Why Tracey Cline should be reinstated as Durham D.A.

Readers of my blog and viewers of my flog know that I am no fan of suspended Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline. As the county’s head prosecutor, I believe that she should have stepped in and dismissed her Assistant D. A. Angela Garcia-Lamarca’s 2010 vendetta prosecution of Crystal Mangum, the Duke Lacrosse victim/accuser. Likewise, I feel she should have moved to force prosecutor Kelly Gauger to drop the murder and larceny charges against Ms. Mangum related to the April 13, 2011 death of Reginald Daye. Despite the fact that D.A. Cline is a friend of former Durham D.A. Mike Nifong and has treated him with civility and respect, I am nonetheless not an ardent backer of her.

You may then query, why do I advocate for her to be reinstated as Durham district attorney? The answer is surprisingly simple and devoid of political prejudices. Tracey Cline should be reinstated as the district attorney because she was overwhelmingly elected to that position by the people of Durham County. In other words, the people had spoken… people who Ms. Cline represented. Her job, and that of any other elected official, be it municipal, county, or state, should not be threatened because of a single individual’s discontent.

Durham defense attorney Kerry Sutton is certainly not an objective bystander when it comes to D.A. Cline. Attorney Sutton had sparred with Cline numerous times within the confines of the courtrooms housed in the Bull City’s justice building. The News & Observer even intimated that Ms. Sutton may have political aspirations and be considering a run for the state senate. Wherever the truth lies, her motives for launching the attack against Ms. Cline can be brought into question.

I am also bothered by the fact that a “little known law” that is on the books and one that is rarely used is the basis for the removal of Ms. Cline from elected office. Not only that, but the law is ambiguous, vague, and subject to a wide range of interpretation. Yes, I am concerned that a “little known law” is being used in an attempt to oust from office the county’s highest ranking prosecutor.

Ms. Sutton seems to be especially offended by the language Tracey Cline used in going after Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson. She refers to it as “venom.” However, Cline supporters may construe this same language as a yardstick to measure her passion for vigorously prosecuting those charged with crimes. Her supporters may attribute her defiant and unyielding stance against Judge Hudson to be an indication of her dedication and determination in the conviction of her beliefs.

In a way, and to an extent, I can appreciate Ms. Cline’s actions in going against the superior court judge… although I would never advise it. I agree that, as human beings, judges make mistakes and that none are infallible. For example, in my civil rights discrimination lawsuit against Duke University, Magistrate Judge P. Trevor Sharp, in a Recommendation, misstated facts about the case; inaccurate and prejudicial “facts” which he attributed to me. He stated that I represented that “after an interview with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer concluded, I began passing out my business cards.” This was totally incorrect, false and misleading. Specifically, in my Complaint, I mentioned that “while waiting for the interview to begin I passed out a few cards to some individuals I had engaged in conversation.” Kerry Sutton and others may consider my use of the accusatory term that he “lied” to be venom. I would say that it is possibly a “politically incorrect” term… but it is nevertheless the truth. Should I have used a less inflammatory term to describe the magistrate judge’s misstatements? Possibly. But like Ms. Cline, I am extremely passionate about the anti-Nifong discrimination to which I was subjected by Duke University and I do not feel that I should be sanctioned because of it.

The fact that Judge Robert Hobgood, who is charged with overseeing Sutton’s complaint against Cline, decided to immediately suspend Ms. Cline as Durham district attorney does not bode well for her. Doing so automatically prejudices the case against her by implying that the action taken was a safeguard to prevent Ms. Cline from pursuing a course that would result in an imminent threat or peril. Without an explanation from Judge Hobgood about his decision for immediate suspension, it is not unreasonable to believe that he caved to The News & Observer-led media vendetta against Ms. Cline.

It has been evident for months that the Triangle area newspaper had Tracy Cline in its crosshairs… just like it did her predecessor, Mike Nifong. The three part series by the N & O, titled “Twisted Truth” was a pathetic bid to stir the public into an anti-Cline frenzy, just like it had successfully accomplished against Mr. Nifong. In its rare exception to the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) policy, the newspaper was at the vanguard of the media offensive against Cline. It highlighted a few instances in which it alleged the prosecutor had withheld evidence and misled the court… dramatizing them as if they were singular events throughout the state’s history of juris prudence. Had the media been conscientiously objective, then it would have produced three-part series about the following legal luminaries: Wilson prosecutor Bill Wolfe for his mishandling of the case against James Arthur Johnson; Wake County prosecutor Tom Ford and his misconduct in Gregory Taylor and Carletta Alston cases; prosecutor David Hoke’s withheld exculpatory evidence in the Alan Gell case, and many others. Note, that although The News & Observer did extensively cover the Alan Gell case and its associated prosecutorial misconduct, it went out of its way to shield the prosecutors and take the focus away from their misdeeds.

Without doubt the media’s attacks against Tracey Cline are rooted in the Duke Lacrosse case and are a part of the seemingly endless and ubiquitous vindictive web cast by the Carpetbagger Jihadists in an attempt to ensnare those considered by the Powers-That-Be to be on the wrong end of that case. For example, the discrimination against me by Duke University had its origins from that case, as well. That the repetitive onslaught to remove Ms. Cline as Durham district attorney is vindictive and politically motivated is clearly evident.

Do I agree with Ms. Cline’s repeated attacks against Judge Hudson? No.
Do I believe her disparaging confrontations against the judge are productive? No.
Do I agree with the way her assistant prosecutor Garcia-Lamarca handled the 2010 case against Crystal Mangum? No.
Do I agree with the ongoing prosecution of Mangum by her assistant Kelly Gauger? No.
The most important question is, however, do I think Tracey Cline should be removed from office because of my disagreements with the way she has conducted herself as Durham district attorney? No. Because the people of Durham elected her to the office of Durham district attorney, the people should be the ones to remove her, if so inclined… not a single individual who may or may not have an ax to grind against Ms. Cline.

I submit that instead of using a “little known law” that is rarely used to remove Tracey Cline as Durham district attorney, Kerry Sutton should have taken the more appropriate and responsible track of initiating and circulating a recall petition amongst the Durham County electorate… allowing the people to determine the destiny of their elected officials instead of a single person. 

Restatement of purpose

Every now and again it seems as though the readers and commenters of this blog site get derailed about the purpose of the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong and its members. Once again, let me put the train back on track to avoid the discourse of distractions and the obstacles of obfuscation… so we can locomotion along the rails to enlightenment.

As we near our four anniversary this coming June, our mission statement and resolve has been steady, uncompromising, and one which follows the light of truth. The fundamental beliefs upon which this organization was founded have been and remain based upon the following principles: (1) former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong was selectively and unjustly persecuted and disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar because of his handing of the Duke Lacrosse case; (2) Mr. Nifong handled the Duke Lacrosse case well within the acceptable standards of a state prosecutor; (3) that Mr. Nifong is the only prosecutor to be disbarred due to professional misconduct is an outrage, especially when considering prosecutors Tom Ford (Gregory Taylor and Carletta Alston cases), Bill Wolfe (James Arthur Johnson case), Michael D. Parker (Floyd Brown case), and David Hoke (Alan Gell case), just to name a few. Our group’s focus remains committed to encouraging the NC State Bar to unilaterally and unconditionally reinstate Mr. Nifong’s license to practice law in the state without restrictions. Although Mr. Nifong has expressed that he never intends to practice law again, it is the contention that his license to practice law was unjustly taken by the Bar, and that it needs to man up and do the right thing by reinstating it.

Members of the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong, I believe, are some of the most courageous people in the state, because they lend their names and their faces to a righteous cause that is widely unpopular with the public because of contamination of the news that is broadcast and published by biased media-types… the big wigs in the upper echelons who determine what stories to follow, which stories to ignore, and what spin to give. Instead of remaining silent in the face of blatant anti-Nifong injustice, like most politicians, media outlets, and many civil rights organizations, members of the Committee speak loudly by their demonstration of courage. There are many ways to put it, but I like the saying attributed to President Abraham Lincoln who stated: “To sin by silence makes cowards of men.” One thing is certain… the members of our group, currently one shy of two dozen, are not cowards.

The Committee is, and always has been an inclusive organization, welcoming brave individuals who coalesce around the principles recited above with respect to former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. No one has been turned down for membership, and dues and/or investment of time or money is not required. All that is required is the heart to seek justice for Mike Nifong, which at its most primal form would be the reinstatement of his law license. Potential members are not vetted or required to provide personal information about themselves, their political leanings, or their ideologies on other topics. Likewise, our group is extremely tolerant of others and we do not discriminate with respect to granting membership.

It is not expected, or even desired that everyone who joins the group hold the same beliefs or opinions on issues other than Mike Nifong’s mistreatment by the state and the media. Gay and lesbians, people of all races and colors, worshippers of all religions as well as atheists, Democrats and even Republicans are all invited to join.

Some commenters are quick to cast some Committee members as homophobes or racists, but I find that these labels are often made without substance. There are people who might not agree with same-sex relationships or who might have a problem with gay and lesbians getting married, but that, at least to my way of thinking, does not categorize them as being homophobes. Personally, I have no problem whatever with gay and lesbian relationships. I have no problem with civil union between couples of the same sex and I do not object to the term “marriage” being used to define such relationships. To my mind marriage is an institution in which two individuals are fully and lovingly committed to one another regardless of their sexes. Not only that, but I believe that the liberal tolerance towards gays and lesbians is growing and gaining greater acceptance.

Hopefully this blog will put issues about homophobia and racism to rest, and the future blogs can be devoted to issues of criminal justice… such as the vendetta prosecutions of Crystal Mangum, the racist pardon policy that the governor’s office has used to deny pardons to Erick Daniels and Shawn Massey, the anti-Nifong discrimination by Duke University against me, and other important issues facing Tar Heelians who believe in the principle of “equal justice for all” instead of those who follow the tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.” 

“Ineffective counsel” enabled prosecution to win capital conviction in Goode case

Today’s edition of The News & Observer contains an article by Anne Blythe titled, “New trial sought in murder case that used SBI blood tests.” It briefly covers a motion that was filed in federal court yesterday that is seeking a new trial for George Goode. Initially sentenced to death for the double murder of a Johnston County couple nearly two decades ago, a judge recently threw out the death sentence because of “ineffective counsel.” Now Goode is under a sentence of two life sentences. His defense is that he was present and witnessed the murder of the couple, but was paralyzed with fear at the homicidal actions of two others.

N & O staff writer Anne Blythe, in her article, is in full compliance with the media’s PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy, as she never mentions the name of the prosecutor who sought the most extreme penalty for a man who was linked to the murder solely on a little prosecutorial hocus-pocus provided by SBI agent Duane Deaver. Mr. Deaver has since been admonished for misleading the jury that convicted Mr. Goode, but as has been recently divulged, he was only following the standard protocol of the slanted playing field used by the prosecution. In allowing the jurors to believe that Goode was linked to the crime by blood, Mr. Deaver used the same tactic (expressing the presumptive test for blood and withholding the negative confirmatory test) that he employed in helping to falsely convict Gregory Taylor for the 1991 murder of Jacquetta Thomas.

Ms. Blythe would have readers believe that SBI agent Deaver acted alone in this obvious conspiracy with prosecution… she expects us to believe that Goode’s prosecutor was oblivious to the misleading statements of its star witness, Deaver. In order to win the conviction against Goode, Goode’s prosecutor needed every trick in his bag of magic, including the misleading hocus-pocus lab analysis in which the jurors had reason to believe Deaver’s testimony to be truthful, objective, and unbiased.

The fact that the case against George Goode was also tainted by “ineffective counsel” is not surprising, and was probably an essential building block in reaching the capital conviction. Was the defense counsel for Mr. Goode back in the day merely inept, or was it purposely hanging its client out to dry for the prosecution’s benefit? I have not followed that case enough to know for sure, but I would not be surprised if the defense was in cahoots with the prosecution.

Speaking from personal experience with both civil and criminal trials, attorneys were not at all shy about taking large sums of money to represent me and then selling me down the drain. More often than not, that would be the case. There are many cases in the North Carolina criminal arena in which I believe that defense attorneys, especially from the Public Defenders office which represent the poorest of the poor and those most greatly disenfranchised, throttle back in the defense of their clients in order to enable the prosecution to come away with a win.

When it comes to public defenders, they really have a conflict of interest, especially when it comes to misconduct on the prosecutor’s side of the table. By definition, public defenders are agents of the state who are tasked to represent the indigent or those without legal representation who are faced with criminal charges. The prosecutors, who are also agents of the state, are pressing for convictions of the defendants represented by the state’s public defenders. In highly publicize cases, it is definitely not to the public defender’s best interests to win an acquittal for a defendant who is unpopular with the press and the people.

The cases against some defendants are so weak that prosecutors are unable to prevail without the ineffective contributions by the defendants’ counsel. In one particular incident, a defendant who was charged with “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury” for stabbing a woman, waived his right to assigned legal counsel. Subsequently, with the defendant left to represent himself, the prosecution filed to dismiss the case. Reasons for the dismissal were that the victim refused to cooperate with prosecution, and that there was lack of evidence to corroborate the victim’s story that she was stabbed. Had this man been represented by assigned counsel, it is possible that the prosecution would have moved forward. This, however, is merely speculation.

Ineffective counsel can on occasion be due to the ineptitude of the defense attorney, such as in the case in which Erick Daniels, a 15 year-old, who was convicted of an armed robbery conviction based largely on the shape of his eyebrows in a middle school year book. With no credible case against him, Erick’s lawyer nevertheless put him on the stand to testify. He was pummeled by Prosecutor Freda Black cross-exam which contained highly prejudicial and inflammatory questions. Daniels served seven years unjustly behind bars. And despite being dragged out of a middle school classroom by police without the existence of a shred of credible evidence to implicate him, the media did not raise a ruckus because the teenage defendant was poor, disenfranchised, and an African American.

In a legal environment in which most prosecutors seek unfair advantage on a skewed playing field, former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong long ago sought to level the field and give defendants fair advantage and justice. More than two decades before it became mandated by law, Mike Nifong was sharing his evidentiary files with defense attorneys. He has maintained an open file policy throughout his 27 year career as a prosecutor. (This is something that the media and the State Bar's F. Lane Williamson never mention and don't want the public to know.) When defense in the Duke Lacrosse case filed a motion seeking discovery, three sets (one for each defendant) of thousands of pages of documents, and copies of CDs and DVDs were provided within 24 hours. When Mr. Nifong sought copies of evidence held by defense attorneys, they gave him nothing (even though some so-called defense evidence was shared with the extremely friendly media). To accuse Mr. Nifong of withholding evidence is ludicrous, especially in light of past history. Such accusations should be reserved for prosecutors such as David Hoke (Alan Gell case), Bill Wolfe (James Arthur Johnson case), Michael Parker (Floyd Brown case), and Tom Ford (Gregory Taylor case).

Prosecutorial hocus-pocus and ineffective defense counsel may have put George Goode on death row, but hopefully now that the unfair practice of the SBI lab have been exposed, he will at least get another trial… and this time on a more level playing field.

DAs on board regarding SBI lab shakeup… Hogwash!

According to The News & Observer editorial of August 31, 2010, the state’s district attorneys understand that clouds over the SBI hurt their ability to make cases. What the district attorneys should be concerned about is that the clouds interfere with the administration of justice. As so-called “Ministers of Justice,” prosecutors should have their priority as the goal of justice before that of winning a case. For many, if not most North Carolina prosecutors, that has definitely not been the case. The recent case exposed in an article by N &O investigative reporter J. Andrew Curliss about Derrick Allen is a prime example of a prosecutor, Freda Black, placing a conviction ahead of seeking justice. Ms. Black is also the prosecutor responsible for winning an armed robbery conviction against a 14 year-old Erick Daniels. There was no credible evidence or forensic findings tying the young Daniels boy to the crime… only the robbery witness’s linking the shape of Daniels’s eyebrows in a school yearbook to those of the assailant. He served more than half of a 14 to 20 year sentence before he was finally released on appeal. Tom Ford, Wake prosecutor responsible for unapologetically stealing seventeen years of a man’s life (Greg Taylor) because Taylor did not implicate an innocent man in a murder, is unfortunately representative of many of the prosecutors who have no qualms about unjustly incarcerating innocents who are poor, disenfranchised, and people of color.

Although The News & Observer would have you believe otherwise, it is the prosecutors and not the people in the SBI lab who are driving the show. The lab people are merely backseat passengers in the prosecutor’s vehicle. It is the prosecutors who benefit from winning a conviction, not the lab technicians. Even the SBI agents don’t get the glory of convicting the defendant in a heinous crime. Therefore, when a prosecutor’s case is weak, he/she has the built-in incentive to lean on people in the lab in order to force them to skew, omit, fudge, tweak, or otherwise manipulate lab results in hopes of improving their odds at trial. Not all prosecutors take this devious avenue; just the unscrupulous ones such as Tom Ford, Freda Black, Bill Wolfe, and Michael Parker.

The fact that justice is a secondary or tertiary concern of prosecutors is best illustrated in the Alan Gell case. Prosecutor David Hoke was in possession of 17 eyewitness statements that proved beyond doubt that defendant Alan Gell could not possibly have committed the murder for which he was charged. Hoke withheld this information from the defense counsel, and won a capital conviction against Gell. Now, The News & Observer wants to blame this wrongful conviction on the lead investigator in the case, Dwight Ransome. However, a decade after Gell’s conviction when the existence of these witness statements came to light, and the Attorney General’s Office was aware that there were 17 witness statements that proved Gell could not have committed the murder for which he had languished in jail (half on death row), the Attorney General’s Office went ahead and prosecuted the case in a second trial. Roy Cooper didn’t issue an “innocent promulgation” on Gell’s behalf. He tried to keep an innocent man in jail. However, once the jury got the case, they immediately found Gell not guilty. How does The News & Observer explain that? The Attorney General’s Office used SBI agent Ransome’s work to support their case against Gell at re-trial. Somehow, it is not the prosecutors at fault… it’s Ransome.

Currently, Alan Gell is incarcerated on a convoluted vendetta charge concocted by a Johnston County prosecutor. His unreasonable and lengthy sentence is nothing more than payback for having the audacity to file a complaint for the malicious and blatant injustice he suffered with his death penalty conviction. Although he wrongfully served ten years, he was convicted on technical trifle and is serving a five year sentence. According to my math, even with the ridiculous five year sentence, he had five years credit. He should never have served one day of this most recent vindictive sentence.

What is truly tragic is that the prosecutors with integrity who prosecute in good faith and act as “Ministers of Justice” are the ones that are targeted, mainly by the Powers-That-Be, and the unregulated North Carolina State Bar. Gregory Butler was a prosecutor in Johnston County, who when he became aware that the defense attorney lacked some of the prosecutor’s discovery, immediately notified the defense. This act, publicized in The News & Observer, resulted in a delay in the court proceedings while the defense was granted time to review the information presented. It also prompted the North Carolina State Bar to initiate a complaint against Mr. Butler, which forced him to remove himself from the case, causing a further delay. Fortunately, there was no bounty on Mr. Butler’s head, and F. Lane Williamson and his band on the Bar’s grievance panel, did nothing more than give Mr. Butler a slobbery tongue lashing.

But what happened to Mr. Butler pales in comparison to the persecution administered to the prosecutor of the Duke Lacrosse case, Mike Nifong. This prosecutor, with 27 years experience as a prosecutor, and who was appointed to the Durham district attorney position by Governor Mike Easley, had a stellar reputation as a fair and hard-working prosecutor. Since he first practiced as a prosecutor, Mike Nifong had always maintained an open file discovery policy… that is, he provided the defense attorneys with all of the evidentiary information he had in his file. (This was decades before such policy became mandated in the state.) Most of the ardent defense attorneys who sparred with Nifong in courtroom, gave him high marks when it came to opening his files for them and prosecuting fairly. As it is with individuals who possess both high ethical standards and courage, Mr. Nifong was not swayed by pressure applied by peers and higher-ups. He followed his conscience… which made him too independent… which made him too dangerous. Therefore, he was brought down by the big power machine, with assistance from the biased media. The state, along with the Carpetbagger families of the Duke Lacrosse defendants and their attorneys set out to make an example of him, and make him pay, every day, for the rest of his life.

When Mike Nifong was taken down, Durham lost the best district attorney it will most likely ever see. He was a prosecutor who prosecuted cases in good faith based on sound evidence and good science. He did not lobby lab technicians for reports or results favorable to his case, and as a result, the lab technicians and agents did not feel the need to help effect the outcome of his cases. Mike Nifong’s priority was to see justice fairly administered, and to see equal justice for all. He did not subscribe to the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.” If he did abide by that principle, he certainly would not have prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse defendants… especially when doing so severely compromised his chances of winning the election for Durham district attorney.

The News & Observer editorial did get it right. The state’s district attorneys understand that clouds over the SBI hurt their ability to make cases… and that’s what they’re interested in; making their cases. Unfortunately, unlike Mike Nifong, they are less interested in seeing that equal justice prevails for all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett, Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, and Mike Nifong

Recently, The Independent Weekly, a Triangle area arts and entertainment publication, which has an aversion to me, featured an article by a “Casual Observer.” The title of the July 14, 2010 article, “Razing questions: The last day of the Duke lacrosse house” by Adam Sobsey, included the following paragraph:
“The next morning, I was sitting in Parker & Otis with a cup of coffee when two men sat down at an adjacent table. One of them turned on a voice recorder and interviewed the other – about the lacrosse scandal, astonishingly. The interviewee vigorously and lengthily attacked the media coverage of the case and defended Nifong. It was even more astonishing to hear him compare Nifong to a cross between Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. The building may have been demolished, but apparently we are still picking through its controversial remains.”

Yep, I was the interviewee. A gentleman was working on a project for his doctorial thesis and we met that day in Durham for the interview about how African Americans responded and reacted to the Duke Lacrosse case. As the casual observer accurately observed, I did place well-deserved criticism about biased and unfair coverage on the mainstream media… which is in lockstep with the Carpetbagger Jihad agenda to destroy former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong and anyone considered to be on the wrong end of the Duke Lacrosse case.

A most conspicuous example of slanted media coverage is the utilization of the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy as evidenced in the recent series in The News & Observer which lays prosecutorial misdeeds on SBI agents and its lab. No where in the entire four part series, spread out over a week, did any of the articles, or related articles mention a prosecutor’s name with a case of injustice. For example, Wake Prosecutor Tom Ford’s name was never mentioned, although he was responsible for putting an innocent man prison for 17 years of a life sentence (Greg Taylor). The name of Prosecutor David Hoke’s name was put in print, even though he convinced a jury to place an innocent man (Alan Gell) on death row. Anson County District Attorney Michael D. Parker wasn’t named in the paper’s series even though he was responsible for an innocent man (Floyd Brown) being incarcerated for fourteen years without a trial. Instead, the newspaper placed blame for these and other flagrant injustices on SBI agents and workers in its forensic lab.

Contrast that coverage to what happened when police investigator Linwood Wilson was charged with “obscenity stalking” as a result of marital discord… the headlines blared, “Nifong’s investigator arrested,” “Nifong’s investigator charged with stalking,” etc. You get the picture. The media, unfortunately, is integrally involved in shaping public opinion, and every chance it gets to link Mr. Nifong to a negative story, it will jump at the chance.

Now, I was pleased with the reference in The Independent Weekly by Mr. Sobsey. And, as I have said for some time, Mr. Nifong has the important and positive characteristics of Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, and Thomas Beckett. As a prosecutor, Mr. Nifong believed in law, and he set his career to seeing justice carried out, as devoted to law enforcement as Marshal Wyatt Earp. Like the “Untouchables’” Eliot Ness, Mr. Nifong would not be swayed by coercion, peer pressure, public sentiment, or “suggestions” from higher-ups. Finally, Mr. Nifong exhibited the courage and independence of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett in seeking justice… not bending under the force of the Carpetbagger Cabal. And contrary to the lies put forth in the media from the unregulated North Carolina State Bar adjudicator F. Lane Williamson, and others, Mike Nifong prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse defendants when doing so presented a definite disadvantage to his being elected to his appointed position of Durham district attorney.

What is truly sad is that the people of Durham have been snookered out of having one of North Carolina’s truly great prosecutors serve their county. Mike Nifong exemplified a “Minister of Justice” who put getting it right ahead of winning no matter what the costs. It is the people of Durham who share in this blame because they remained silent and idle, allowing the travesty against Mr. Nifong to take root and flourish. Unfortunately, as is often the case, a man possessing the admirable qualities of Beckett, Earp, and Ness, was considered too much of a risk for the Powers-That-Be who wanted to have free rein to co-opt their version of justice as opposed to enforcing the sacrosanct principle of “equal justice for all.”

An ultimate betrayal by the SBI agents and its lab?

The News & Observer, with a big boost from its recent four-part series on “Agents’ Secrets,” in which it actually shares blame with someone other than Mike Nifong for the abysmal state of the North Carolina justice system, is now the front-runner for my annual “Jedi Mind-trick Award”… barely squeaking ahead of NBC-17 News. The series by staff writers Mandy Locke and Joseph Neff predictably places blame for all the state’s criminal justice woes on a few bad apples in the State Bureau of Investigation and the forensic lab that it runs. The four-part series recounts numerous horrific tales of injustice and wrongful incarcerations that have occurred in the state in the not so distant past, but what is truly remarkable is that the writers did it while mentioning the name of a prosecutor (linked to a case) only once! And even when mentioned, it was not in a derogatory context. Ms. Locke and Mr. Neff surely deserve accolades for adhering to the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy when presented with such a challenging topic. And they did well to shift all responsibility from North Carolina State prosecutors to SBI agents and SBI lab personnel.

When it comes down to it, a few individuals in the SBI and its lab were sacrificed as scapegoats to take the downfall and accept blame for all of the malicious and baseless prosecutions and lengthy incarcerations of the innocents that have occurred. The prosecutors, the newspaper would like you to believe, were nothing much more than bystanders and onlookers when the prosecutorial treads of injustice squashed designated individuals (mostly the disenfranchised, poor, and people of color) along with their civil and constitutional rights. From reading the four-part series, one would swear that the investigative agents and lab technicians were single-handedly in charge of determining the fate of the state’s defendants.

The Gregory Taylor case was, of course, mentioned. Revelations from his hearing before a three judge bench in February 2010 was responsible for media focus being directed at the SBI and its forensic practices. But Prosecutor Tom Ford’s name was never mentioned in the series, and his actions in that case were some of the most despicable in the annals of North Carolina juris prudence. Ford was responsible for the vindictive and malicious incarceration of Mr. Taylor because he (Taylor) would not bow to Ford’s urgings for him to implicate an innocent African American man in a murder. Without any credible evidence, Mr. Taylor was sentenced to life, and served 17 years before he was freed by a three judge panel. Ford was even a pivotal figure in attempts to persuade the recently seated panel to deny Taylor’s bid for freedom by arguing against Taylor’s release.

In the Taylor case, The News & Observer left the SBI lab workers and its lab protocol, which in general heavily trended in favor of the prosecution, holding the bag when it came to the fact that the prosecution identified blood on the bumper of Taylor’s car… crucial in winning a conviction against an innocent man. It was the only so-called “evidence” used by Ford against Taylor besides the trumped up testimony of two so-called “witnesses” seeking shorter sentences in exchange for their statements. Prosecutor Tom Ford is neither dumb nor naïve… to the contrary, he is smart, cunning, and calculating. Make no mistake about it, Ford knew in 1991, as well as in February of 2010, exactly what the SBI lab’s complete results were with respect to the red substance on the bumper of Greg Taylor’s vehicle. He was aware that the confirmatory tests did not support the specimen being human blood.

But with the murder of African American prostitute Jacquetta Thomas, Ford was not interested in solving a crime… because he cared not about the victim, his priority was in closing the case. Despite Tom Ford knowing that Taylor was innocent, Taylor’s refusal to falsely implicate Johnny Beck, a black “suspect,” was all it took for Ford to seek a life sentence conviction. Prosecutor Ford could care less whether results forthcoming from the lab were bogus or legit, as long as they supported his case against Taylor.

In another case cited by the newspaper, unnamed prosecutors referred to only as “Davie County prosecutors” supposedly relied on lab work and forensic testimony in prosecuting a Kernersville dentist for the murder of his wife. It seems that the SBI agent involved in the case did not make the appropriate notes and documentation, predated a document, and made false statements about evidence. According to the newspaper, the misdeeds by the agents and bloodstain pattern expert were done to fit the investigator’s theory. The reader is to believe that the unidentified prosecutors were totally out of the loop? Such a scenario is not to be believed as it is the prosecutors who drive the prosecution of defendants, not the other way around. The investigators and agents try to conjure up results backing up the prosecutor’s story about how the crime(s) unfolded and the defendant’s role.

Perhaps the most blatant example of the PAPEN Policy in The News & Observer series is a redacted quote by Barry Scheck who is questioning Alan Gell investigator Dwight Ransome: “When you were talking with [the district attorney], didn’t you…” Mr. Scheck probably said, “When you were talking with David Hoke, didn’t you…” So in order to protect the identity of the Gell prosecutor (Hoke) who put an innocent man (Gell) on death row despite exculpatory evidence that proved Gell could not possibly have committed a murder, the newspaper substituted a generic [the district attorney].

There are many more examples which I could point out, but doing so would only be redundant. The fact is that whether it’s DNA, bloodstain patterns, confirmatory testing for human blood, missing notations and documentation, false testimony, purposely not conducting tests on evidence, etc., the investigators and lab analysts who are acting unethically and inappropriately are doing so at the behest of the prosecutors to help win a conviction. By and large, prosecutors are anything but “ministers of justice” whom they are portrayed to be… prosecuting a case but seeking the truth and assuring that the defendant receives justice. In North Carolina with its system of “selective justice based on Class and Color,” prosecutors have absolutely no qualms about putting away individuals in society who are disenfranchised, poor, and people of color. Likewise, as exemplified by the murder of Jacquetta Thomas, prosecutors lack the resolve to solve to crimes against the disenfranchised, poor, and people of color. They just want to close their case by sticking any body fitting the desirable profile (disenfranchise, poor, and of color) behind bars.

There once was a district attorney who did not fit the mold of the typical North Carolina prosecutor. Nearly a quarter of a decade before it became mandated, he had an open file policy wherein he shared all of his evidence with defense attorneys. He was a district attorney of the highest integrity, who believed in the principle of “equal justice for all.” He had the same respect for the law, sense of fair play, and obligation to duty as famed lawmen Wyatt Earp and Elliot Ness. And he had the independence and courage of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett to forge ahead and do what was right… and not do what was expedient or expected. As a result, Mike Nifong, former Durham district attorney was persecuted by the state and crucified in the media. The best district attorney the state of North Carolina will probably ever see was figuratively speaking thrown under the bus because he would not adhere to the Carpetbagger agenda in the Duke Lacrosse case. Unfortunately, the crimes by the state against Mr. Nifong are an abomination that has placed a scar on the justice system from which the state will never recover.

Although prompted by testimony at Greg Taylor’s hearing just months ago, the problems with the state’s criminal justice system have festered for many decades. What I find thoroughly disingenuous is the reaction to The News & Observer four-part series, with politicians and prosecutors feigning shock and indignation at problems which they have known to exist and have tolerated. Durham Representative Mickey Michaux, according to the newspaper, “was disturbed to read about false reports filed by SBI agents and the innocent people harmed, and said that agents who violate law and policy need to be punished.” But Michaux knows that the rights and liberty of innocent people (especially the poor and of color) are violated routinely by police and prosecutors. What has Representative Michaux done about it? Nothing, at least that I am aware of. And punishing agents who violate law and policy seems to be misplaced when they do so in response to the persuasion and pressure applied by prosecutors. Punishing wayward prosecutors, who are the driving force behind many innocents being locked away and mistreated, is not an unreasonable step. In my mind, it is also unlikely to be undertaken.

After reading the newspaper series, North Carolina Prosecutor Ann Kirby was quoted as saying: “It’s an absolute betrayal to us as prosecutors and to the agents who are doing their job fairly. To find out that people we relied on so heavily in so many cases were slanting results – by their own accord or by the instruction of supervisors – is the ultimate betrayal. We are not playing a game here. These are people’s lives.” To me, the betrayal seems to be on the other foot. The prosecutors entice, cajole, plead, demand, threaten and do whatever is necessary to extract results, regardless of how bogus, from willing or vulnerable agents and lab technicians in order to prevail in court. Then, when the unsavory practices for which these prosecutors are responsible are exposed by the media spotlight, they attack the agents and lab techs who did their bidding. Now that’s what I call the ultimate betrayal.

N&O columnist joins in scapegoating the SBI

This week, The News & Observer newspaper has been presenting a four-part series about misconduct and malfeasance at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and its lab. It is nothing more than a blatant attempt to shift all of the blame for exposed prosecutorial misdeeds upon a few “rogue elements” within the SBI. As in keeping within its adherence of following the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy, I believe that the name of a prosecutor has been mentioned possibly once in the two parts that have been published to date in the newspaper. Recently, Barry Saunders, the paper’s columnist with the acerbic keyboard, jumped into the fray by dumping on two SBI agents in particular in his column titled “Meet he SBI’s bad guys.”

Following the same tenor as articles in the four-part series, Mr. Saunders lambastes the investigators, while not laying a single kid-gloved hand on the prosecutors. This is yet another example of the strict compliance which the media has when it comes to the PAPEN Policy. To his credit, Mr. Saunders does mention the name of a prosecutor in his article once, but he fails to tie him to the real injustice visited upon defendant Floyd Brown.

Barry wrote the following about the Brown prosecutor: “…Anson County District Attorney Michael Parker spitefully refused Dix workers’ request to take him to the State Fair. Brown would have loved that.” However, nowhere in the article does he attribute Brown’s fourteen years of incarceration without a trial to D.A. Parker. Readers of the Saunders column are supposed to believe that SBI investigator Mark Isley is responsible for that. As a matter of fact, the column doesn’t begin to touch upon the depth of Parker’s malevolence and misconduct. Michael Parker not only denied Dix workers’ request for Mr. Brown to have an occasional lunch with his sister, but he willfully and maliciously interfered with Brown’s disposition after being released from 14 years in custody. This was achieved by Parker surreptitiously finding out the assisted living facility where social workers had arranged for Brown to be sent, then talking with the owners of said facility. Shortly thereafter, there was an abrupt 180 by the owners of the house, and Floyd Brown was denied admittance.

What is terribly misleading about these articles is that they put the onus of the injustice in these criminal cases on the investigators, and not on the prosecutors where it squarely belongs. Surely, District Attorney Parker knew that the lucid confession by a severely retarded defendant was flawed to the point of being fraudulent. And don’t think for a minute that investigators work in a vacuum. They are frequently in contact with the prosecutors. As the articles in the four-part series allude, investigators often work to please the prosecutors on the case. So even if the evidence that is brought by investigators before the prosecutor is not credible, it is accepted by the prosecutor if it supports his/her version of events. These articles printed thus far point to the SBI agents and investigators as being the driving force behind the prosecution of defendants. The prosecutors’ roles have almost been relegated to that of bystanders. “Protect those prosecutors… except Nifong” should be the media’s motto.

What I find to be most disingenuous about castigating remarks about SBI agent Dwight Ransome, is that the media maintains that the investigator zeroed in on a particular defendant and skewed his findings to support his belief. But what about the prosecutor? It begs the question, who is running the prosecution? You would believe the investigator and not the prosecutor after reading this week’s articles in The News & Observer. And what I find curious in Barry’s column is the total omission of the highly publicized case to which Ransome was related… that of Alan Gell. Of course, the identity of the prosecutor of Mr. Gell, David Hoke, would not be expected to be mentioned (in accordance with PAPEN).

As you may remember, in the Gell case, the prosecution withheld from defense attorneys the existence of 17 eyewitness statements wherein the alleged murder victim of Gell was seen alive, after Alan Gell had been locked up on an unrelated charge… clearly and definitively exculpatory evidence. Although these documents were within David Hoke’s folder (and I believe that Hoke maintains that he overlooked them), SBI agent Ransome is the one the media holds responsible for defendants not having access to the evidence. What is even further outrageous is that the media contends that had Prosecutor Hoke and defense attorneys been aware of these witness statements that the charges would have probably been dropped. What the media fails to mention however, is that even with knowledge of the 17 witness statements, the Attorney General’s Office chose to re-try Alan Gell (which resulted in an immediate verdict of not guilty). Now if SBI investigator Ransome’s work was so tarnished at Gell’s initial trial, why would state prosecutors take it upon themselves to take Mr. Gell to court a second time? This is not addressed by the media.

What the media needs to focus on is the vendetta case against Crystal Mangum, the former Duke Lacrosse victim who is currently facing trumped up charges of arson and injury to personal property. The News & Observer needs to sic its top investigative reporters on the Durham Police Department and prosecutors. It needs to delve into the basic question of who started the fire. It needs to ask what credible evidence is in possession of the prosecution to support its claim that Crystal Mangum vandalized a car the night of February 17, 2010. It needs to question the specific basis for the initial charges of attempted first degree murder and identity theft lodged against Mangum. It needs to look into the inactivity of police to clothes ablaze in a bathtub. It needs to try and make sense of a timeline vaguely proffered by police and prosecution regarding events that took place the night of February 17th.

There is plenty for a couple of good investigative reporters to sink their teeth into regarding this case. Not only that, but such an exploration would provide fodder for another highly sarcastic and entertaining column by The News & Observer’s own Barry Saunders. I can’t wait.

Now, it is important to pay attention to these blogs, as you might be tested about them in the future. To get an indication of your apprehension of the topic of Duke Lacrosse’s big connection to the media, click on the following link to access the latest quiz on the topic. Click Quiz 10 on the directory page.

LINK: http://justice4nifong.com/quiz/quiz.htm

When it comes to injustice, Duke LAX case doesn’t even merit mention

In yesterday’s issue of the News & Observer, an article by staff writer Mandy Locke titled “Former Dix inmate sues SBI agents” tries to dredge up sympathy for the Duke Lacrosse defendants by making a comparison with the injustice Floyd Brown sustained. In what is essentially media blasphemy, she stretches to make a connection between the situations faced by Floyd Brown and the three Duke Lacrosse defendants. Floyd Brown is a mentally retarded man who was held for fourteen years without a trial by Anson County District Attorney Michael D. Parker. Per its customary PAPEN Policy (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong), the prosecutor’s name is never mentioned in the article. Mr. Brown was finally released from custody when a judge from outside of Anson County ruled that he was being held unlawfully. There was no “credible evidence” or any evidence linking Brown to a murder for which he was charged, but never tried. Brown’s fourteen years of confinement were made harder by Parker’s refusal of the staff’s request to allow Brown to have lunch with family, or a day trip to the fair. And after Brown was released, with arrangements made by state social workers for his placement in an assisted living facility, a vindictive Parker went out of his way to disrupt Brown’s disposition. Further arrangements for housing for Brown were made secretly to prevent the D.A. from continuing to maliciously interfere with housing plans. In addition, the charge against Brown by D.A. Parker was based solely on a written confession attributed to Brown that experts claimed he was too retarded to have made.

Contrast Floyd Brown’s situation with the three Duke Lacrosse defendants who did not spend one day in jail, received $7 million each in an out-of-court settlement with Duke University, enjoyed the benefit of being proclaimed “innocent” by Attorney General Roy Cooper during his April 11, 2007 “Innocent Promulgation,” were coddled by the biased media, and are suing the cash-strapped city of Durham for an additional $10 million each… in the words of their attorney “so nothing like this ever happens to anyone else.” Yet, they are claiming that they were denied due process. How? This claim is obviously a bluff, and the Carpetbagger families of the Duke Lacrosse defendants and their greedy attorneys were expecting the city to roll over just like Duke University. They have no intention of carrying out this lawsuit because they have no case.

The media should be ashamed to even mention the Duke Lacrosse case when it comes to injustice, especially with innocents such as Alan Gell who was falsely convicted of capital murder by Prosecutor David Hoke, and Darryl Hunt in Winston-Salem. These men mentioned in the article, along with others such as Erick Daniels, Gregory Taylor, and James Arthur Johnson are some of the true victims of North Carolina’s justice system, and they have all served excessively long unjust incarceration on convictions made without credible evidence.

One of the most recent victims of injustice is Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case. Durham Prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca is trying to do her best to get a plea deal with Ms. Mangum, now that she is under electronic house arrest and not in an oppressive jail cell. Initially the prosecutor tried to have Ms. Mangum plead guilty to the arson charge and serve a two year jail sentence… as though that was a really great offer. The problem is that the prosecutors have no case against Ms. Mangum, and they know that they would be thoroughly embarrassed if they took their case to court. No credible evidence… nothing. The Mangum prosecution’s position is similar to that of Prosecutor Bill Wolfe’s in the James Arthur Johnson case, in which, to the relief of the prosecution, Johnson accepted an Alford plea on a flimsy charge to avoid the possibility of being returned to jail. The Mangum prosecution’s retaliatory motivation is similar to that of Alan Gell who currently in prison for charges brought as a vendetta against him after he filed lawsuits and complaints for his earlier false murder conviction. Prosecutor Garcia-Lamarca, Judges Claude Allen and Paul Ridgeway, and the Durham Police and Fire departments, along with the media, are all focused on punishing Crystal Mangum for her role in the Duke Lacrosse case. The charges for which she was arrested on February 17, 2010 were merely a means of imposing an indefinite sentence on Ms. Mangum without her being convicted of a crime.

Some media outlets have attempted to mitigate the suffering of Ms. Mangum by falsely reporting, shortly after her arrest, that she was under house arrest on a $250,000 bail. NBC-17 and Newsweek magazine both made the false claims although Ms. Mangum actually spent approximately 90 days at the Durham Detention Center, and is currently under house arrest after the posting of bond. Almost without exception, however, the media goes out of its way to give the Duke Lacrosse players (who attended the beer-guzzling stripper party with under-aged drinking and racial epithets) a positive and sympathetic look. But there is no way that Duke Lacrosse defendants comes close to enduring the hardship and suffering of Floyd Brown, Alan Gell, Crystal Mangum, and others.

However, what I don’t understand is why Floyd Brown’s attorneys are going after the investigators. Surely the SBI agents and sheriff’s deputies acted no more deliberately and in bad faith than lead prosecutor Michael Parker. It was Prosecutor Parker who was responsible for Floyd Brown being unlawfully held fourteen years, not the investigators. Maybe Brown’s attorneys are extending a professional courtesy to Prosecutor Parker by not filing a law suit against him. But, then, the North Carolina State Bar did not even feel motivated enough by the injustice against Brown to initiate its own complaint against Michael Parker. Whereas in the Duke Lacrosse case, the State Bar was quick to lob an ethics complaint against the Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong in order to force him off the case as the prosecutor.

Bottom line is that Floyd Brown deserves compensation for the atrocious injustices he suffered at the hands of Anson County Prosecutor Michael Parker… the defendants in the Duke Lacrosse case, on the other hand, do not even deserve mention.

Making a big deal out of a little fire: the Mangum arson timeline

The following information has been obtained from fire records, police reports, and other documents that are accessible by the public. Data from these papers are used to set up an accurate account of what transpired during the night of February 17, 2010, and early morning of February 18, 2010 at the Durham apartment that was rented by the Duke Lacrosse accuser Crystal Mangum.

February 17, 2010 – evening. Crystal Mangum is at the apartment she rents with her three children. She has a dispute with her ex-boyfriend who has been staying for a short time at her apartment intermittently. Crystal’s nine year-old daughter becomes concerned about her mother’s welfare during this dispute, and places a call to 911 seeking help for her mother.

Durham Police officer H. P. Thompson arrives at the house in which the dispute is taking place, late at night on the 17th, no time of arrival is listed on the reports.

February 17, 2010 – 11:53 pm. Ms. Mangum is placed under arrest by Officer Thompson, according to the arrest report.

February 18, 2010 – 12:08:56 am. 15 minutes after Ms. Mangum’s arrest, an alarm to the Durham Fire Department is placed by the Durham Police reporting a “structure fire with a subject trapped” at the address of Crystal Mangum.

February 18, 2010 – 12:15: 10 am. 6 minutes, 14 seconds after receiving the call, Fire Engine 3 arrives on the scene. When they arrive, they find the bathroom door closed, and upon opening it notice that a fire was visible in the bathtub. With a 1 ¾ inch hose-line extending through the front door, the firemen spray water on the fire in the bathtub.

February 18, 2010 – 12:18:00 am. 2 minutes, 50 seconds after arriving on the scene, the firemen extinguish the fire in the bathtub. Although there is no indication from the fire reports or police reports that the walls, floor, or ceiling of the bathroom sustained any fire damage, the firemen pull the ceiling of the bathroom to check for extension of the fire… and find that there is none.

Engine 3 then advises command that an investigator is needed for this incident.

February 18, 2010 – 1:40:31 am. 1 hour, 22 minutes, 31 seconds after extinguishing the fire, the last unit leaves the scene.

What is not clear in any of the reports is why the police officers, upon finding the clothing on fire in the bathtub did not simply turn on the faucet or shower head and douse the fire? Instead, it seems, the police decided to close the bathroom door in hopes of slowing the spread of the fire from the bathtub to other parts of the structure. There was no mention of any fire damage to the walls, floors, or ceilings in the bathroom or anywhere else within the apartment. It seems that had the fire been extinguished by the police when they first became aware of it, any smoke damage would have been significantly minimized. The time that had elapsed from when Ms. Mangum was arrested by police until the fire was extinguished by the fire department was 25 minutes.

I am not a fireman, but I have serious questions as to why an investigator would be needed for this fire. Common sense would dictate that Ms. Mangum must have harbored some ill feelings toward her ex-boyfriend and wanted to release frustrations by setting his clothing on fire (not unlike the scene in the movie “Waiting to Exhale” in which the Angela Bassett character sets her boyfriends clothing on fire… not in a bathtub like Ms. Mangum did, but in her boyfriend’s sports car). It is obvious that by placing the ex-boyfriend’s clothing in a fireproof bathtub, that Ms. Mangum was executing a controlled burn, and had no intention of burning down the house. In lieu of a fireplace, the bathtub is the most logical place to burn someone’s clothing. Furthermore, there was no mention in any of the official reports of an accelerant being used in the fire. It makes no sense that in a fit of anger at her ex-boyfriend, Ms. Mangum would burn her residence that she shared with her three children.

If anyone acted negligently during this event, it would be the police, who instead of immediately extinguishing the fire in the bathtub upon detection, decided to close the bathroom door and call the fire department to put out the fire. Their irresponsible actions put the entire apartment building in jeopardy of being burnt to the ground. The police enabled the smoke damage to the building grow in magnitude, and the extensive smoke damage possibly forced the firemen to pull the ceiling in the bathroom. Why the reluctance on the part of the police to put out the fire? More likely than not it was to magnify the seriousness of the charges that they would lob against Ms. Mangum, the accuser of the Duke Lacrosse defendants. Their misguided motivation for acting against Ms. Mangum was in compliance with the Carpetbagger Jihad movement directed at anyone or anything on the “wrong end” of the Duke Lacrosse case.

With respect to the fire, Crystal Mangum was arrested on a felony first degree arson charge (initially five counts, then later reduced to one count). Ms. Mangum was indicted by a grand jury on the charge of first degree arson under North Carolina statute 14-58. According to that statute, a first degree arson charge is in reference to a building or a structure that is burned while inhabited. It is evident that the structure (building, or apartment) was not burned, nor was there an attempt made to burn the structure by Ms. Mangum. The blatantly false charges are vendetta-driven and make a mockery of the North Carolina justice system, its police officers, prosecutors and courts. It is past time for the Duke Lacrosse case related foolery to cease. Crystal Mangum should be immediately released from custody and the charges against her dismissed. The justice system should not be involved in lengthening her time of incarceration for the purpose of disrupting her employment situation and losing custody of her children. What is really shameful is that our system of justice is not only cruel and draconian in its workings, but that it allows the Carpetbaggers to dictate the degree of callous and inhumane treatment.

In addition to releasing Crystal Mangum, the courts should also immediately release Alan Gell, another victim of vendetta justice. Prosecutor David Hoke withheld exculpatory evidence in winning a capital murder conviction against Gell, an innocent man. After serving ten years of wrongful incarceration, Gell was set free at re-trial, and he filed lawsuits against those individuals and agencies responsible for his conviction. When law enforcement learned that he impregnated his girlfriend just prior to her turning legal age, he was convicted on some convoluted cockamamie charge and sentenced to five years. This, after serving ten years wrongfully incarcerated. Do the math: Gell wrongfully incarcerated ten years minus five year cockamamie sentence equals immediate release from prison with five years credit.

Doing the right thing when a prosecutor errs

Wayne County District Attorney Branny Vickory in his earlier days as a North Carolina prosecutor helped to wrongly convict Dwayne Dail of the 1987 rape of a twelve year old girl. Mr. Dail spent nearly 19 years in prison before DNA evidence performed on a night-gown proved that he could not possibly have been the rapist. The case that Prosecutor Vickory brought against Dail more than two decades ago lacked “credible evidence” (something for which former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has been soundly criticized for in his handling of the Duke Lacrosse case). Despite Dail’s steadfast insistence of his innocence, he was convicted largely on the testimony of the twelve year old victim. The full extent of the evidence in the Duke Lacrosse case will never be known because it was dismissed by Attorney General Roy Cooper on April 11, 2007… however, like the rape case in 1989, it included testimony by the sexual assault victim. Prosecutor Branny Vickory, though green as an attorney back then, seems to have prosecuted the case in good faith and within the standards accepted by which prosecutors are held.

Mr. Vickory prosecuted the wrong person for the 1987 rape. Did he make some mistakes? I am sure that he would be the first to admit to it, just like Mr. Nifong admitted to making mistakes during the prosecution of the Duke Lacrosse case (although the jury will be out permanently regarding innocence or guilt of the three indicted by the grand jury). Although the injustice of an innocent man (Dail) spending nearly two decades of his young productive life unjustly confined is unfathomable, the prosecutor, Vickory, should not be pilloried. Mike Nifong,who prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse case in good faith and within acceptable standards, likewise should not be held to public scorn just because he prosecuted defendants from families of wealth, power, and privilege. Unfortunately, the gauntlet was thrown down and the Carpetbagger Jihad initiated when the mother of Duke Lacrosse defendant Dave Evans, Rae Evans gave her interview on “60 Minutes.” She stated that Mr. Nifong would “pay every day for the rest of his life,” because, as she so insightfully put it, he “picked on the wrong families to indict.” It is important to also keep in mind that the Duke Lacrosse defendants, as opposed to Mr. Dail, never spent one day in jail, that they received seven million dollars each from Duke University, and that they are currently suing the city of Durham seeking an additional ten mil each.

Although I am not well versed about the Dwayne Dail case and the prosecution’s actions, I am inclined to give the prosecutor the benefit of the doubt, if, as was reported in The News & Observer, Vickory rushed to free Dail once the 2007 DNA tests excluded him as the assailant of the 12 year old victim. No one person, or no one prosecutor is perfect… everyone makes mistakes. To his credit, Branny Vickory admitted his mistake and made an effort to correct it. This is what a good prosecutor does. And as simple as the principle of correcting a mistake seems, it is one that is not undertaken as often as one would think among state prosecutors. In the Alan Gell case (prosecuted by David Hoke), for example, as soon as definitive exculpatory evidence became available proving that Gell could not have committed the murder for which he received the death sentence, the Attorney General’s Office proceeded to re-try Gell, nonetheless.

More recently, another situation where prosecutorial mistakes led to a wrongful 17 year imprisonment of an innocent man is illustrated by the Greg Taylor case. When the Innocence Inquiry Commission unanimously referred Greg Taylor’s murder conviction to a three judge panel for review, the initial 1991 prosecutor Tom Ford, with assistance from Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby, fought tooth and nail to have the innocent man, Greg Taylor, remain incarcerated for the rest of his life. The judicial review of the case brought to light the fact that the State lab withheld information favorable to the defendant, and that Prosecutor Ford misrepresented the lab results in order to win a conviction against the innocent man. Like prosecutors Vickory and Hoke, Ford had no credible evidence to charge or prosecute Greg Taylor in 1993.

Prosecutors, once they realize that they have made a mistake, should admit it and move to correct it… like Vickory and Mike Nifong. When the Duke Lacrosse accuser could not identify to Prosecutor Nifong’s satisfaction that she had been rape, Mr. Nifong immediately moved to drop the rape charges. However, when exculpatory evidence was uncovered pointing to Gell’s innocence, the Attorney General’s Office chose to fight to try and convince the public that it had not made a mistake by convicting an innocent man to death… but the jury, when presented with the exculpatory evidence and given the opportunity to deliberate, quickly reached the obvious verdict, that Gell was innocent. Prosecutor Tom Ford, likewise tried to convince the world that Greg Taylor was guilty before a panel 17 years after the initial trial. Ford was more interested in trying to prove that he had not made a mistake in convicting the wrong man, rather than any consideration that he might be keeping an innocent man behind bars for the rest of his life… he didn’t care.

All prosecutors, at some time or another in their careers, make mistakes… but it is the relatively few good ones, like Branny Vickory and Mike Nifong, who admit to them and then set about to correct them.

Why Prosecutor Tom Ford is among the worst of the worse

On the morning of September 26, 1991, Raleigh police officers come upon the body of Jacquetta Thomas, a 26 year old African American, in a cul de sac at the end of Blount Street. The murder victim, who worked as a prostitute, had been severely beaten and her body partially exposed. Near by, but out of sight, is an SUV belonging to Gregory Flint Taylor, which had been abandoned earlier that morning after it became bogged down off-road in marshy land.

When Greg Taylor returns to the scene to see about extricating his vehicle, he identifies himself to the police at the crime scene as the owner of the vehicle and cooperates with their questioning in the homicide investigation. He does so freely and without legal consultation, and even goes to the police station to submit to further interrogation.

During his interviews, Greg Taylor gives consistent statements to the investigators. He he tells that he did not know the victim Jacquetta Thomas, never met her, and that she never was inside of his SUV. He states that his only passenger that night was Johnny Beck (an African American man), that they were riding around seeking and using drugs, and that while driving off road, his car got stuck in the moist terrain during the wee hours of the morning. He tells detectives that unable to remove it from its quagmire, the two decided to leave the vehicle to walk and try to hitch a ride home. On exiting the cul de sac, they noticed for the first time what appeared to be a body, but did not get close or examine it; planning instead to call authorities later in the morning if it had not been discovered by then.

Within twelve hours of the police’s discovery of Jacquetta Thomas’s body, Greg Taylor is charged with the murder. He is charged without forensic evidence linking him to the victim or vice versa, and without evidence confirming the victim’s presence in his vehicle. The unsubstantiated motive for the murder, according to Wake County Prosecutor Tom Ford is that Jacquetta Thomas, a prostitute, refused to engage in sex with Taylor, which resulted in Taylor becoming so enraged that he severely beat her to death. As was pointed out during the February 2010 hearing before the three judge panel, Gregory Taylor has never had a history or reputation of violence, either before the murder or afterwards during his 17 years of incarceration (during time spent in prison, he was not charged with any violations or misconduct… a rare accomplishment).

Prosecutor Tom Ford, I strongly believe, does not care whether or not the killer of Ms. Thomas is apprehended and faces judgment because he has absolutely no compassion for the victim… an African American and a prostitute. His only priority is closing the case, and not solving the crime. So, he rushes to judgment in charging Greg Taylor with the murder of Jacquetta Thomas without reasonable cause or due diligence. Tom Ford heeds the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color” when he charges Taylor, who is white but admitted to drug use and did not come from a family of material wealth and privilege, with the murder of Ms. Thomas.

Now, this is where Tom Ford’s actions become really sinister and despicable. His plan is to entice Greg Taylor, the white owner of the SUV, to falsely implicate his black passenger and fellow drug user Johnny Beck for the murder of Jacquetta Thomas. If Taylor refuses, Ford threatens to convict Taylor and have him spend the rest of his life in jail. By doing so, Ford could accomplish two objectives… close the case on a murder, and take a black man off the Raleigh streets (innocent or not). Ford initially believes that wrapping up this case would be relatively easy, thinking that Taylor would jump at the chance to avoid a conviction for murder and a lifetime in prison by simply implicating a black man for the commission of the crime, even though Taylor knew Beck to be innocent. However, Tom Ford does not count on Greg Taylor being a man of such integrity that it far exceeds what little that Ford, himself, possesses. Gregory Flint Taylor, at the repeated urgings and threats by Prosecutor Ford, refuses to give false testimony implicating Johnny Beck, a man he knew to be innocent.

Because Greg Taylor refuses to perjure himself by giving false testimony at the behest of Prosecutor Ford for the purpose of implicating another innocent man, Tom Ford makes good on his threat to convict Taylor of the murder. Ford achieves this goal by making deals with two other incarcerated individuals (a prostitute and a jailhouse snitch), who are facing long stretches behind bars, and like him, are lacking morals and integrity. They provide false testimony against Taylor in exchange for the promise of a reduction in their sentences. What is particularly egregious about this action is that Taylor’s defense team is not made aware by the prosecution of this backroom deal between Ford and the perjurers. In addition to the false testimony, false forensic blood test results, as well as the falsely misinterpreted actions of a scent hound, are used by Prosecutor Ford to win a conviction against Taylor in 1993 for the murder of Jacquetta Thomas. Greg Taylor is sentenced to life in prison.

Facing a life sentence for a murder he did not commit, Prosecutor Ford continues to offer Greg Taylor incentives for a reduced sentence and a chance at freedom in exchange for the false testimony needed to convict Johnny Beck, the black man against whom Ford was forced to drop charges because Taylor would not provide the false and necessary testimony to needed to convict. Despite the prospect of spending the rest of his life and dying within the dreary confines of a small prison cell, Greg’s ethics and integrity remain strong. Ford is unable to break him.

After sixteen years in prison, the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission takes up Greg Taylor’s case and presents it to the Innocence Inquiry Commission. After a thorough review of the case, the eight member board unanimously recommends that Greg Taylor’s case be brought before the three judge panel to determine whether or not he should be proclaimed innocent and freed, or remain in jail… the burden of this hearing being placed on the defense.
Wake Prosecutor Tom Ford, with full knowledge of the sleazy backroom deals made with the jailhouse snitch and the prostitute, and full knowledge that the SBI lab test results were not confirmatory for the presence of blood on Greg Taylor’s SUV, nonetheless decides to work with Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby to fight and try to keep an innocent man in jail for the remainder of his life. Tom Ford is definitely no “minister of justice.”

In February 2010, the truth, as cogently and orderly presented by Attorneys representing Greg Taylor (Mumma, Klinkosum, and Cheshire), combined with the pathetically convoluted, disjointed, and irrelevant presentation by the state assures a pronouncement of “innocent” by the judicial body at the hearing. Gregory Taylor, at long last, is unfettered by shackles and bars, and tastes freedom for the first time in nearly two decades. Seventeen years of his life are lost because of the actions of a prosecutor who, is angered by Taylor’s refusal to work with him to wrongfully convict an innocent black man in the Thomas murder. This anger is what led Ford to punish Taylor by convicting him of the Thomas murder.

Clearly, actions by Ford in the Greg Taylor case, warrant Tom Ford the dubious distinction of being hailed as among the “worst of the worse prosecutors in the Tar Heel state. Other deserving North Carolina prosecutors include David Hoke, who withheld from the defense attorney of Alan Gell exculpatory testimony of seventeen independent eyewitnesses which absolutely refuted Gell’s guilt in a murder for which he was sentenced to death and served a decade wrongfully behind bars. Wilson County Prosecutor Bill Wolfe deserves mention as one of North Carolina’s worst prosecutors for charging James Arthur Johnson for the murder of Wilson teen Brittany Willis, a crime that Wolfe knew Johnson did not commit… a charge based on the statement of Kenneth Meeks, a black teenager and the true killer of the victim. Meeks made the statement implicating Johnson (who is also African American) in the murder of the Wilson teen after police informed the killer that Johnson snitched on him. When Meeks, more than a year later, recanted his statement and admitted that he made it out of anger, Prosecutor Wolfe had no case against Johnson because there was no forensic evidence tying Johnson to the crime. Therefore, Wolfe shortly thereafter manufactured two eyewitnesses, both related to the Wilson Police Department (one being a retired police officer) to implicate Johnson in the crime. The use of these two false witnesses was quickly jettisoned by the prosecution after Dr. Reverend William Barber, President of the NC NAACP became involved; because with his involvement came closer media scrutiny… scrutiny that the false testimony of Wolfe’s two eyewitnesses could not withstand.

As horrendous as these overt acts of prosecutorial misconduct are, and the terrible injustice for which they are responsible, only one of the prosecutors, David Hoke, was taken before the unregulated North Carolina State Bar’s Disciplinary panel. He was merely given a mild reprimand by the group. However, professionally Hoke did not suffer as he was promoted to the position of Assistant Director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts. Rev. Barber filed a complaint of prosecutorial misconduct with the North Carolina State Bar against Bill Wolfe, which the Bar proceeded to ignore. Likewise, the North Carolina State Bar refused to act on my complaint against Tom Ford (for his actions in the Gregory Taylor case) which was filed in August 2009. As things now stand, former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong remains the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar since its inception in 1933.

And why was Mike Nifong disbarred? He was disbarred because, as Rae Evans (mother of Duke Lacrosse defendant Dave Evans) so insightfully put it during an interview on “60 Minutes,” he “picked on the wrong families.” In other words, Mr. Nifong did not automatically stop the investigation and he did not refrain from pressing charges in the alleged sexual assault against the Duke University student-athlete partygoers who came from families of wealth, status, and privilege, as was expected from a Durham district attorney. Instead Mr. Nifong pursued the investigation and prosecution as he would in any other case, without Class or Color entering the equation. To express the displeasure by the state, Mike Nifong was singularly persecuted to an extent never before seen… and it was done in order to set an example for other North Carolina prosecutors who might consider not complying with the unwritten state tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color. In addition to disbarment, Mr. Nifong was convicted on a trumped up contempt of court charge and sentenced to jail; the U.S. Department of Justice was asked to launch a criminal investigation into Mr. Nifong for depriving the Duke Lacrosse defendants of their civil rights; Mr. Nifong was denied immunity to which he was entitled as a state employee carrying out his duties; the Attorney General’s Office refused to represent him at his hearing before the North Carolina State Bar; the North Carolina State Board of Elections chose to harass Mr. Nifong by singularly auditing his campaign without cause; and he was blatantly bashed by the biased mainstream media.

The unregulated and self-serving North Carolina State Bar was so hard pressed to come up with a complaint carrying enough substance against Mr. Nifong to appear legit that it was forced to amend the complaint initially filed… a rare action indeed and not supported by law. The Bar alleged that Mr. Nifong withheld evidence… which he did not. The Bar alleged that Mr. Nifong lied to the court… which he did not. The Bar alleged that Mr. Nifong made prejudicial and inflammatory statements against the defendants… which he did not (most, if not all, of the statements for which Mr. Nifong was accused of making took place prior to any indictments being handed down). It is the position of the Committee of Justice for Mike Nifong that Mr. Nifong acted within the acceptable standards of the state’s prosecuting attorneys.

F. Lane Williamson, the chair of the Bar’s grievance panel, used his divine powers of mind reading to reach the conclusion that Mike Nifong prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse case solely for political gain (to retain his post as Durham district attorney). A rigged poll by SurveyUSA conducted for WTVD – ABC 11 News helped fertilize the idea that the May 2, 2006 primary for Durham district attorney was close and that wooing black voters would assure Nifong of victory. In actuality nothing could be further from the truth, as black voter registration was low, and black voter turnout was even lower. Using common sense and logic, the best route to a victory would have been for Mr. Nifong not to have brought charges against the Duke lacrosse player or to dismissed them. Instead, his pursuit of the prosecution turned a landslide May 2006 primary victory into a narrow one, and enabled another campaigner (who ran on a platform of solely beating Nifong and promising to give up his position to enable an appointment to the Durham D.A. position by Governor Mike Easley) to garner a whopping 39% of the fall election vote. The only person to use the Duke Lacrosse case for his/her own political gain was Attorney General Roy Cooper, whose main television campaign ad begain with a screen showing in big letters: “The Duke Lacrosse Decision.”

It should be noted that Mr. Nifong acted as a “minister of justice” as evidenced by the fact that he dropped the rape charges against the Duke Lacrosse defendants after the alleged victim could not give assurances in later testimony, to his satisfaction, that a rape had taken place. Mr. Nifong’s actions in this respect are in stark contrast to those of Tom Ford, who continues to press for Greg Taylor to remain in jail for the rest of his life in spite of the fact that his contention that blood evidence used to convict Taylor was false, as was the interpretation of actions by a scent hound in the initial trial. Also, the Attorney General’s Office continued to fight for Alan Gell to remain locked up after it came to light that 17 eyewitness statements that proved Gell could not possibly have committed the crime for which he was sentenced to death.

Wake County Prosecutor Tom Ford is no minister of justice, but as a prosecutor he most definitely is among the worst of the worse. Yet, the state does not go after him professionally or personally. The biased mainstream media follows the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy and shields his identity from the public whenever possible when discussing the Taylor case. Even Greg Taylor’s attorney, Joseph B. Cheshire V, has not a disparaging word to say about Tom Ford, the prosecutor responsible for his client losing 17 productive years of his life due to Ford’s malicious vendetta. Yet, Cheshire, the most powerful attorney in North Carolina, is quick to chastise and criticize Mr. Nifong for his actions in the Duke Lacrosse case (well within standards practiced by other prosecutors), even though Cheshire’s client (one of the Duke Lacrosse defendants) does not spend one day in jail, and receives a $7 million out-of-court settlement with Duke University.

What I find most disheartening, however, is the response, or lack thereof, by the leadership of the African American communities in Durham and throughout the state of North Carolina. To my knowledge, Dr. Reverend William Barber (president of the NC NAACP) and other leaders have not been critical of Prosecutor Tom Ford and his actions in the Gregory Taylor case. To my knowledge, leaders of the black communities have also been silent about the barbaric treatment of Mike Nifong by the state and the media for his handling of the Duke Lacrosse case in which he adhered to the principle of “equal justice for all.” And now that fallout from the Carpetbagger Jihad against Mike Nifong etal. has engulfed Crystal Mangum (charged with attempted first degree murder for allegedly scratching her boyfriend and held in jail on a million dollar bond), the black leadership continues to follow its course of timidity, and remains silent about this injustice. This is disgraceful.

Don’t believe the hype fostered by the Carpetbagger Jihad Juggernaut and dutifully disseminated by the biased mainstream media that Mike Nifong is the worst prosector in North Carolina history and the only one deserving of disbarment. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Mr. Nifong’s nearly thirty years of service to the state has been exemplary and exemplified by the principle of “equal justice for all.” The truly worst of the worst designation, without doubt, goes to Wake County Prosecutor Tom Ford, although compelling arguments could be made for prosecutors Bill Wolfe (in the James Arthur Johnson case) and David Hoke (the Alan Gell case.)

Thank goodness D.A. Willoughby ignored my pleas

After the unanimous September 2009 decision of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission to recommend the case of Gregory F. Taylor be taken before a three judge panel for adjudication, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby had the perfect opportunity to work to free the man who had spent 17 years wrongly incarcerated for a murder which the state failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, he chose to fight the release of Taylor by first requesting a lengthy delay in the hearing. The judge refused to acquiesce and the February 2010 date of the hearing remained firm.

Because Greg Taylor had already lost 17 years of his life behind bars, I felt that each day was especially precious, and I wrote two letters to the Wake district attorney imploring him to work to have Mr. Taylor released as soon as possible and forego the scheduled hearing before the three judge panel. D.A. Willoughby never responded to my correspondence and refused to do so. Instead, with the assistance of Tom Ford – the prosecutor responsible for Taylor’s initial conviction in 1993, Willoughby proceeded to argue before the three judge panel to have Greg Taylor remain imprisoned for the rest of his life.

There was never a question in my mind about the outcome of the three judge panel’s decision, as Tom Ford’s “rush to judgment without credible evidence” case in 1993 was fraught with problems: no forensic evidence linking the victim to Taylor or Taylor to the victim; prosecutor testimony of two witnesses who fingered Taylor in exchange for the promise of a reduced sentence; blood evidence on Taylor’s vehicle which the State SBI lab knew was not of human origin; and the motive for the murder did not hold water. The state’s case against Greg Taylor was so weak that I believe that first year Campbell University law students representing Taylor would have prevailed before the panel of jurists… despite the burden of proof being shifted to the defense.

Now, had Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby followed my advice and taken the initiative to release Mr. Taylor prior to the February hearing, then the testimony from prosecution witness Duane Deaver about SBI lab’s uneven reporting practices in 1993 might never have come to light. According to Mr. Deaver, protocol in place at that time prevented him from putting in his report the results of confirmatory tests which favored Taylor’s innocence and countered the presumptive test which tended to be damaging to Taylor. This revelation is of immense importance because other convictions won while this biased and flawed lab policy was in place could now possibly earn a second look. So even though Greg Taylor’s liberty was delayed for several weeks, in the big picture his sacrifice will enable many wrongly incarcerated innocents to have another shot at freedom.

I do not expect the state to welcome review of the cases and work hard to identify the wrongly accused. This was made apparent when North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper first stated that an internal review would be conducted. He later succumbed to the intense prodding by defense attorney Joseph Cheshire V to permit an external review of the cases. As Joseph Cheshire stated… to paraphrase, the people do not trust the state to conduct a fair and objective audit of its own past practices. Nor should they.

This hearing is not the first time that prosecutorial egos and the desire to protect the misconduct of a prosecutor overtook common sense. Not long ago the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office decided to retry Alan Gell despite the presence of irrefutable exculpatory evidence of his innocence. This trial was undertaken for the purpose of mitigating David Hoke’s obvious misconduct in the initial Gell trial in which he won a death penalty conviction. However, with the exculpatory evidence in play at the re-trial, the jury was quick to find Alan Gell not guilty. In a more recent case, Forsyth County prosecutor Belinda Foster was forced by D.A. Tom Keith to file an “accessory after the fact” charge against James Arthur Johnson while she dropped charges of murder, rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. Special prosecutor W. David McFadyen then stepped in to prosecute the case, which resulted in an Alford plea by Johnson to a charge of misprision of felony (not reporting knowledge of a crime to authorities). Now, although James Arthur Johnson did report to the Wilson Police three days after his knowledge of the crime (which resulted in the case being solved), he evidently did not report it quick enough.

So, thanks to the hubris and desire of Willoughby to shield Tom Ford from criticism of his prosecution of the innocent Greg Taylor, he did not take my advice and instead proceeded with fighting against the release of a man wrongfully convicted. And, as a result, other innocents may hopefully find another avenue by which they can obtain a justice that has been denied.

News & Observer’s familiar dance with the Attorney General’s Office

In an editorial by the News & Observer staff in the March 3, 2010 editorial page titled, “Testing the crime lab,” the newspaper and the Attorney General’s Office waltz around the issues of injustice for appearances sake. Not long ago the newspaper’s editorial chastised a state prosecutor for holding a man, Floyd Brown, for fourteen years without a trial. A judge later dismissed murder charges in this case in which a confession was cooked up by the prosecution. Problem is that the severely retarded defendant could not have possibly made the confession attributed to him. There was no physical evidence linking Mr. Brown to the crime, but he was poor, disenfranchised, and an African American. Nobody cared. However, the newspaper’s editorial pretended to be concerned by challenging the Attorney General’s Office to look into how the man could be held for 14 years without being taken to trial. Over the years, the Attorney General’s Office has not looked into the matter. The News & Observer has not pressed for a response.

With the exposure of the biased State forensic lab testing procedures which helped convict Gregory Taylor of a crime which he did not commit, the News & Observer is now calling for the Attorney General’s Office to investigate other cases in which convictions might have been won through faulty state lab procedures. Pitifully, the News & Observer is trying to reassure its readers that Attorney General Roy Cooper is conscientiously leading the charge in trying to uncover tainted convictions. As the paper puts it, “Fortunately, Attorney General Roy Cooper is facing up to the problem.” As in the Floyd Brown case, the newspaper pretends to be concerned about injustice created by the State’s lab procedures, and the A.G. is pretending to objectively review cases in search of convictions attained with faulty lab results.

The truth of the matter is that the prosecutors knew that the State’s lab was biased against the defendants long ago. Prosecutor Tom Ford and Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby were aware that the lab results used to help convict Gregory Taylor were flawed when they recently fought to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life, despite a case that hinged completely on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch and prostitute who received promises of reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony. The backroom deals that Tom Ford hatched with the “witnesses” were withheld from Taylor’s original incompetent attorneys.

Look at the facts in the Gregory Taylor case. D.A. Willoughby and Prosecutor Ford have knowledge that the blood evidence used to convict Taylor was not reliable, yet they fought against justice for Mr. Taylor. Willoughby, because he knew that he had no case, initially tried to indefinitely delay the hearing before the three judge panel which resulted from the Innocence Inquiry Commission. Is this the action of a true minister of justice? The Attorney General’s Office, in the meantime, was silent. However that is not surprising when one reflects on the Alan Gell case in which Prosecutor David Hoke withheld crucial exculpatory evidence from the defense in winning a capital murder conviction. When a new trial was ordered by a judge, the Attorney General’s Office chose to fight to keep Gell incarcerated. The jury, when armed with knowledge of the exculpatory evidence that proved that Gell could not have committed the murder, immediately found him not guilty.

The difference between Hoke, Ford and former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is that when new evidence or testimony was presented to Mr. Nifong, he was a true minister of justice and acted accordingly. For example, when he heard that the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case could not say with absolute certainty that she had been raped, he immediately dismissed those charges. Tom Ford and David Hoke were unyielding in their positions despite the overwhelming logic against them. And whereas the media, in accordance with the carpetbagger jihad against Mike Nifong, has unfairly and wrongfully defined Mr. Nifong, it has gone out of its way to adhere to the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy. Tom Ford’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the March 3, 2010 editorial.

What is most telling is what the editorial attributes Attorney General Roy Cooper as saying… which is that “the review (of the cases for flawed State lab reports resulting in convictions) will be conducted internally at the outset, but that an independent look might be warranted.” What is that supposed to mean? Basically, it means that the process will not have transparency and that the so-called review is undertaken for nothing more the sake of appearances. Everyone’s pretending, including the media.

State Bar joined Carpetbagger Jihad against Nifong with gusto

When the carpetbagger families of the Duke Lacrosse defendants declared jihad against former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong because he had the nerve to charge their boys with a crime, the media, judges, state officials all made full commitments to assist in their vindictive cause. As stated in her call to arms which aired on CBS – TV’s “60 Minutes,” defendant mom Rhea Evans made clear their mandate… to see that Mike Nifong and his family “pays” every day for the rest of his life.

The North Carolina State Bar went above and beyond the call of duty, and are deserving of special carpetbagging recognition. First, it trumped up a flimsy ethics complaint that was so weak, that even they had to amend it a second time and re-file. The State Bar’s action was necessary in order to get the dedicated D.A. Nifong off the Duke Lacrosse case, and into friendly hands. Unbeknownst to Mr. Nifong at the time, the Attorney General’s Office was in bed with the carpetbagger crew, following its every directive to the tee… such as later carrying out the dismissal of the Duke Lacrosse case and innocent promulgation of April 11, 2007.

The State Bar’s F. Lane Williamson, who headed up the grievance panel, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, went so far as to claim that Mike Nifong pursued the Duke Lacrosse case for the political purpose of being elected to the district attorney position to which he had been appointed. What makes this widely held motive so laughable is the fact that simple math would point out that the way to assure victory in the May 2006 primary was to dismiss the Duke Lacrosse case, not pursue it. Williamson and Duke Lacrosse defense attorney Kirk Osborn, among others seemed to believe that by wooing the black vote, Mr. Nifong would win the primary. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the voting results confirmed that. Of the African Americans who made up 38.2% of the total registered voters, they accounted for only 34% of those who voted in the primary. Fewer blacks turned out percentage-wise. Of the white voters who comprised 56.3% of the total registered voters, they accounted for a whopping 63% of the voters for the May 2, 2006 primary. A higher turnout of white voters percentage-wise. Yet, Mike Nifong won, proving wrong the WTVD ABC 11 Eyewitness News poll that proclaimed the primary race was a dead heat with Nifong requiring a huge black turnout in order to beat chief rival Freda Black. ABC 11 News deserves a lot of credit for this Jedi Mind-trick, for its poll and coverage convinced many that Nifong would benefit by pursuing the Duke Lacrosse case. The fact is, that pursuing the Duke Lacrosse case presented a tremendous impediment for him to overcome on his way to victory.

Besides disbarring Mr. Nifong, the North Carolina State Bar decided to turn the knife in his back while simultaneously pouring salt in his wounds. They decided to send Mr. Nifong an invoice to cover the costs of holding the five day hearing to disbar him. The bill amounted to eight thousand, eight hundred ninety-seven dollars and 91 cents ($8,897.91), with payment due within ninety days. According to the Bar’s counsel, Katherine E. Jean, the Bar is given this authority under regulation: 27 NCAC 1B .0109(8). She informed me that this regulation was used when it fined David Hoke and Deborah Graves for their disciplinary hearing held years earlier… however they were billed a total of $702.10… an amount which they shared, each paying half. Even though David Hoke’s actions against Alan Gell were far more egregious than anything Mr. Nifong was accused of doing in the Duke Lacrosse case, Hoke got off paying $350.05, whereas Mr. Nifong faced a tab that approached nine thousand dollars. The disparity in the amounts of the fines can be attributed to but one thing…the carpetbagger jihad against Mike Nifong. How many other attorneys have been sent an invoice by the State Bar to pay for the costs to discipline them? Not many, I bet. I was only given the one example other than Mike Nifong.

All I can say is, “How shameful.” Selective persecution against Mike Nifong has sadly been widespread among state agencies, especially the unregulated State Bar.