cliddy@newsobserver.com
Suspended Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline argues the request to subpoena News & Observer employees as she prepares to defend herself. The hearing was rescheduled for next Monday shortly after this as Cline 's voice was deemed not strong enough to continue by the judge. Cline, the suspended Durham District Attorney is appearing today for the beginning of a special inquiry that could cost her the elected position she has held since 2009.
Tracey Cline, the suspended district attorney of Durham County, alerted a judge last week that she was too ill to vigorously defend her job as prosecutor Monday.
Cline, 48, reported to court as ordered, coughed and cleared her throat as she struggled to speak. She said she had battled pneumonia last week and had been unable to hire an attorney to represent her at the hearing.
Monday morning, minutes into an inquiry that could end Cline's career as elected district attorney, Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood granted Cline a week's delay to prepare and heal.
But as she tried to argue that several journalists and lawyers should be ordered to testify during her hearing, Cline lost her voice. Twice, Hobgood urged Cline to take a seat and a drink of water, and 45 minutes into the hearing, Hobgood adjourned court altogether. The hearing will resume this coming Monday, with Cline presenting evidence in her defense Feb. 24.
It was the latest wrinkle in a saga that has captivated the state's court system. Cline has been under fire for weeks after she took aim at chief Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson, saying that he is biased against her. Cline has tried and failed twice before to remove Hudson from criminal cases in Durham; she has attacked Hudson, saying he has the "reprobate mind of a monarch."
Her assault on Hudson could now cost Cline her job. Kerry Sutton, a Durham lawyer, petitioned a judge to remove Cline, saying that her behavior was "prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute." Sutton, who has hired Fairview lawyer Stephen Lindsay to help with her case against Cline, has said Cline's language contains "venom."
The hearing has limited precedent. Only once before has a North Carolina judge removed an elected district attorney, and in that case, the prosecutor had used a racial slur in a bar feud.
Hobgood, a second-generation judge from Franklin County, must weigh subjective standards when he determines whether Cline must go. His decision could undo the will of voters who elected Cline in 2010.
On Monday, Hobgood was gentle and patient as he waited for Cline to recover her voice.
"Ms. Cline, how are you feeling?" he asked after urging her to take a seat.
Cline answered: "I'm feeling okay, judge. I was feeling fine. I thought it was stress, but it was just pneumonia. ... I don't feel any of that anymore. So I'm good to go. I just can't talk with this handicap."
Cline told a friend after court adjourned that she had been in and out of the hospital recently.
On Monday, lawyers and reporters, some of whom had been subpoenaed as potential witnesses, jammed the courtroom; Cline has subpoenaed, among others, Judge Hudson.
Cline asserts that Hudson and a reporter and editors from The News & Observer conspired against her to report "Twisted Truth," a series of articles published last September that showed Cline had withheld exculpatory evidence from defendants and had made misstatements in court. Hudson and the newspaper have disputed Cline's claims.
Attorneys for the newspaper as well as lawyers and a judge Cline subpoenaed are asking Hobgood to throw out those subpoenas.
Cline declined to comment to reporters as she was escorted from the courtroom by sheriff's deputies.
