North Carolina State Bar charged Mike Nifong Broke Rules (Update: Disbarred)

The NC Bar has charged DA Mike Nifong with breaking several rules of professional misconduct in dealing with the Duke Lacrosse rape case including “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” Mike Nifong has stated that he will resign his position as DA.

(ABC News)

The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong 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.

The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge — including the most serious allegations — that Nifong’s actions involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” (Yahoo News) N.C. State Bar: Nifong Guilty of Ethics Violations

Nifong had been charged with seven counts of violating the rules of professional conduct that govern attorney conduct in North Carolina. During closing arguments attorney Doug Brocker of the North Carolina State Bar said Nifong engaged in a “systematic abuse of prosecutorial power and discretion in the Duke Lacrosse case.” “Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice,” Brocker added. (ABC News)

Deliberations Begin in Duke Prosecutor’s Ethics Case

Mike Nifong gives up law licence

 Update I: N.C. panel disbars Duke prosecutor

RALEIGH, N.C. – District Attorney Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, a disciplinary committee decided Saturday. Even the veteran prosecutor said the punishment was appropriate. (Yahoo News)

UPDATE II: Prosecutor in Duke Case Is Disbarred for Ethics Breaches

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. (NY Times)

Other discussing the Nifong disbarment:

• The Gateway Pundit: Mike Nifong Disbarred!
• Durham in Wonderland
• Hot Air:  I should be disbarred, says Nifong