Nifong and Legal Ethics

According to the latest news blurbs about the rape allegations against Duke lacrosse players, the prosecutor requested that a witness not reveal that the DNA tests showed no DNA from the three suspects.  I'm not a big fan of hurling ethics accusations based solely on one side's version of the facts as reported in the news, but according to the news stories, this is not simply an assertion by the defense attorneys; this was self-implicating testimony from the witness himself while being cross-examined.  Nifong ought to address this issue immediately.  If the witness's testimony has been accurately described, Nifong violated the standards in Model Rule 3.8, and quite possibly MR 3.4 and 3.6 as well.  (Instapundit has more, including news of a press release from Prof. Banzhaf of George Washington.)

UPDATE: If Nifong asked a witness to conceal exculpatory proof, there could be a lot more on the line than just an ethics violation.  Civil and even criminal liability could become issues.  For a recent article on prosecutorial misconduct and its institutional causes, see Peter Joy's article here.

Comments

[Judith]

I've always been curious why prosecutors are not disbarred, if such behavior is proven. Not only do they violate their basic ethical obligations as attorneys, but prosecutors also have a higher obligation to the truth, as representatives of the government and officers of the court. Shouldn't prosecutors who have been show to deliberately solicit perjured testimony, deliberately suppress exculpatory evidence, or deliberately charge someone they believed was innocent be disbarred, or at least fired? It seems there are rarely any repercussions for such behavior. Or at least, I haven't read about any of it, while I regularly read about prosecutorial misconduct.

[Monroe H. Freedman]

What happens in practice is that the courts affirm the convictions, deferring to the disciplinary process for the prosecutorial misconduct. Then the disciplinary committees defer to the prosecutors' offices, who say that they police unprofessional prosecutorial conduct. And then the prosecutor avoids discipline (and, indeed, garners praise) because, after all, the conviction was upheld.

[former Wake Countian]

I knew Nifong was pandering to black voters with this, even before I found out the evidence didn't hold up. But it's not like lawyers have any ethics to speak of anyway.