Ethics Charges Filed by State Bar Against Duke Lacrosse DA--Facing Possible Disbarment!

[Tony Montana]

I wish they would have had this sort of follow-up in the wake of the Colorado Kobe fiasco...

Mark Hurlburt 2.0 Goes Down In Flames!

Also, here is a blog urging the liar{cough} accuser to come clean (again, reminicent of Katie Faber...) Come Clean, Crystal...

...and the voters there re-elected this guy? What's next, Timothy McVeigh for Mayor?

[Basketball Fan]

Well you obviously know the major difference here: The accused are rich and white who were accused by black strippers of course they were going to file charges against the DA.


With Kobe it was the reverse and frankly nobody gives a (bleep) about a black man accused of raping a white woman regardless of who he is or how ridiculous the case is. All they see is someone who shouldn't be tainting the genetic pool.


As for Hurlburt being reelected it wouldn't surprise me if charging Kobe had something to do with being reelected in exchange. That being said anyone who's prosecuted by that guy as a result in a wrongful manner gets what they deserve that is if they voted for him if not that sucks.


Oh and McVeigh can only be mayor if its posthumously after all he died by injection about 5 years ago about 70 miles from here in Terre Haute.

[LALfan4life]

I don't expect anything to come of it though. Lawyers and especially DAs seem to have a lot of room to do their dirty work without facing punishment.

[JerryMagicKobe]

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” or their alleged unwillingness to cooperate. Most of the comments were in March and April.

Among them:

Nifong referred to the lacrosse players as “a bunch of hooligans.”
He declared: “I am convinced there was a rape, yes, sir.”
He told ESPN: “One would wonder why one needs an attorney if one was not charged and had not done anything wrong.”
He told The New York Times: “I’m disappointed that no one has been enough of a man to come forward. And if they would have spoken up at the time, this may never have happened.”
Nifong was also 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 a condom.

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 a condom.

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 penis, as she had claimed several times before. The men still face charges of kidnapping and sexual offense.

In recent months — and especially after last week — legal experts and even Nifong’s own colleagues have warned openly that the case appears pathetically weak.

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 until at least the spring.

The weaknesses in the case include the lack of DNA evidence; the accuser’s ever-shifting story; one player’s claim to have an alibi supported by receipts and time-stamped photos; and the defense’s insistence that the photo lineup that was used to identify the defendants violated police procedures and was skewed against the men.

Before the ethics charges were filed, Bob Brown, an attorney in private practice who once worked with Nifong in the prosecutor’s office, predicted the case would be a “bloodbath” for the prosecution if it went to trial.

Among other questions raised in recent weeks: Why did it take months for anyone from Nifong’s office to interview the accuser? And why did Nifong initially withhold from the defense DNA test results that found genetic material from several men — none of them Duke lacrosse players — on the accuser’s underwear and body?
“I don’t see how any member of the public can have confidence in this case. I think it’s making a mockery of our criminal justice system to permit this guy to keep fumbling along,” Duke University law professor James Coleman, one of Nifong’s leading critics, said before the ethics charges were filed. “It’s either total incompetence or it’s misconduct on a scale that is extraordinary.”

[TACH]

[Tony Montana]