Durham DA Tracey Cline defends herself for attacks on judge

DURHAM -- Suspended District Attorney Tracey Cline said she does not believe that her actions brought any disrepute to her office, nor did she imagine it would.

"I would not do that," Cline said. "As a matter of fact, I felt that if I didn’t do something, it would be inconsistent with justice," Cline said.

On Friday afternoon, Cline said she wishes she'd chosen better words to criticize Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson but that she still feels she did the right thing.

"I wish that my words would have been chosen better." Cline said. "I wish I could explain myself of the total responsibility that the office of the district attorney feels for the community and for the victims. Of the responsibility you feel when you’ve been hired to do a job and you can’t do it."

Cline is fighting for her job. She is the subject of a rare inquiry in which she can be removed from her office permanently if a judge finds her behavior is "prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute."

The hearing will resume Monday morning Cline answering questions from the lawyer who initiated her removal.

Cline unpacked her history with Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson during testimony today, saying she once considered him a mentor but in recent years didn't agree with his judgment and said he erred in findings in orders he issued.

Cline, 48, is at the center of a rare inquiry to determine whether she can keep her job. Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood is determining whether her behavior is "prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute." She is being scrutinized for her attacks on Hudson, which critics have called inflammatory.

Cline detailed during her testimony interactions with Hudson in several cases in which he dismissed cases against defendants she prosecuted. Cline has accused Hudson of being biased against her, and in recent months, launched lengthy, repeated attacks on him in efforts to remove him from cases she prosecuted.

On Friday, Cline said each of the allegations she raised in motions to remove Hudson from her case were true.

The News & Observer has reported on some factual errors in Cline's filings against Hudson.

Cline's testimony, which resumed this afternoon after lunch, largely paralleled Cline's previous complaints against Hudson. She read passages of Hudson's order, then offered contradictory recollections of those cases and called into question his findings.

Her testimony today was calm and measured, a sharp difference from her motions and arguments previously in court.

As Cline testified, she recounted a meeting in December 2010 in which Hudson called her to his office for a meeting along with some defense attorneys pursuing efforts to abolish the death penalty because of racial bias concerns. Cline said Hudson asked her to sign a consent order saying that district attorneys across the state had inappropriately used race as a basis for picking juries in capital murder trials.

Cline said she did not feel comfortable signing the order because she didn't want to say other districts were somehow using race as a factor because she didn't have personal knowledge of those cases.

Cline also recounted a case in which she says Hudson urged her to dismiss charges. Cline said that Hudson told her the case, highlighted in an audit detailing problems in the SBI's reports on blood evidence, was high-profile and that she shouldn't put herself in a position to defend problems at the SBI.

"He told me this case needs to go away and you need to dismiss it,'" Cline said. "I honestly felt like he had not read the file."

Hudson eventually dismissed the charges against Allen, despite Cline's attempts to move forward.

Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood is considering whether Cline's attacks on Durham County Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson crossed the line and brought undue damage to the District Attorney's office.

Cline testified today that she had considered Hudson a role model.

"I looked up to him and cared about him, still do very much," Cline said.

Cline said she met Hudson in 1989 when she was a brand-new lawyer working as an assistant public defender in Fayetteville. Hudson, too, had worked in that office.

Cline said that she didn't always agree with Hudson's rulings in the past, but until recently, considered him fair.

Cline's troubles are unusual. Only once has a North Carolina district attorney been ousted through the state law establishing such inquiries and giving a judge the power to find that a DA is not fit for duty.

Hobgood denied several motions this morning by Cline's attorneys to suspend the inquiry because the law was vague and Cline had been denied her due process. He has yet to rule on a motion to throw out the case because Cline's statements were protected by the first amendment right to free speech.

Cline has used language in her motions to remove Hudson from her case that critics call inflammatory. Among the criticisms against Hudson, Cline accused him of having a "reprobate mind of a monarch" and of "raping" victims with his rulings.

The law that has been invoked to seek Cline's removal describes a range of behaviors that, if a judge finds exist, requires the DA's removal.

On Monday, Durham lawyer Kerry Sutton, who initiated efforts to remove Cline from office, presented evidence and arguments, calling upon other lawyers to testify about their assessment of Cline's behavior and its effects on the court.

Those associates, namely Appellate Defender Staples Hughes and Director of Indigent DefenseServices Tom Maher, said that Cline couldn't be trusted to remain in office.

"I've just never even heard anything like that," Hughes testified Monday. "It is regarded that she's simply, for whatever reason, completely out of control."

Cline, the daughter of two pastors, is known as a fierce prosecutor.

The way she criticized Hudson is at issue in this inquiry.

Stephen Lindsay, a Fairview lawyer who is helping in efforts to unseat Cline, said she should have known the rules guiding how lawyers interact with judges in court the moment she became a lawyer.

"They know what they are supposed to do and what they are not supposed to do in a courtroom," Lindsay said. "They are on notice of that from the day they appear before a judge and are sworn in."