Because Unfair Charges are Wrong

One day after normally cautious North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper blasted the handling of the Duke Lacrosse rape case and took the extraordinary step of declaring the charged players innocent of all counts, disgraced Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has issued a trite semi-apology:

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong acknowledged today that three former Duke University lacrosse players were "wrongfully accused" of sexual assault.

Nifong released a statement one day after N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper dismissed the charges against the lacrosse players and declared them "innocent" and the victims of an "unchecked" prosecutor who rushed to judgment.

"It is and has always been the goal of our criminal justice system to see that the guilty are punished and that the innocent are set free," Nifong wrote. "No system based on human judgment can ever work perfectly.

"Those of us who work within that system can only make the best judgments we can," Nifong continued. "To the extent that I made judgments that utimately [sic] proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three suspects that were wrongly accused. ... It is my sincere desire that the actions of Attorney General Cooper will serve to remedy any remaining injury that has resulted from these cases."

But Nifong disputed Cooper's assessment of him as a "rogue" prosecutor.

"The fact that I instead chose to seek that review should in and of itself call into question the characterizations of this prosecution as 'rogue' and 'unchecked,'" he wrote.

Shorter Mike Nifong: "I'll accept that charges shouldn't have been brought, but don't call me a "rogue" just because I conspired to hide evidence that would have exonerated the accused and used a mentally-disturbed girl's inconsistent stories as a battering ram to bludgeon my way into an elected office I promised to the governor himself I would not run for.

"Why, it is horrible to stigmatize someone with an inaccurate description.

'Cause that would, you know, be wrong."

Nifong faces a hearing at the North Carolina State Bar's Disciplinary Hearing Committee tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 PM, which will determine if he will be stripped of his law license.