Disbarred District Attorney and convicted criminal has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Mike Nifong cited more than $180 million dollars in liabilities and only $243,898 in assets of real and personal property.

He filed for protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Tuesday, the same day defendants were required to respond to a sweeping federal civil lawsuit filed in October by the three exonerated players Nifong falsely accused of rape.

Hopefully the plaintiffs will get punitive damages that are non-dischargeable an will haunt him forever.

Just when you thought that the Duke Lacrosse (Faux) Rape Case was finally over, think again. The interim DA for Durham has asked the North Carolina AG to investigate whether charges should be brought against any law enforcement officer in the handling of the case. This would include disgraced fromer Durham DA Michael Nifong. Another person who might find himself facing criminal charges is Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the officer who seemed almost as eager as Nifong to push this case forward.

Micheal Nifong, the former Durham District Attorney is going to go to jail. For one day.

Nifong was sentenced Friday to a single day in jail, having been held in criminal contempt of court for lying to a judge during his pursuit of rape charges against the three falsely accused lacrosse players.

Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III could have sentenced Nifong, who had already been stripped of his law license and had resigned from office, to as many as 30 days in jail and given him a fine as high as $500. Instead, he opted for a largely symbolic punishment—the public humiliation of sending a prosecutor to jail—that he said would help protect the integrity of the justice system.

“If what I impose with regard to Mr. Nifong would make things better or different for what’s already happened, I don’t know what it would be or how I could do it,” Smith said.

Well how about making the punishment for fitting than merely the symbolic. I’m thinking of something involving a rail, tar and feathers.

Lets be clear here. Nifong lied repeated to the judges involved in the case, he manipulated them and abused his position. I find it rather disappointing the same court that Nifong abused is cutting him slack on this. But as usual, the law profession has a disturbing tendency to protect their own.

According to this post by Radley Balko about the Genarlow Wilson case, it is sure starting to look that way.

It seems that DA McDade, with the help of Sen. Johnson, is attempting to use video footage of the act for which Wilson was acquitted of rape to tarnish Wilson’s image, and quell the mounting public outrage over his sentence for the consensual oral sex. Griftdrift points to the following passage from the Georgia Bar on prosecutoral responsibilities:

The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:

(g) except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the nature and extent of the prosecutor’s action and that serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose, refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused

I have to admit there is something particularly disturbing when a DA is handing out a video tape to potential supporters that depicts sex and where one of the individuals is only 17 years of age. If I did something like this, the Feds would likely be knocking on my door…oh sorry, busting down the door, killing my dogs and taking my entire family into custody. When the people who are appointed to protect us and enforce certain laws routinely break them in such a dubious way it undermines our entire system. Worst case example, Mike Nifong. Further, as these kinds of cases keep popping up it makes people even more doubtful of our legal system.

Balko also points to the Walsh Act on the dissemination of pornography to defense attorneys and wonders how a DA can then turn around and distribute what might very well be considered pornography to potential supporters.

The punchline to all of this is that under the new federal law the Walsh Act, defense attorneys in child pornography cases are given extremely limited access to the evidence (read: the pictures) against their clients, to the point where the defense bar says it hampers their ability to mount an adequate defense (thanks to De Novo for the tip). All the evidence remains in the state’s hands, making it difficult for defense experts to review it. Here are the congressional findings explaining the need for the access provisions in the Wash Act:

“every instance of viewing images of child pornography represents a renewed violation of the privacy of the victims and a repetition of their abuse,” and therefore, “it is imperative to prohibit the reproduction of child pornography in criminal cases.”

If that’s the justification for barring defense counsel access to evidence against their clients, I don’t see how McDade should possibly be allowed to get away with distributing child porn to condemn Genarlow Wilson for a crime for which he’s already been acquitted.

Note that Wilson has already been acquitted of the rape charge that is depicted on the video tape.

It sure does indeed look like we’ve seen this kind of thing before.

Duke University has agreed to a settlement with the lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape and then hung out to dry by university administrators and faculty.

Duke University has reached a settlement with each of the three former lacrosse players and their families. The university made the announcement this afternoon.

According to a press release issued by Duke, the terms of the settlement will not be disclosed. In a statement, Duke officials said the board of trustees and Duke President Richard Brodhead had determined that it was in the best interests of the Duke community to eliminate the possibility of future litigation and move forward. “This past year has been hard for many people who care about Duke — for students, faculty, staff, alumni, families and friends — and for the three students and their families most of all,” the Duke statement said. “We resolve to bring the Duke family together again, and to work to protect others from similar injustices in the criminal justice system in the future. ”

The players, Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, also provided a statement. “Years ago, each of us made a decision to attend Duke because it is one of the greatest universities in the nation,” the players stated. “We were drawn to Duke because of its sense of community. The events of the last year tore the Duke community apart, and forcibly separated us from the university we love.

“It is impossible to fully describe what we, our families and team endured. As we said from day one, we are innocent. But it took three-hundred and ninety-four days, and the intervention of the North Carolina Attorney General, before our innocence was formally declared. …We hope that today’s resolution will begin to bring the Duke family back together again, and we look forward to working with the University to develop and implement initiatives that will prevent similar injustices and ensure that the lessons of the last year are never forgotten.”

Whatever they paid, it wasn’t enough.

Former Sports Illustrated associate editor Don Yaeger’s book about the Duke lacrosse case, written with former head coach Mike Pressler, is a very good overview of the circumstances surrounding the fateful events of March 13-14, 2006, when members of Duke’s lacrosse team created a “perfect storm”: hiring two adult entertainers for a party that went dreadfully wrong.

It’s Not About The Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered supplies some details about the events of that evening that I wasn’t familiar with from my contemporaneous coverage of the case, supplied in interviews with players for the book, and as such gives us a more complete picture of what actually happened at the house at 610 North Buchanan in Durham that evening. The bulk of the book, however, is about heroes and villains, and more of the latter than the former; those looking for a balanced, objective account of events may want to take some of the book’s aspersions with a grain of salt.

The obvious villain is Mike Nifong, but Duke administrators Joe Alleva and John Burness, as well as the school’s president, Dick Brodhead, take their fair share of the blame, as do the infamous “Group of 88″ Duke professors (including several former colleagues of mine in the Duke political science department); the Durham police also take their lumps. About the only mainstream media figures to be praised are News and Observer columnist Ruth Sheehan, who did much to aid and abet Nifong’s poisoning of the well in the early days of the case but quickly changed sides once the wind started blowing in the opposite direction; Bill O’Reilly, whose involvement in the case was peripheral at best (MSNBC’s Dan Abrahms was a far more effective advocate for the accused players at the peak of the media frenzy); and Duke Chronicle columnist Stephen Miller, whose position as the chief campus cheerleader for David Horowitz goes unmentioned. A few bloggers, like K.C. Johnson and LieStoppers, get credit; others, such as JohnInCarolina and the infamous DukeObsrvr, do not, suggesting a research strategy that was based on who was still writing on the case in early 2007.

A bit more disturbing is the degree of whitewashing of the lacrosse team throughout the book. One notable example: the allegations of assault and battery in Washington D.C. involving Collin Finnerty, one of the three players ultimately accused of rape, go completely unmentioned. Nor is there much effort to place the lacrosse case in context: Duke’s responses to the 610 party allegations are compared to a similar 2007 incident allegedly involving a party organized by members of an African-American fraternity at an off-campus house—a case in which the alleged assailant wasn’t even a Duke student. Duke’s past crackdowns on on-campus fraternities for minor infractions–less serious than the allegations in question in the lacrosse case–aren’t mentioned at all, although Yaeger might have gotten a hint of the Duke administration’s level of discomfort about the Duke party scene when recounting Nan Keohane’s notorious keg control scheme or more recent efforts to rein in Tailgate.

In closing, while I think Yaeger’s work is a pretty powerful polemic–aided by the access to Mike Pressler, his family, and a number of lacrosse team members–this is not the definitive story of the “rush to justice” in the case that many will be looking for; perhaps the forthcoming book by Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson will be more satisfactory on that score.

Mike Nifong, the former (?) DA of Durham, North Carolina and the lead prosecutor for the Duke Rape Case fiasco has been disbarred and accepted disbarment according to K.C. Johnson. I have to say, that at the very least, this was the only outcome that could have gone anyway towards restoring faith in the system of justice not only in Durham, but also in North Carolina.

K.C. Johnson has been live blogging the case, but since I’ve been rather busy the last couple of days, I haven’t been following it. So expect this post to be updated over the next couple of hours.

Update: From K.C. Johnson’s blog,

3.) Marsha Goodenow was a devastating witness.

Charlotte ADA Marsha Goodenow pulverized Nifong with her testimony.

It was “highly unlikely,” she noted, for North Carolina prosecutors to file rape charges in cases where the only evidence was the contradictory stories of an accuser.

Marsha Goodenow is an ADA for another jurisdiction in North Carolina and she provided some nice testimoney on how Defendant Nifong violated ethical standards as a prosecutor. It covered the line up, the DNA evidence, refusing the meet with the defense attorneys and so on. It showed that pretty much right from the start Nifong was not pursuing justice but another agenda entirely (his re-election, IMO).

K.C. Johnson also had this in brackets about Reade Seligmann’s testimony,

[People in the courtroom are audibly crying as they are listening to this testimony.]

[This is extremely powerful testimony; the three panelists are watching intently.]

And then there was this,

Nifong to Cooney: “Boy, I bet you wish your client hadn’t shown his alibi story, because there’s no such thing as an airtight alibi. Sure enough,” the story was changed–tried to show how DNA and alibi wouldn’t be relevant. “Almost predictable.”

Rather despicable, IMO.

Update II: One of the things about the case that always fascinated me was the role of Tara Levicy, the SANE (Sexaul Assault Nurse Examiner) trainee who did the rape kit on Crystal Mangum. The reason why I find Levicy interesting is that Levicy was a trainee at the time and she provided, what appears to be, some of the early “hard” medical evidence in the case. Later it turned out that this hard evidence really was nothing other than Levicy’s personal belief that Mangum had been raped. Unfortunately Levicy was not called by Nifong’s attorney as a defense witness. But there was this testimony by Nifong,

Nifong: Both Himan and Gottlieb considered Mangum very believable to them. Tara Levicy indicated the same thing to him.

Aside from the fact that Himan has testified pretty much to the contrary, it is interesting that Nifong is claiming that Levicy found Mangum believable. From what I’ve read Mangum’s behavior was at odds with how the typical rape victim behaves, the physical evidence was paltry, and all Levicy went by was Mangum’s hysterical behavior.

Update III: With regards to the last update, keep in mind that Nifong very much appears to be a serial liar.

Update: IV Yes, it is offical, apparently Nifong resigned while on the wittness stand. K.C. Johnson calls this a cynical ploy for sympathy during Nifong’s trial, and I have to agree.

Update V: This is truly sad and I hope it haunts Mike Nifong till the day he dies,

Dave’s [Dave Evan's] grandfather (89 years old) went regularly to Duke lacrosse games. “Took it very very hard . . . He was consumed with the case. Would say, ‘Why is this DA going forward? Look at all the evidence.’”

Had sudden heart attack Aug. 20. “Great regret” that he died before he heard that the system worked and Dave was declared innocent.

His trial that is for ethics charges. I bet this is not at all what Nifong saw as the future when he took over this case about a year ago.

“This didn’t have to happen and the horrible consequences were entirely foreseeable,” State Bar Counsel Katherine E. Jean said during her opening statement. “The harm done to these three young men and their families and the justice system of North Carolina is devastating.”

Gee ya think?

I think the only way to repair all the damage done is to punish Nifong as harshly as possible. Make an example of him, to crucify him in the public eye and destroy his reputation beyond all hope of repair. Anything short of that the damage done by Nifong and his enablers will likely be very long lasting. That and Nifong deserves nothing less.

K.C. Johnson, at Durham in Wonderland, is still following up on the Duke Lacrosse Rape case, and posts this amazing bit of information.

On September 12, Captain Ed Sarvis of the Durham Police Department admitted that the Durham Police had an official policy of meting out disproportionate punishment Duke students, as a class, for alcohol- and noise-related offenses. When confronted with police records showing that Sgt. Mark Gottlieb had arrested 10 times as many Duke students as the other three District Two supervisors combined, Sarvis replied that the sergeant “was doing his job, and doing what I asked him to do.” The implication? The sergeants who didn’t handcuff and arrest Duke students (and only Duke students) for minor alcohol-related offenses weren’t doing their job.

In other words, it appears to have been official policy at the Durham Police Department to target Duke students for special treatment. And the universities response has to date been literally nothing. Which isn’t a surprise given how the university abandoned not only the three men falsely accused of rape, but also the entire Lacrosse team. And if you think it is just the athletes who get the special treatment think again.

In late March, outgoing DSG president Elliot Wolf penned a memorandum expressing concern that the Office of Judicial Affairs, led by Associate Dean of Students and Director of Judicial Affairs Stephen Bryan, had chosen to “pursue judicial action against a student based on evidence collected by law enforcement officers that was illegally obtained or otherwise insufficient to serve as the basis for criminal prosecution.” In other words, Bryan was intending to use evidence that even Durham’s blatantly pro-prosecution judges viewed as suspect.

Dean Bryan’s response can be summed up as an admission that indeed Duke University does use this rather dubious evidence to prosecute its own students.

Bottomline is that if you go to Duke University as a student you will be on your own, and can count on no help whatsoever from the University, and you’ll pay well over $40,000 a year too. I’m thinking you can find a better university to attend.

ABC News is reporting that, thirteen months into one of the most notorious criminal prosecutions in memory, all charges will be dropped against three players from the Duke Lacrosse team.

The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case. The three players, Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, were facing charges of first degree kidnapping and first degree forcible sexual offense. The charges stem from an off-campus party on the night of March 13, 2006.

In the hours after the party, one of two dancers hired to perform for the players claimed she had been violently raped in a bathroom by members of the lacrosse team. The players had also been indicted for first degree rape, but that charge was dismissed on Dec. 22, 2006.

Special prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office took over the case after Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong recused himself in January, citing charges of unethical conduct filed against him by the North Carolina Bar. Since then, Jim Coman and Mary Winstead have examined the case from scratch, interviewing key witnesses and working through reams of evidence.

The reasons that will be cited for the dismissal are not yet known, though the case has been riddled with criticism and colored by controversy since its early months. Defense attorneys released documents showing the accuser changed key details of her story in the weeks and months after the alleged assault.

Legal analysts and forensic experts have criticized what they call a critically flawed photo identification lineup — a lineup that led to the identification and indictment of Evans, Finnerty, Seligmann. No DNA evidence was found matching any lacrosse players with samples from the rape kit, while DNA from unidentified men was found on the accuser’s body and clothing.

The complete lack of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and lack of witness credibility might have has something to do with this. One hopes Nifong and the accusers wind up in prison.

It seems clear from this an a few other high profile cases involving athletes and other celebrities that the penalties for bringing fraudulent criminal charges are far, far too low. Were the penalties commensurate with those the falsely accused party would face, these incidents would drop precipitously.

This story over at Lie Stoppers is pretty scary and it shows that Durham North Carolina really isn’t all that different from your typical third world country like Nicaragua.

On November 23, 2006, Nashville native Eric Volz was arrested in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, Doris Ivanez Jimenez. Despite conclusive evidence that he was in Managua over two hours away at the time of the crime, the twenty-seven year old publisher of El Puente Magazine, was convicted last month, following a three day trial. Mr. Volz was sentenced to serve thirty years in “El Modelo” prison, the maximum sentence allowed, after Judge Ivette Toruño Blanco threw out all the defense evidence, which included testimony of multiple alibi witnesses, cell phone and computer records, signed credit voucher, and more. Also disallowed were the findings of the prosecution’s forensic expert, who testified that none of the physical evidence (over 100 hairs found on and around the victim, as well as blood, saliva, semen, and footprints) matched Volz. The parallels between the Volz case and the Hoax, ranging from evidence of actual innocence to improper extra-judicial statements by the prosecutor and the community hysteria fueled by inflammatory media coverage, are all eerily similar.

Sounds like they went to the Mike Nifong school of criminal prosecution.

Drudge is reporting (top of the right hand column, no links yet) that all charges may be dropped as early tomorrow in the ridiculous Duke Lacrosse rape case. It was also reported that this news caused Amanda Marcotte’s head to explode.

Update: Still no news about the charges being dropped, but this is an interesting article that references Linda Fairstein, a Manhattan based prosecutor that specializes in prosecuting sex crimes,

With the Duke lacrosse investigation in its final weeks, Linda Fairstein, the former head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit and one of the nation’s leading experts on sex crimes, told ABC News that she would be shocked if the case went forward.

Having investigated and prosecuted thousands of rape cases, Fairstein has a special ability to evaluate the strength of the case. A pioneer in the field and an advocate of victims’ rights, Fairstein points to serious flaws in the investigation and in the evidence that has surfaced to date.

“If a prosecutor were to take this to court, given all the changes in the accuser’s story, I don’t think there is a crime for which these young men could be convicted,” said Fairstein.

Fairstein points to the laundry list of problems with this case that suggest that that not only was there no crime committed, but that the DA, Mike Nifong, handled the case badly. And there is this interesting bit,

Whatever the outcome, Fairstein worries about the impact of the Duke lacrosse case on rape prosecutions around the country. Her concern is that the high-profile investigation will inhibit aggressive prosecution of sexual assault cases.

“If there is a dismissal there will be many more people who encounter rape in the future with greater skepticism. It will reinforce the stereotype that many of these rapes are false reports.”

It would indeed be quite unfortunate if this is indeed the impact of this case.

In case it isn’t obvious, I was kidding with Marcotte reference.

The Duke Lacrosse case has become a complete joke and it is hard to imagine it becoming even more ridiculous, but several weeks after learning the Nifong and Dr. Meehan of DNA Security agreed to withold potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense…the defense attorneys have still not seen the DNA report.

Defense lawyers in the Duke lacrosse case still have not received all the DNA test material in the case, according to a motion filed today.

A private laboratory, DNA Security of Burlington, has provided only some of the underlying data in the case, said the motion, which comes a month after the N.C. State Bar charged Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong with withholding DNA evidence favorable to the defense.

[...]

In October, a judge ordered Nifong to turn over all the underlying laboratory documents. Defense lawyers examined about 2,000 pages of documents, including “electropherograms,” which map DNA data as a series of peaks.

The lawyers discovered the laboratory had found DNA from at least four unidentified men in samples from the accuser’s body and clothing. The DNA did not match that of any of the lacrosse players–Bolding for Amanda Marcotte.

DNA Security director Brian Meehan admitted that he and Nifong had agreed not to report these results, which must be given to the defense under state law.

Note to Self: Never, ever go to North Carolina. Their notions of justice and legal procedure there are extremely screwed up.

At least that is the word from Salon. Also out is Melissa McEwan who was hired to be Edwards’ Netroots Coordinator. The article at Salon indicates that Marcotte and McEwan might be rehired, so take this with a cannister of salt.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Wow. The problem with this is that it makes Edwards look incredibly inept and weak. It would be understandable were he firing Marcotte and McEwan for things they wrote while working for him or even for things that they had written at some obscure location that was suddenly unearthed. In this case, though, these were prominently linked posts on the rather prominent blogs that served as the basis for their being hired to begin with. So either Edwards’ staff failed to perform due diligence in bringing these women on or they knew what they were doing and are unwilling to take the heat for something that would blow over in a day even though it’s nearly a year before the first primary. Either way, it’s not good.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Ezra Klein had virtually the identical reaction pre-emptively: “To back down would either prove that their hiring process was incompetent and they didn’t vet someone with an extensive public record, or that they’ll collapse beneath even moderate pressure from rightwing professionals. Neither is a good look for the new campaign.”

Update (Steve Verdon): Well now they are not fired or are un-fired I don’t know which. This source seems pretty reliable: John Edwards himself.

I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word.

Soooo…Marcotte and McEwan were lying or merely being humorous in their post? Did they go to the Michael Richards school of comedy?

K.C. Johnson has more on Amanda Marcotte. One possible defense for Edwards in hiring Marcotte is that Edwards was not aware of it and had little input in the decision (e.g., go get us a blogger for our campaign blog). Johnson points out that this is hard to believe because it was fairly widely known that Marcotte was going to head up his blog and at least one rumor posits that it was Edward’s wife who picked Marcotte.

Also, Overlawyered, provides some evidence that Marcotte has been busily working away at shoving posts and comments down the memory hole. We also get this post as well.

And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject of why if I see the words “Duke” or “lacrosse” in an email that has the whiff of accusatory tone, I’m deleting it and simply not going to reply to it. I have never, ever stated that I think that anyone should go to jail without a proper trial.

There is only one problem with this: no evidence. Apparently Marcotte thinks it is okay for a criminal case to go to court when there is literally, no physical evidence to back up the (ever changing) story of the accuser. This raises the disturbing possibility that Marcotte is an extremist that believes if a woman makes an accusation of rape, then that is sufficient evidence that a rape occured, or in short a complete kook.

Some might be wondering what this might have to do with Edwards, beyond having bad judgment in picking his “official blogger”. Well, Edwards is from North Carolina. Edwards worked at the same law firm as one of the defense lawyers. Edwards has a chance to speak out on this complete fiasco. But it looks like Edwards is quite happy to simply ignore the whole issue as if it doesn’t exist. Nope, instead it is much better to bitch and whine about Wal-Mart (after sending an aide there to purchase a video game system for his son, where said aide tries to use Edward’s name to cut in line).

Note: If you are wondering what happened to the exceptionally wordy post by me [sarcasm] I deleted it. I don’t know what happned, but somehow an empty post went up instead of this one. The comments though were great.