Nifong biography

Spouse Cy Gurney - present 1 child. Declared bankruptcy in He earned a law degree in from the university's law school and began working as an assistant district attorney for nearby Durham County in Former district attorney of Durham NC County who sought prosecution of three members of the Duke University lacrosse team in after they were accused of rape and assault by Crystal Gail Mangum, a black student at nearby North Carolina Central University who also worked as an exotic dancer and was at a party thrown by the team in March Although there was no physical evidence of either rape or assault, Nifong, who was running for re-election, pursued charges relentlessly.

On October 5,Evans, Finnerty, and Seligmann filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Nifong engineered a wide-ranging conspiracy to frame the players. Also named in the suit were the lab that handled the DNA work, the city of Durham, the city's former police chief, the deputy police chief, the two police detectives who handled the case and five other police department employees.

The players sought unspecified damages, and wanted to place the Durham Police Department under court supervision for 10 years, claiming the actions of the police department pose "a substantial risk of irreparable injury to other persons in the City of Durham. While the nifong biography filing automatically delayed the civil suit against him, it may not protect Nifong from civil liability for his actions in the case.

Unsecured creditors can still pursue claims against someone filing for bankruptcy if the debt was incurred through "willful and malicious injury" to them. According to at least one bankruptcy law expert, Nifong's bankruptcy filing was a tacit nifong biography that he does not have the resources to defend himself against the players' civil suit, and is trying to protect what assets he is allowed to protect under the law.

Later that same year, Judge William L. Stocks lifted the automatic stay imposed by Nifong's bankruptcy filing, and announced that the plaintiffs could pursue their lawsuit. In July there was a call for all the cases Nifong had prosecuted to be reviewed on the basis of his having been shown to ignore due process in some cases including the murder trial against Darryl Howard, who had been convicted in of a murder of a woman and her daughter.

InHoward, who at that time had been imprisoned for murder for 20 years, was granted a new trial because Nifong had withheld evidence in the trial that led to his convictions. Nifong is twice married. He has a daughter from his first marriage and a son with Gurney. He lives in northern Durham County. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk.

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Nifong biography

In other projects. Wikidata item. Disbarred North Carolina attorney, and politician. Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Duke lacrosse case [ edit ]. Main article: Duke lacrosse case. Criticism [ edit ]. Ethics charges [ edit ]. Disbarment [ edit ]. Wikinews has related news: US prosecutor Mike Nifong to be disbarred for ethics violations. Sentence and jail [ edit ].

Sued by players [ edit ]. Bankruptcy filing [ edit ]. Later developments [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. June 21, ABC News. Archived from the original on September 13, Retrieved August 31, Archived from the original on September 28, The New York Times. Durham, NC. Retrieved December 22, Archived from the original on Retrieved Archived from the original on August 30, Retrieved November 4, January 15, Raleigh, NC.

Archived from the original on December 18, American Journalism Review. Fordham Law Review. Archived from the original PDF on In Cheney, G. Handbook of Communication Ethics. ISBN The Washington Post. Associated Press. October 22, January 12, January 11, After a year as a per diem assistant DA with the Durham County DA's nifong biography, he was hired on a full-time basis in He eventually worked his way up to chief assistant.

Nifong was sworn in on April 27, Prior to the most intense criticism of his handling of the case see belowNifong won the Democratic primary on May 2, That saga was itself strongly affected by two earlier death penalty cases where prosecutors also failed to provide exculpatory information to the defense. The constitutional doctrine in Brady v. Maryland that requires the disclosure of exculpatory evidence and the related ethics rule produced no evidence in the Duke lacrosse case or the other two prosecutions.

The reversal of nine North Carolina capital cases in the last decade, since open-file discovery was mandated for capital post-conviction litigation, demonstrates the ineffectiveness of solely relying on voluntary Brady disclosures, even when the consequence of an unjust conviction would be execution. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.