Duke Lax Prosecutor Bankrupt (Financially, Too)

The sad, sad story of Mike Nifong, the prosecutor who inexplicably pursued rape charges against three Duke lacrosse players, is not yet over. Nifong filed for bankruptcy, citing $180M in potential legal liabilities arising out of the incident.

I know one way he could raise some capital. He needs a real tell-all interview, because I don't get it. The whole story is impossible for me, a lawyer, to understand. Did he really need to be re-elected as the DA in the county this badly? The job doesn't pay that well and doesn't even confer that much power.

Does Nifong have a personal vendetta against Duke? If anyone could understand that it would be me, a Maryland grad. Still, my hatred of Duke doesn't rise to the level of wanting innocent 20-somethings to go to prison.

I do blame the media somewhat for Nifong's fall. When Gerald Poindexter, the prosecutor for Surry County, Virginia, refused to be forthcoming with the media during the Michael Vick investigation, I pointed out that he was doing the right thing. His reward was that blogs such as ProFootballTalk and people even as high up as ESPN painted him as sloth and corrupted. Now that Vick has been convicted, and still will face state charges later this year, no one is jumping up to note that Poindexter created an untainted case in a rural county with the glare of the world pounding down on him. His initial legwork laid the ground for a quick federal prosecution of Vick and his co-conspirators.

So Mike Nifong is now disbarred, broke, and humiliated. The only positive thing I can say about him is that I am impressed that he has not attempted suicide. People have done so over far less.

And no, I don't place as much blame on the accuser as I do on Nifong. He is the safety net in the whole system. People lie. His job is to look at evidence and determine if a prosecution is warranted. It's not to fabricate evidence and hide exculpatory facts.