Durham County D.A. Mike Nifong Tells Newsweek His Take on Case Hasn’t Changed: ‘None of The ‘Facts’ I Know at This Time, Indeed, None of The Evidence I Have Seen From Any Source, Has Changed The Opinion I Expressed Initially’ He Says in an Email
NEW YORK, June 18 LAWFUEL – Press Release Service – Asked for an interview last week by
Newsweek, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong declined, but sent an
angry e-mail accusing the national media of getting spun by defense lawyers in the Duke rape case and sticking to his earlier comments to the press, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and Senior Writer Susannah Meadows in the June 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 19).
“None of the ‘facts’ I know at this time, indeed, none of the evidence I
have seen from any source, has changed the opinion that I expressed
initially,” Nifong wrote to Newsweek. He lashed out at “media speculation”
(adding, “and it is even worse on the blogs”). Nifong said that he was
bound by ethics rules against commenting any more about the case or
evidence.
Court documents in the case increasingly suggest that Nifong had very
little evidence upon which to indict three players for rape. As required by
North Carolina law, Nifong says he has turned over all the evidence in his
possession, almost 1,300 pages, to the defense, and this week he is
expected to turn over another batch of documents. It is conceivable that
Nifong is holding back some kind of smoking gun, but, given the rules and
the publicity about the case, that does not seem likely.
Nifong is described by some lawyers as an adversary who gets dug in-and
won’t budge. But Nifong’s motives may have been political as well. He was
six weeks away from an election when the Duke case came up. Durham voters
are almost evenly divided between black and white. One of Nifong’s
opponents was black and the other was white, but the white lawyer was much
better known in the community, thanks to winning a high-profile murder
case. (That opponent, former Assistant D.A. Freda Black, became a bitter
enemy of Nifong after, she claims, Nifong fired her.) Nifong promised black
voters that he would not let the Duke case drop. He indicted two of the
players two weeks before the election. He won narrowly, taking a larger
share of the black vote than the other white candidate.
