Nifong to spend a day in jail for contempt

Hearing focused on what Nifong said about DNA test

DURHAM -- Former District Attorney Mike Nifong will spend a night in jail after being found guilty of criminal contempt by Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III.

Smith ordered Nifong to report to the Durham County jail at 9 a.m. next Friday. He will stay there until 9 a.m. the following day.

The judge could have sentenced Nifong with a $500 fine or up to 30 days in jail.

After a two-day hearing, Smith found that Nifong lied in court when the former prosecutor assured the judge in September 2006 that he had provided the lawyers of three Duke lacrosse players charged with rape with everything he had learned from DNA tests performed by an independent lab.

Nifong testified today that the lab director, Brian Meehan, had briefed him in April 2006 about DNA of several unidentified men found in samples taken from the accuser. Nifong did not disclose that information at the September hearing.

Smith called Nifong's September statements regarding the tests "willfully contemptuous" when he entered his guilty verdict just before 5:30 p.m. today. Nifong was sentenced at about 6:15 p.m.

Earlier today, Nifong took the stand in his own defense, saying that even if he lied about DNA evidence analyzed in the notorious rape case, he did not know he was lying.

"All the statements that I made to the court, at the time I made the statements, I believed them to be true," Nifong said.

But Smith rejected the defense, saying that Nifong was aware of the presence of DNA from the other men when he assured the court the tests yielded no further information. "He was aware he had not provided such information to the then-defendants," Smith said before he made his ruling.

Nifong said today he knew by the end of March 2006 that the State Bureau of Investigation had found no evidence of sperm or semen on the accuser. That was before DNA Security did a more sophisticated test and came up with the presence of DNA.

"This had been a non-ejaculatory event," Nifong said. "There was no semen left during the course of the assault....in which case it would become an eyewitness case."

The eyewitness was the accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum.

The DNA findings were important to the defense at the time, in part because Mangum had told nurses, doctors and police investigators that at least one and perhaps all three of her alleged assailants had ejaculated.

Nifong also said today that he approved a crucial report that failed to note the discovery of DNA from multiple unidentified men in and on Mangum.

Nifong said the results weren't reported because the tests did not match any of the 46 players on the lacrosse team.

"That would not be a problem," Nifong said.

Nifong also offered a unique theory about whose DNA it could have been.

"It could have come from anybody," Nifong said. "She had a son, a very young son."

An unusual moment came before Nifong's testimony, when a judge testified that she expected lawyers to be more honest during trial than during pretrial hearings.

A prosecutor asked the judge, Marcia Morey, whether a lawyer would be following his duty to be candid if he assured a judge that a report was complete when the lawyer knew it to be incomplete.

It depended on whether the case had reached trial, Morey said.

"I do think it makes a difference," Morey said. "Are you are at a trial stage, are you at a pretrial conference."

The three lacrosse players -- Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann -- were declared innocent of all charges in April.

Nifong subsequently lost his law license for misconduct in his handling of the case and resigned as district attorney.

Nifong said this morning that as district attorney, his policy was always to turn over complete evidence to defendants. Normally, he said, he did so even before defense lawyers asked for the information, he said.