Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
AARON BEARD
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. - Ethics charges filed against the prosecutor at the center of the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case might constitute a conflict of interest that forces him off the case, legal experts said.
"It's hard for me to imagine how he can be effective as an advocate, with either the court or a future jury, when he has ethics charges pending against him ... concerning his conduct of this very same case," said Joseph Kennedy, a University of North Carolina law professor.
The North Carolina bar filed the ethics charges Thursday, accusing District Attorney Mike Nifong of violating four rules of professional conduct by making misleading and inflammatory comments about the athletes under suspicion.
Kennedy said Nifong should recuse himself, but added that the judge overseeing the case could also order his removal. The ethics charges carry penalties that range from admonishment to disbarment.
The bar said it opened a case against Nifong on March 30, a little more than two weeks after a 28-year-old woman hired to perform as a stripper at a lacrosse team party said she was gang-raped.
The ethics charges will be heard by the state's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, made up of lawyers and non-lawyers, at a forum similar to a trial. A date for the hearing has not been set.
Nifong did not return several calls and e-mails seeking comment. But in an October interview with The Associated Press, he said his only regret in handling the case was speaking so often to the media early in the investigation.
"Certainly what I was trying to do was to reassure the community, to encourage people with information to come forward," Nifong said. "And that was clearly not the effect."
The bar cited 41 quotations and eight paraphrased statements made to newspaper and TV reporters, saying many of them amounted to "improper commentary about the character, credibility and reputation of the accused."
Among them:
_ Referring to the lacrosse players as "a bunch of hooligans."
_ "I am convinced there was a rape, yes, sir."
_ "One would wonder why one needs an attorney if one was not charged and had not done anything wrong."
Nifong also is charged with breaking a rule against "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." The bar said that when DNA testing failed to find any evidence a lacrosse player raped the accuser, Nifong told a reporter the players might have used condoms.
According to the bar, Nifong knew that assertion was misleading, because he had received a report from an emergency room nurse in which the accuser said her attackers did not use condoms.
Last week, Nifong dropped the rape charges against the athletes after the stripper wavered in her story, saying she was no longer certain she was penetrated vaginally with a *****, as she had claimed several times before. The men still face charges of kidnapping and sexual offense.
Stan Goldman, who teaches criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, questioned how the ethics charges will affect the case should Nifong continue as its prosecutor.
"Is this going to result in him treating the case more gingerly and deciding it's not worth pursuing, or is he going to get his back up and decide he's got to pursue this case to the end regardless?" Goldman asked.
The athletes, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, have maintained their innocence and called the charges "fantastic lies." The case is not expected to go to trial before the spring.