Out-Nifonging the Nifong: Criminal Charges in Order

Washington, DC (TLS). As most have obviously heard or read by now, the North Carolina Bar Association has charged Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong with misleading the court and withholding crucial evidence in the Duke lacrosse rape hoax. These charges will be added to the ethics charges with which the Bar has already charged Nifong. If found guilty this would be enough to remove Nifong from the Bar, essentially making it impossible for him to practice law ever again.

This should be the very least of his worries.

A new term has been added to the modern vernacular resulting from Nifong's gross misconduct in this case--'Nifonged'--which of course refers to the process of being tried in the court of public opinion rather than in a court of law and then proceeding to drag the accused through the mud in the process. Of course, anyone who gets 'Nifonged' is in dire straits.

In Mike Nifong's case, however, it would seem that the process that bears his name is a perfect fit. After all, each of Nifong's misdeeds were conducted publicly, in plain sight of the watchful eye of the public. The public is therefore an eyewitness to a heinous crime, a dark scheme contrived to win an election by framing or at least aiding in the framing of three young Duke students for crimes they did not commit, thus coming dangerously close to ruining their lives. Each false statement, each misdeed, each deception is all part of the public record, complete with TV cameras, video equipment, digital video and audio technology, all of which have preserved Nifong's prosecutorial misconduct.

Now it is time to 'out-Nifong' the Nifong, so to speak.

The suggestion has been made that judicial immunity may prevent Nifong from facing criminal charges for his misdeeds. However, such immunity clearly does NOT protect judges and attorneys from facing criminal charges if there is sufficient evidence that the counselors in question may have engaged in willful criminal conduct. It is difficult to see how Nifong's behavior can be viewed as anything but willful and criminal. The fact that a District Attorney in the middle of a high profile rape case, with potentially explosive racial overtones, would not even interview the accuser until eight months after the accusations were brought only highlights the calculated manner in which Nifong went about his work to play up the case in the news media, aiding and abetting agitators who worked up the Durham community into a state of frenzy, declaring the accused guilty before the cameras knowing full well he did not have a case, and then cruising to an easy re-election in a town that considered him to be a hero.

A series of crimes have been committed here right in front of the public by one of Durham's heroes.

Criminal charges should be vigorously pursued against Nifong. The man who did not hesitate to seek to ruin the lives of three innocent young men should be shown no mercy in facing his own prosecution.

It is now time for Nifong to be nifonged. This time, however, the charges will not be fabricated. They are all there in the public record.