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The New York
Times
Prosecutor in Duke
Case Is Disbarred
for Ethics Breaches
By DUFF WILSON,
nytimes.com on the Web. June 16, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C., June 16 — In a
case that has brought one surprise after another, a disciplinary hearing panel
found Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, guilty today of
ethical violations while pressing a false accusation of sexual assault against
three former Duke University lacrosse players. The panel then ruled that
Mr. Nifong should be disbarred.
But the ruling was almost an anticlimax to the case because in the penalty phase
of the five-day ethics hearing, David Freedman, one of Mr. Nifong’s lawyers,
told the panel that Mr. Nifong believed that disbarment was “the appropriate
punishment in this case.” The state also said it felt disbarment was
appropriate.
After deliberating for less than an hour, the panel stated that any punishment
short of disbarment would not be appropriate in the case.
In a lengthy statement, F. Lane Williamson, chairman of the disciplinary
committee, said that Mr. Nifong had received due process, “and that’s what was
nearly hijacked in the case of the Duke lacrosse defendants.”
Six of the charges against Mr. Nifong involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or
misrepresentation,” the most serious of the accusations against Mr. Nifong.
The developments come a day after Mr. Nifong said in tearful testimony that he
will voluntarily resign from office even though he insisted he had not lied
about evidence, the most serious charges against him.
While the panel was deliberating, Mr. Freedman said of his client, “He just
wants this over” and that he was “absolutely devastated.”
Mr. Freedman said Mr. Nifong “believes he’s received a fair hearing and he
accepts the findings of the commission.”
David C. Evans, the father of one of the lacrosse players, said: “My
reaction is we take no pleasure in this and that people should realize that the
North Carolina criminal justice system is strong.
“We’ve got the North Carolina Bar Association presenting this case and the North
Carolina attorney general making a fair and independent investigation.
North Carolina gives enormous discretion to their local prosecutors. This
is a case where the local prosecutor systematically abused that discretion and
that trust.“
In closing arguments on Friday, Doug Brock, attorney for the North Carolina
State Bar, the state agency bringing the case, said, “From his very first
involvement in this case, Mr. Nifong weaved a web of deception, which continued
up to this hearing.”
Mr. Brock called the prosecutor “a minister of injustice” who had hurt the Duke
lacrosse players, their families, real victims of sexual assault, and the
reputations of lawyers, prosecutors and the justice system.
Mr. Brock said Mr. Nifong had “immediately embarked on an unprecedented local
state and national media barrage” with loaded words like “reprehensible,”
“unconscionable” and “deep racial motivation.” And he said he had hidden
evidence showing at least four unidentified males had left DNA on the accuser’s
body and clothes, but none of the lacrosse players.
In closing arguments, one of Mr. Nifong’s attorneys, Dudley Witt, said he was an
“old-school prosecutor” who had never dealt with the media and never had a DNA
report other than from the state laboratory. While admitting many
mistakes, including inattention to the unknown DNA matches, Mr. Witt said, “He’s
a very truthful guy.”
“It is egregious mistakes, multiple egregious mistakes, but it is not
intentional conduct,” Mr. Witt said.
David Freedman, another attorney for Mr. Nifong, argued that he had a long
history of ethical behavior and his handling of the DNA report showed
carelessness but “no attempt at all to cover it up.”
Mr. Freedman said Mr. Nifong, 56, a prosecutor for nearly 29 years, would have
never risked his law license and career on hiding DNA evidence that he knew the
defense would find.
F. Lane Williamson, chairman of the ethics panel, responded that “there is no
rational explanation sometimes” for unethical or illegal behavior. “I
don’t know if we’ll ever know,” he said.
Mr. Nifong had admitted earlier this week to ethical violations in his media and
public comments in the early weeks of the case.
Closing arguments on that issue focused on his motives: Did he give dozens
of media interviews to pressure witnesses to come forward — as he claimed — or
to improve his political prospects?
Mr. Brock, the bar prosecutor, said a poll by Mr. Nifong’s political opponent in
the election for district attorney showed Mr. Nifong was trailing, by 20 percent
to 37 percent, on March 27, 2006, the day the police first briefed him on the
case. But he went on to win, by 45 percent to 42 percent, after all the
media attention.
Mr. Witt, the defense lawyer, said Mr. Nifong was a career assistant district
attorney who had only assumed the top job, by appointment, a year before the
lacrosse case and had no experience with the media. He said Mr. Nifong had
no political motives. If he had, Mr. Witt said, he would have dropped the
charges after winning a primary election in May 2006 instead of keeping them as
write-in candidates emerged for the general election.
All three of the former players — David Evans, 24, who now works as an
investment banker for Morgan Stanley on Wall Street; Collin Finnerty, 20, of
Garden City, N.Y.; and Reade W. Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J. — are
attending the trial today for closing arguments and the penalty phase.
They were accused by a stripper the team had hired for a party on March 13.
Mr. Nifong said her accusation and identification were the main reasons he filed
the case. He said most police officers and the sexual assault nurse
believed the woman, but there was no other evidence. Mr. Nifong says he
agreed with the attorney general’s decision to drop the case.
The case touched nerves of race, class and privilege, fueled by Mr. Nifong’s
public comments in a weeklong series of media interviews.
Carla Baranauckas contributed reporting from New York.
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