The Nifong excuse

David Limbaugh:

I believe the culpability of "rogue" prosecutor and bully-extraordinaire Mike Nifong in the Duke LaCross "fiasco" has been grossly understated. His premeditated actions and apparently unrepentant heart merit a special ranking on the outrage meter and it should be a very long time before we apply to this case the adage that time heals all wounds.

Even in his mostly condemnatory statement explaining the North Carolina Disciplinary Commission's decision to disbar Nifong, commission chairman F. Lane Williamson seemed to bend over backward to give Nifong the benefit of the doubt -- a benefit the wrongfully accused Duke Lacrosse defendants never received.

Williamson said that Nifong's action appeared to the commission "to be out of self-interest and self deception, not necessarily out of an evil motive, but that his judgment was so clouded by his own self-interest that he lost sight of it and wandered off the path of justice and had to be put back on course again by extraordinary means."

I respectfully disagree with the evil motive part. It's as if the commission is suggesting that Nifong's consuming quest for selfish political benefit somehow lessens his culpability, when it clearly aggravates it.

This is a bit like saying that a bank robber's criminal act is less criminal because he possessed a dizzying desire to enrich himself. Perhaps if the robber had committed the crime sacrificially to save starving people in Ethiopia, his actions could be viewed in a more favorable light, but that's hardly the situation here.

Nifong was running for office in a heavily black jurisdiction and deliberately pursued apparently well-to-do white defendants for the express purpose of exploiting racial tensions to improve his prospects for re-election.

...

What struck me about the hearing was just how lame Nifong's defense of his actions were. Even bad lawyers can usually construct some kind of colorable argument from bad facts. In fact, bad lawyers are the most likely to attempt such arguments. Nifong's excuse for the case he brought is that he "still thinks something happened " at the party. The next question has to be, "based on what?" Certainly the only witness that alleges that something happened has been shown to be wholly unreliable. Even after having tangible evidence that the events she alleged, did not happen he wanted to go forward with an assault case. My speculation is that he thought he could still get a plea to a lesser offense and avoid responsibility for his gross misconduct.