D.A. in Duke case to resign

RALEIGH, N.C. —  Choking back tears at his own ethics hearing, the prosecutor in the notorious Duke University rape case stunned a packed courtroom Friday, saying that he was resigning as the district attorney of Durham County.

Mike Nifong’s emotional announcement came after a bruising interrogation by his own lawyer, whose questions forced the district attorney to say that he had unwittingly lied to judges and had made prejudicial statements against three Duke University lacrosse players.

As two of the former defendants and their parents stared at him, Nifong apologized “to the extent that my actions have caused pain.” He also apologized to the state’s legal community for bringing “disrespect and disrepute to the bar.”

Nifong’s mea culpa -- his first public comments on his motivations -- brought to a close his 29-year career as a prosecutor in the Durham district attorney’s office. But it did not end his legal jeopardy. He faces sanctions from the North Carolina State Bar that could cost him his law license, and a likely hearing before a Durham judge for allegedly lying to the court during hearings in the rape case.

While admitting that he had withheld exculpatory DNA evidence, Nifong said that he had mistakenly believed he had turned over all test results to defense lawyers. Even so, he said, his actions helped “contribute to injustice” against the former lacrosse players, who were cleared by the state’s attorney general in April.

“My presence as the district attorney in Durham is not furthering the cause of justice,” Nifong, 58, said in a muffled voice, fighting tears. “It is not fair for the people in my community to be represented by someone who is not held in high esteem.”

Nifong said he had not even told his lawyer about his plans to resign. His wife wiped her eyes with a handkerchief as he spoke. The couple’s son sat slumped in his chair, his head down.

A three-member panel of the bar, a state agency, begins deliberations today on charges that Nifong made improper public statements, withheld evidence and lied to judges and defense lawyers. If found guilty, he could be reprimanded, have his law license suspended or be permanently disbarred.

Nifong’s admissions from the witness stand, coupled with the panel chairman’s barbed questioning, appeared to increase the likelihood of guilty verdicts on at least some charges.

“Didn’t a light bulb go off in your head and make you say ‘Whoa’?” Chairman Lane Williamson -- a gruff, bearded lawyer from Charlotte -- asked Nifong in an exasperated tone. Again and again during the rape prosecution, Williamson said, Nifong had missed clear opportunities to stop committing ethical violations.

“I got carried away,” Nifong said at one point.

The district attorney replied, “Yes, sir,” when asked whether he thought the bar would find him guilty of making prejudicial comments.

Asked whether he had lied in court when he said he had turned over evidence, Nifong said: “It was a false statement in the sense there was information I had not given that I thought I had given.”

During several grueling hours of testimony on the hearing’s fourth day, Nifong was alternately combative and contrite, if not penitent. At the time the Duke case broke, Nifong was a newly appointed district attorney locked in his first election campaign for the office. On Friday, he portrayed himself as a well-intentioned but hapless neophyte who lacked the media or political savvy to know when he was crossing ethical boundaries.

He testified that he had not properly questioned a stripper whose rape claims triggered the prosecution, even after she gave contradictory accounts of the alleged assault at a lacrosse team party in March 2006.

He admitted that he had proposed a photo ID lineup that violated police procedures, and that he did not supervise a district attorney investigator who improperly showed the stripper photos of named lacrosse team players.

And he said he had never read a 1,844-page report prepared by his own DNA expert. Nifong is accused of telling a lab director to withhold test results showing that DNA found on the stripper’s body and underwear matched DNA from at least four unknown males -- but did not match DNA from any of the 46 white lacrosse team members.

It wasn’t until months later, when the defense presented him with a detailed analysis of the highly technical report, that Nifong realized he had withheld the exculpatory test results, he testified. “My first reaction was a variation of ‘Oh crap! I didn’t give ‘em this?’ ”

But, Nifong testified, swallowing hard, “the allegation that I am a liar is not justified.”

The district attorney’s tearful apologies were met with contempt by Joseph B. Cheshire V, who represented former defendant David Evans. “A cynical ploy designed solely to save his law license,” Cheshire said moments after Nifong left the stand to compose himself during a recess. “His tepid apology is far too little and far too late.”

Nifong took the stand after half an hour of wrenching testimony from Reade Seligmann, 21, a former lacrosse player who was indicted on rape charges on his mother’s birthday in April 2006.

As he described being vilified on campus, Seligmann’s mother sobbed in the gallery. So did the mother of Collin Finnerty, another former defendant who was in the courtroom.

After he was told that he had been indicted, Seligmann said, his first words were: “My life is over.... How am I going to tell Mom?” He described his father and his girlfriend collapsing when they heard the news.

When he finally told his mother, Seligmann said, “the life was sucked right out of her.”

Calling Nifong’s dogged prosecution “a sick joke,” Seligmann said the district attorney “smirked to himself” during Seligmann’s first court hearing. He said protesters outside the courthouse screamed profanities and called him a rapist. Behind him in the courtroom, he said, he heard a voice hiss: “You’re a dead man walking.”

Nifong indicated Friday that he was moved by Seligmann’s anguish. “I thought that his parents must be very proud of him,” he said.

He added: “I’m very proud of my son, and I want him to be proud of me. And I felt that it was important for him to see this because I’ve always told him that in this case, although I made mistakes, I was trying to do the right thing.”

Nifong said he was appalled by pretrial comments he made -- captured by TV cameras last spring and played on a courtroom monitor this week -- in which he said that the alleged crime was spurred by “a deep racial motivation.” The defendants were white and their accuser black. Nifong said he had never seen the clip before, and “it made me cringe.”

“I think that crossed the line,” he said.

His voice breaking, and speaking so softly that people in the gallery strained to hear him, Nifong said: “I will go to my grave being associated with this case.”

david.zucchino@latimes.com

Times researcher Jenny Jarvie in Atlanta contributed to this report.