Spotlight is new place for Nifong

Duke lacrosse case looms in Durham DA's election bid

After 30 years, Mike Nifong's career as a Durham prosecutor might hang on a single case.

A city waits for the district attorney's decision: Will anyone be charged in connection with a reported rape at a party attended by members of Duke University's lacrosse team?

Nifong, who returns to work today after three days at a conference and a week of silence, has emerged as a divisive figure in the story of a black woman who said she was raped by three white men. His early thunder at what he implied was a cover-up by the team and his confidence in the accuser's story helped generate national media coverage and campus protests decrying the team.

But lawyers representing the team's players and some independent legal experts have questioned and even excoriated Nifong, saying he overstepped his bounds by asserting so publicly and confidently that a sexual assault had occurred.

Durham County voters are going to pick a district attorney May 2, and the events of the next week or two are likely to bear heavily on how voters mark their ballots.

Nifong, 55, has abundant big-case experience. For much of his career, he was the aggressive assistant prosecutor who was assigned to the toughest trials. But his public persona and the controversy around him are new for a man who has cultivated a reputation at the courthouse as an ethical lawyer more interested in justice than winning.

"So far, he's showing he's not afraid to take on a challenge," said John Fitzpatrick, a lawyer in Durham for 10 years who is not connected to the Duke lacrosse case. "But he's got to come through with a charge."

Nifong's challengers in the May 2 Democratic primary, former prosecutor Freda Black and defense lawyer Keith Bishop, have kept a low profile throughout the case. Since no Republicans are running, the primary will decide the next district attorney.

Nifong stopped talking publicly about the case, but not before he granted more than 50 interviews with newspaper and television reporters, including live appearances on national cable news shows. In a March 31 interview, Nifong said he tries to answer legitimate questions from the news media.

"I'm trying to be as honest and as straightforward as I can without jeopardizing the case, without being unfair to any person," Nifong said.

The case unfolds

On March 14, police responded to a 911 call at a Durham grocery store. There they found a woman who said she had been hired through an escort service to dance at a party at a house shared by three lacrosse team captains.

The three residents of 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. told police that the two women they hired to dance took $800 and left after dancing only a few minutes, the players' lawyers have said. The players have said that no rape, no assault and no sex happened.

A police investigator and one of Nifong's deputies, convinced there had been a sexual assault, got a judge to order all the white members of the team to have DNA samples taken March 23 to be compared with evidence collected from the accuser and from the house.

In interviews March 27 and 28, Nifong made several statements that helped transform the case into a national story.

Elaborating on the accuser's description of the attack, he compared the incident to the quadruple homicide in an Alpine Road townhouse and multiple cross burnings that outraged the city last year.

Nifong said all three cases were serious enough that he would prosecute them personally.

He implied that members of the lacrosse team were engaging in a conspiracy of silence.

"I would like to think that somebody [not involved in the attack] has the human decency to call up and say, 'What am I doing covering up for a bunch of hooligans?' " he said.