Nifong, the Glitch in the System

In a recent article, the News & Observer praised the efficiency of the Durham County District Attorney’s office by citing misleading statistics to support the notion that there was a reduction in the backlog of pending cases while the office operated under the cloud of disrepute brought upon it by District Attorney Mike Nifong‘s hijacking of the Hoax.

“While many people in Durham and the nation talked about the Duke University lacrosse case and what will become of District Attorney Mike Nifong, Durham's assistant prosecutors have been plowing quietly through tens of thousands of cases.

“For nearly a year, Nifong has been under siege by reporters, bloggers and county residents who question his actions in the sexual assault investigation that grew out of a lacrosse team party last March. In December and January, the State Bar, which regulates lawyers, filed ethics charges against Nifong.

“In the world outside the courthouse, Duke lacrosse often seems to be the only pending case in all of Durham. Inside the building, the case is one of more than 40,000 filed each year.

“In the fiscal year ending June 2006, the Durham District Attorney's Office tried, pleaded, dismissed or otherwise resolved 43,904 felonies, misdemeanors and traffic tickets, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts. The number of disposed cases was 2,200 greater than the number of new cases filed.”

“Nifong said in an interview that when he was appointed to the office in April 2005, 2,692 felonies were pending in Durham. As of Jan. 5, 2,134 felonies were pending.”

Curiously, the Administrative Office of the Court’s annual “Summary of North Carolina Trial Court Caseload” indicates that as of June 30, 2006 there were 1,872 felonies pending in Durham. If the N&O’s January 5, 2007 count of 2,134 felonies pending is accurate, the backlog of felony cases pending in Durham actually rose over the last seven months of Nifong’s term as hijacker of the Hoax despite having fallen (if Nifong’s April 2005 total is accurate) substantially in his first year as District Attorney.

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The News & Observer also fails to note that nearly half of all the cases disposed by the Durham County District Attorney’s office in the fiscal year ending June 2006 (not including traffic tickets for which no breakdown is available) were done so by dismissal. One might assume that dismissing cases at a rate higher (much higher, 44% to 35%, for matters in Superior Court and notably higher, 44% to 40%, for District Court cases) than the statewide average would be a means of reducing the backlog that should cause concern rather than the applause the N&O appears to offer.

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While the overall high dismissal rate is alarming, the Snooze Room’s Brianne Dopart points to the District Attorney’s abysmal failure to secure rape convictions as further indication of a dysfunctional DA’s office. Despite there being 162 rapes reported in 2005 and 2006, the District Attorney’s office managed, incredibly, to obtain only one rape conviction in 2006. It is unclear how many of the 162 cases were deemed to be false accusations, saw no charges brought for other reasons, were plead down to lesser charges, remain pending, or were prosecuted unsuccessfully. Despite that uncertainty, the fact that a year which saw 100 rapes reported also saw only one rape conviction is astounding.

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Dopart writes:

“Each year, Durham police and workers at Durham's Crisis Response Center handle scores of reported rapes.

“In 2005, police took 61 rape reports. The Crisis Response Center helped 109 people who said they were victims of a recent rape or sexual assault.

“In 2006, police got 100 rape reports, and the Crisis Response Center provided services to 102 people. Eleven were gang rapes, said Aurelia Sands Bell, the center's executive director.

“Patrick Tamer of the state Administrative Office of the Courts in Raleigh said one person was convicted of rape in Durham in 2006.”

This astounding revelation offers further demonstration of the inability or unwillingness of Nifong’s office to successfully prosecute genuine rape charges while overzealously persecuting the victims of the Hoax. It also reinforces the impression of ineptitude and indifference to justice created by Nifong's hijacking of the hoax, and the Durham Police Department's apparent compliance with his direction. As disturbing as Dopart’s revelation is, the District Attorney’s office apparent attempt to not disclose that there was only one rape conviction in all of Durham County last year is equally concerning.

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Dopart adds:

“The Herald-Sun asked the District Attorney's Office for a list of rape charges that resulted in convictions.

“Candy Clarke, an assistant in the office, said there is no way to link the incident numbers the police assign to charges to the case numbers the DA's Office uses.

“Clarke called it "a glitch" in the system.

“Tracey Cline, who prosecutes the county's sex-crime cases, didn't return several phone calls seeking comment.”

Although the list requested consisted of a singular case, Ms. Clark pretends that a glitch in the system is to blame for the District Attorney's office being unwilling to acknowledge that only one conviction was obtained. While Ms. Clark’s excuse for withholding the information requested by the Snooze Room does not appear to have merit, she may indeed be correct that there is a glitch in the Durham County justice system. That glitch has a name: Nifong.