Replies

Nifong will claim:

Mitigating:

(A) absence of a prior disciplinary record;
(G) character or reputation;

(A) one is true unless the digging into his prior cases quickly lead to new charges in other cases. (G) he will get a bunch of Woody's to say what a great guy he is.

(B) absence of a dishonest or selfish motive;

I know, I know but he is a Dim. He will try it. He will say it was for the children. He will deny the election had anything to do with it. He will claim he believed Mangum.

(C) personal or emotional problems;
(H) physical or mental disability or impairment;
(J) interim rehabilitation;
(L) remorse;

Face it he is a Dim and that is what they do.

(D) timely good faith efforts to make restitution or to rectify consequences of misconduct;
(E) full and free disclosure to the hearing committee or cooperative attitude toward proceedings;

I will claim that he shut up early on in the case and eventually turned of the evidence. He will lie and claim his shutting up had nothing to do with the primary being over. He will claim he has cooperated with the bar. These two claims may well irritate the bar even more but he will make them unless his attorney threatens to quit over this.

(F) inexperience in the practice of law;

He will claim inexperience as DA. As a 20+ year ADA, it won't work but he will claim it.

(K) imposition of other penalties or sanctions;

He will claim that the scorn in the public eye has been great punishment for him. He may also claim this if he is forced to resign as DA before his hearing on these ethics charges.

So overall he will claim the all but (I)and(M)because there has not been much delay and he has no priors as of now.

If Nifong tries to throw all that nonsense at the committee, they will be more PO'd than they are now. He might be able to try B, C & D with a straight face but, realistically, the only mitigating factors with merit for him are A, G & L (L, if he can bring himself to express remorse). He might try E by telling yet more lies to cover his earlier lie to the committee since lying to cover previous lies is his established pattern, but if his lawyer is smart he won't allow it.

You'd think that Nifong would be smart enough not to advance multiple mitigation claims that don't even pass the smell test, but his past MO illustrates that he will try just about anything if he thinks he can get away with it. He certainly deserves to have all such claims blow up in his face.

You can bet that when the boys' attorneys asked for ALL the evidence from Nifong early on, they meant ALL OF IT. It's why it was asked for IN COURT. They knew he was withholding important data. Meehan proved the point with his testimony.

Don't forget, the Bar filed charges and then expanded the charges. VERY UNUSUAL. So much for character.