Just in time for Halloween, Durham DA Mike Nifong tells us about his biggest case
The latest questions about Nifong's handling of the case came last week, after he said he and his staff have yet to interview the accuser about the facts of the case, leaving that work to police. He said Monday his responsibility is to direct the investigation, not conduct it.
"I've been prosecuting cases for 28 years, and nobody has ever asked me questions about my policies in terms of when I have normally interviewed witnesses," he said. "But all of a sudden, everybody has an opinion about when I should interview witnesses in this case."
Gee, Mike, that's terrible. People asking you or someone in the District Attorney's office to interview the accusser in what is the biggest criminal accusation of the year in North Carolina.
Notice, the other week it was just Nifong that hadn't spoken to the stripper. Now it is he and his staff that just didn't have the time. Intersting that he says that, considering
The 56-year-old Nifong, who has worked for Durham County's district attorney's office since 1978, thrust himself into the story in the days after the accusations became public, granting numerous newspaper and TV interviews as he prepared to face two challengers in May's Democratic primary — an election he won.
His tone was decidedly aggressive, as Nifong called the players "hooligans" used to having "expensive lawyers" get them out of trouble. He denounced what he called a "blue wall of silence" that had supposedly formed around the perpetrators.
He had plenty of time to bloviate in front of the camera's, and denigrate the accused (thereby violating the Consitutional Right to "innocent till proven guilty"), yet no time to talk to the accuser about the case.
A DA who doesn't have the time to do his job, but has time to yap to the camera's: that's scary. Add horror to the mix when you realize that not one judge or North Carolina official in the Department of Justice has intervened in this travesty of justice.
