NC State Bar, KC and God’s mills

The AP reports:

The N.C. bar filed an ethics complaint Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case, accusing him of breaking four rules of professional conduct when speaking to reporters about the case.

The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.

Among the rules Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong was accused of violating was a prohibition against making comments "that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public comdemnation of the accuser."

In a statement, the bar said it opened a case against Nifong on March 30, a little more than two weeks after the party at which a 28-year-old student at N.C. Central University hired to perform as a stripper said she was raped. (bold added)[...]

Legal historian and blogger KC Johnson gives his first take on the Bar’s action:

Some quick reactions, with more detailed analysis to follow.

1.) This filing is the beginning of the end of Nifong’s career as Durham D.A.

The filing focuses solely on his procedurally improper public statements, which the Bar (correctly) contends violated Rule 3.8(f) of the Code of Professional Responsibility. That provision requires prosecutors to “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

Importantly, the bar complaint also alleges that Nifong’s violations of 3.8(f) were of such magnitude that they ran afoul of Rule 8.4(c) and Rule 8.4(d), which state that prosecutors cannot “engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”; or “engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

2.) There is no reason to believe that the bar will not take other actions against Nifong.

The bar surely would have to consider filing an ethics complaint against Nifong for his conspiracy with Dr. Brian Meehan to hide the exculpatory evidence; given the recent nature of this revelation, no public filing on this matter could occur at this stage. […]

We’ll keep reading you, KC.

Meanwhile, who could miss that the State Bar opened the case on March 30?

That was just 5 days after the Raleigh News & Observer published across five, front page columns a story about a night it said ended in sexual violence. (I’ve used no quotes around sexual violence because the N&O editors ruled they shouldn’t be used when it reported the account of the false accuser the N&O told readers was a frightened young mother brutally gang-raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team. John)

March 30 was also just 3 days after Nifong began speaking publicly about the case. Remember “Hooligans” and “why would they need attorneys?”

Nifong was extraordinarily out of line to catch the Bar’s attention so soon, wasnt he?

But so many didn't notice or went along with Nifong anyway.

I’ll say more about what the failure of almost all of Duke and Durham's leadership, the N&O and H-S and assorted rights groups to say or do anything to check Nifong’s malfeasance tells us about those leaders and groups.

You're very likely saying some of it already.

Meanwhile, here are words the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote more than a century before Duke's "poet-president," Richard H. Brodhead, told an audience of Durham civic leaders “Whatever they did was bad enough.” From Longfellow:

Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.