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Monday, 18 June 2007 |
 District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred Saturday for his
"selfish" rape prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players
- a politically motivated act, his judges said, that he inexplicably
allowed to fester for months after it was clear the defendants were innocent."This matter has been a
fiasco. There's no doubt about it," said F. Lane Williamson, the
chairman of the three-member disciplinary committee that stripped the veteran
prosecutor of his state law license. Even Nifong and his attorneys supported
the decision, though the veteran prosecutor refused to admit to the end that no
crime occurred at a March 2006 lacrosse team party.
 The committee said Nifong manipulated the investigation to boost his
chances of winning his first election for Durham County district attorney. In
doing so, he committed "a clear case of intentional prosecutorial
misconduct" that involved "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and
misrepresentation." Williamson specifically cited Nifong's comments in the
early days of the case, which included a confident proclamation at a candidate
forum that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of
lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl." He also called the
lacrosse team "a bunch of hooligans" at one point. Appointed district
attorney in 2005, Nifong was in a tight race for the office when a stripper
told police she was raped at the party. "At the time he was facing a
primary, and yes, he was politically naive," Williamson said. "But we
can draw no other conclusion that those initial statements he made were to
further his political ambitions." During the ethics trial, Nifong acknowledged he knew
there was no DNA evidence connecting Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty to the
28-year-old accuser when he indicted them on charges of rape, sexual offense
and kidnapping. Nifong later charged Dave Evans with the same crimes.
But months later, state prosecutors concluded the three players were
"innocent" - a fact Williamson hammered home on Saturday. "We acknowledge the
actual innocence of the defendants, and there's nothing here that has done
anything but support that assertion," Williamson said. Williamson
said it appeared that throughout his investigation, Nifong was looking for any
evidence to link a lacrosse player to the accuser's story in order to support
his initial comments that he was sure an attack occurred.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 02 July 2007 )
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