Updated at 6:50 p.m., Saturday, June 16, 2007
Duke lacrosse prosecutor called 'minister of injustice'
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — A panel of his peers heard closing statements Saturday at the ethics trial of Mike Nifong, who had already promised to leave his job as district attorney over his ill-fated pursuit of the debunked Duke University lacrosse team rape case."Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice," state bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker said Saturday morning in his closing statement.
Brocker told a disciplinary hearing committee that as Nifong investigated allegations that a stripper was raped at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team, he charged "forward toward condemnation and injustice," weaving a "web of deception that has continued up through this hearing."
The bar charged Nifong, a prosecutor in Durham County for his entire three-decade legal career, with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.
If convicted, the committee could suspend Nifong's law license or take it away entirely.
Nifong tearfully said Friday he would resign as district attorney, stunning his staff in Durham and his own attorneys. They had insisted for weeks their client had no plans to leave the office he was elected to for the first time in November.
"It has become increasingly apparent, during the course of this week, in some ways that it might not have been before, that my presence as the district attorney in Durham is not furthering the cause of justice," Nifong said, adding later: "My community has suffered enough."
