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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Justice in the Duke non-rape case 


Regular blog readers know that there has been an extraordinary amount of controversy regarding the conduct of Durham (NC) District Attorney Mike Nifong in the prosecution of members of the Duke lacrosse team for rape and other heinous crimes. Well, the North Carolina bar filed ethics charges against Nifong today "accusing him of saying misleading or inflammatory things to the news media about the athletes under suspicion." Good. Prosecutors everywhere need to know there are some lines that they must not cross. John Hinderaker:

Our criminal justice system reposes a tremendous amount of discretion in prosecutors. When prosecutors are corrupt, like Nifong or Ronnie Earle of Travis County, Texas, who ruined Tom DeLay's public career, the consequences can be devastating.

There is one reform that I think would push prosecutors substantially in the direction of the responsible: We should bar all prosecutors -- state, federal, attorneys general -- from running for any non-prosecutorial public or judicial office for a period of five years after leaving the prosecutor's office.

4 Comments:

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Fri Dec 29, 11:37:00 AM:

Couldn't agree more (and they shouldn't be appointed to the federal bench, either) -- MCU  

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Fri Dec 29, 01:09:00 PM:

And no book deals either--KSG  

By Blogger Dawnfire82, at Fri Dec 29, 02:42:00 PM:

Barring people from political office is a governmental line we don't really want to cross...  

By Blogger Lanky_Bastard, at Fri Dec 29, 10:49:00 PM:

Must be hard taking the moral high ground as a prosecutor while watching defense attorneys play the media game.  

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