Cline, 48, faces removal from the post she won in 2008. A judge suspended Cline on Jan. 27 and will consider permanently removing her this week amid complaints that Cline's hostility toward Judge Orlando Hudson has brought disrepute to her office. She's been in the spotlight for months, facing mounting criticism that in a quest to convict those accused of serious crimes, she has misstated facts to judges, withheld evidence helpful to defendants and disregarded ethical requirements for lawyers.
Cline, the daughter of two pastors from a small town outside Charlotte, had a sharp sense of right and wrong and the rhetorical flair to convince others of her convictions. She started talking about law school in high school, said her father, Lee Cline.
By her own telling in a 1997 newspaper article, she had pursued a career in criminal defense work as she fretted about poor people getting decent legal representation.
But Cline has spent her career on both sides of the aisle, defending and prosecuting criminals and shepherding victims through the judicial system. Cline knows well the pain, loss and betrayal that beckons people to the courthouse. She lost two brothers to tragic car accidents. Over the past 15 years, she has watched her nephew go in and out of jail for stealing, fighting and using drugs.
And Cline knows what it's like to be scared of someone you trust. In 1996, she sought a protective order against her live-in boyfriend, saying he shoved her into a wall and punched her.
But as Cline stands in this bright spotlight, railing against a judge she once considered a mentor, some wonder if she has lost her way.
"When your emotions are caught up in how you reason, you can see things that aren't there," said the Rev. Melvin Whitley, a Durham pastor and supporter of Cline's who has questioned her actions in recent weeks.
Cline declined repeated requests to speak for this story. She has blamed reporters and editors at The News & Observer for criticizing her unjustly.
A hearing on whether she should be removed will resume Monday.
A pastor's fervor
Cline is the youngest of six children born to Lee and Yvonnie Cline. Her father worked in manufacturing and pastored a church on weekends.
Cline spent her childhood singing in choirs and performing with her parents and sibling at churches around their Lincoln County home of Crouse, west of Charlotte.
As a lawyer, colleagues say, she captures the flavor and fervor of a pastor. She slaps the table or raises her voice to drive home a point, punctuating the horrors of a particular crime. Her presentations entranced jurors, colleagues said.
"There's some people that a jury really wants to listen to, and Tracey was one," said Luke Bumm, a former Durham assistant district attorney who has watched her arguments. "I got the impression that juries would listen to her all day."
Even as a child, Cline had a way with people, her father said. And she always seemed to know where she was headed.
After high school, she followed an older brother to Livingstone College, a historically black college in Salisbury. While three of her siblings pursued careers in education, Cline headed to Durham to attend law school at N.C. Central University. There, her passion was set: providing sound defense to those who couldn't afford lawyers.
Cline said in an interview in The Herald-Sun in 1997 that she went to law school to be a public defender. "I felt people without money deserved good legal representation, too," she said.
After graduating from law school in 1989, she landed a job as a public defender in Fayetteville. Like most green lawyers, she logged most of her time in district court, representing defendants against lower-level charges such as drunken driving and fighting.
Colleagues there recall her as competent and reliable, but not particularly impassioned.
"She came in and did her job and went home," said Paul Hertzog, a Fayetteville lawyer who supervised Cline during her final years in the office. "I was never called to a courtroom to calm her down or dress her down."
Hertzog recalls Cline not being excited to advance to superior court, where she could handle more serious cases, such as rapes and drug trafficking. In particular, sex cases didn't sit well with her, he said.
License suspended
Years later, on the campaign trail, she would identify a lack of appetite to represent rape suspects as an impetus to cross sides and prosecute them.
In July 1993, she headed to the state's northeast corner to work as a prosecutor in a cluster of counties near Elizabeth City. Her stint there was short-lived, just six months, and unremarkable, according to supervisors.
But years later, when she filled out a questionnaire in 2008 when running for district attorney, Cline said that at work in Elizabeth City, she was "confronted with what I felt was a disparity in justice based solely on race. I refused to be a part of that injustice." She said in an interview last summer that she didn't recall the exact issue.
Both her bosses, former district attorney H.P. Williams and current district attorney Frank Parrish, say they have no idea what Cline is recalling. Both are mystified by her feelings about her time in Elizabeth City, saying it seemed cordial.
"I hated to see her leave," Williams said. "I'm surprised to hear she remembered that time as difficult. I would have given her a good recommendation."
For whatever skill she claimed in the courtroom as a young lawyer, she failed to handle some of the administrative requirements demanded of lawyers. Once in 1991 and again in 1993, Cline had her law license suspended for failure to pay her dues to the North Carolina State Bar, the state agency that disciplines lawyers.
In the 1993 instance, her license lapsed from November 1993 to May 1994, according to bar records. Those revocations would have followed several warnings to pay up or lose the license to practice law, said Alice Mine, head of membership services.
"Suspending someone is a big hammer," Mine said. "We don't like to do this."
A move to Durham
Cline came to the Durham district attorney's office in March 1994, taking one of a few positions that District Attorney Jim Hardin needed to fill quickly after unexpected departures by assistants.
Aside from a brief stint in private practice in the late 1990s, Cline has logged the rest of her career as a prosecutor. For most of it, she has handled some of the most serious and vile cases, including those involving sexual assault.
Cline faced her own personal violence at home.
A boyfriend at the time, a mall security guard named Michael McMillan, assaulted her in 1996, according to Cline's account in a protective order she sought in May 1996. In that report, she said McMillan, who lived with her in a home on Massey Avenue, grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall, punching her in the right eye.
There are no arrest reports that coincide with the event. McMillan could not be reached for comment.
It is the sexual assault cases for which Cline receives the most criticism. In one case, the state Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Frankie Washington, saying Cline had failed for years to have critical evidence tested and citing her "repeated neglect." When the evidence was tested, none of it matched the defendant, who was convicted anyway.
When Cline ran for district attorney, she distanced herself from the office's most notorious sexual assault case. Her boss, District Attorney Mike Nifong, was disbarred for misconduct in the Duke lacrosse case.
She won the office in 2008 against three opponents with 46 percent of the vote, and was unopposed for re-election in 2010.
During her tenure, she worked to speed up the disposition of criminal cases, but also suffered high staff turnover. In perhaps the office's biggest case - Michael Peterson's bid for a new trial - she came to court unprepared to defend the work of a discredited SBI analyst.
Judge Hudson ordered a new trial.
Startling accusations
Frankie Washington's case was one of several detailed in the N&O series, "Twisted Truth," published in September. The series prompted the State Bar to investigate Cline, though it has not reported any disciplinary action. But the inquiry that could remove her from office this week started because of her reaction to the N&O's reporting.
Cline took aim at Hudson for dismissing charges against some defendants she prosecuted. She called Hudson biased against her and accused him of colluding with The N&O to ruin her career. In long, rambling motions in which she requested the judge be removed from criminal cases in Durham, Cline didn't hold back.
She said Hudson was retaliating against her for refusing to dismiss a charge in 2010. She accused him of "moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption," said he had "raped" victims of crime and asserted that he had a "reprobate mind of a monarch."
The accusations by Cline startled many who had considered Hudson a close mentor of Cline.
Whitley, the pastor and community activist, said he remained loyal to Cline last fall when she said the newspaper had unfairly attacked her. He attended a community meeting she planned and spoke in support of her. But late last year, when Cline turned on Hudson, another court official Whitley respects, he took a step back.
"I suppose she felt her mentor had turned against her," Whitley said. "She felt betrayed."
The strain of this battle pressed on Cline last week. Her voice, weak from pneumonia, cracked as she tried to argue that she be allowed to question journalists under oath. When Judge Robert Hobgood, who will decide whether she can remain district attorney, asked whether she was OK, Cline admitted that she at first had thought her ailment was stress.
Many of Cline's supporters have distanced themselves in recent months.
"If someone tells you they are a leader and they don't have anyone behind them, they are just taking a walk," Whitley said. "That's what is going on here."
News researchers Peggy Neal, Teresa Leonard, Brooke Cain and David Raynor and staff writer J. Andrew Curliss contributed to this report.
