utility vehicle in which Baines and his companions were riding.
Among the most serious wounds, one victim was shot in the back, another through the arm and a third through the leg. A fourth still has a bullet in his neck because physicians reportedly fear the possible complications of surgical removal.
Jurors began deliberating the case on Monday and continued until just before noon on Tuesday, putting in about six hours of discussion before the mistrial was announced. At one point, they said an "intent-to-kill" clause in the charges against Baines was causing them difficulty.
The charges are officially titled assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury -- often shortened to attempted murder.
Defense lawyer Christopher Shella had argued that Baines was untruthfully implicated by codefendants out to exchange their testimony for generous plea bargains.
In a separate case, Baines is accused of first-degree murder in the January 2005 fatal shooting of George R. "Bull" Perry, whose body was found near a baseball field between Liberty and Holloway streets.
As with the MetroSport incident, police have said they believed the Perry homicide was gang-related.
Perry is being held without bond on the murder charge. However, his $2 million bond in the MetroSport cases was reduced Tuesday to $500,000.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-814570.cfm
Duke lacrosse hearing postponed 3 months
By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Jan 31, 2007 : 12:12 am ET
DURHAM -- A much-anticipated hearing scheduled for Monday to discuss key issues in the Duke lacrosse case will be delayed for three months.
The new date of May 7 was announced Tuesday as a team of special state prosecutors met for the first time with attorneys defending three players accused of first-degree sexual offense and kidnapping, and with Superior Court Judge Osmond Smith. The state Supreme Court has assigned Smith to oversee the highly publicized case.
Lawyers said the delay was necessary to allow the two newly appointed special prosecutors, James Coman and Mary Winstead from the state Attorney General's Office, to bring themselves up to speed.
They face reviewing thousands of pages of documents and other evidence before they can proceed.
The meeting was held behind closed doors in Durham County Superior Court and was not open to the media or public.
Afterward, Raleigh lawyer Wade Smith said the defense team had quickly forged a "very professional," "very cordial" and "very healthy" relationship with the new prosecutors.
"Thomas Jefferson would have been pleased," he quipped.
A central issue in the hearing is a defense allegation that police used an unconstitutional photo lineup at the direction of District Attorney Mike Nifong.
The woman who accused the players of sexually assaulting her during an off-campus party last March was under subpoena to appear at the hearing.
Coman and Winstead were assigned to the case this month after Nifong stepped aside in the face of mounting public and professional complaints that he had bungled it.
Winstead is a former Durham assistant district attorney who once worked with Nifong.
Wade Smith and Durham attorney Bill Cotter represent Collin Finnerty, who was a Duke sophomore when he and two others were indicted last spring on charges of kidnapping, raping and committing another first-degree sex offense against the accuser, then an exotic dancer.
Nifong dismissed the rape allegations in December after the woman changed her story, but felony kidnapping and sex-offense charges are still pending.
Finnerty and his codefendants, Reade Seligmann and David Evans, insist they are innocent.
"The case is in very good hands now," Wade Smith said Tuesday. "I'm sorry the case ever happened, but the case is in very good hands."
Despite the three-month delay, Wade Smith predicted the new prosecutors would not "drag their feet."
Raleigh lawyer Joe Cheshire, representing Evans, also lauded the new prosecutors in what doubled as a jab at Nifong's professionalism.
Cheshire previously had blasted Nifong, accusing him of unfairly rushing to judgment without sufficient evidence and of refusing to discuss information with the defense team that might show the players are innocent.
"We are excited to have professional prosecutors who are willing to sit down and engage us in conversation, are willing to fairly look at the case," Cheshire said Tuesday. "That's all we've asked for from the very beginning. We are excited that we are now engaged in a professional process."
Coman and Winstead had no comment about Tuesday's meeting.
But their boss, state Attorney General Roy Cooper, issued a statement saying the time between now and May would be used "to continue reviewing the case files, talking to the many people involved in the cases, and making sure that all [requests for information] have been responded to properly."
Cooper said earlier that, based on their review, his assistants could either dismiss the remaining charges or take them to trial.
If a hearing in the case had occurred Monday, defense lawyers planned to attack the reliability of a photo lineup in which the accuser told police April 4 that Evans "looks like one of the guys who assaulted me sort of."
But when she was shown a photo array on March 21, much closer to the time of the alleged assault, she failed to identify Evans in any way, according to defense attorneys.
In addition, the defense team contends Nifong coached police to use a photo lineup that was unconstitutional and "impermissibly suggestive" because it included only pictures of Duke lacrosse players and no one else, a violation of the Police Department's own policies.
If defense lawyers won that argument and succeeded in eliminating all identifications made from the photos, it theoretically could suffice to kill the prosecution's case.
Defense lawyers also had planned to argue next week that, if it goes to trial, the case should be moved to another county because of massive pretrial publicity that might make it impossible to find an impartial jury in Durham.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-814570.cfm
Leftist liberals do such wonderful things with the law: Nifong, the Clintons and Fitzpatrick.
Now, it is time for criminal and civil trials of Liefong, the Group of 88, $harpton, Je$$ie HiJack$on and the new Black Panthers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1810510/posts
DURHAM, N.C. — — Sitting on the stoop of his small wood-sided home, on a parcel of scrub pines carved from a former tobacco plantation, William Ragland, 76, said he wanted to see justice, and soon, in the Duke lacrosse case.
That would mean putting on trial not the lacrosse players, but the district attorney who led the early prosecution of the case, said Ragland.
“I was shocked by how Mr. Nifong did the whole thing. It was a cover-up. He had evidence that these boys did not rape her,” and improperly kept it secret, said Ragland. “
The link below will take you to a picture of the druggie ho that the two black Raci$ts, Rev Un$harpton and Je$$e HyJack$on lied about to make headlines and bucks for Je$$e and $harpton.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04122007/frontback.htm
It is time to debar LieFong, frog march him to criminal courts to be tried for conspiracy and malfeasance. Then frog march him over to civil trials by the players and their parents, the coaches and anyone who came close to being lynched by the black racist and mediots of America.
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