Duke DA: I Got "Carried Away"

District Attorney Mike Nifong acknowledged Friday that he "maybe got carried away a little bit" in talking about the three Duke University lacrosse players who were once charged with raping a stripper, and he said he expected to be punished by the state bar.

"I think clearly some of the statements I made were improper," Nifong testified Friday at his own ethics trial.

The lacrosse players were cleared of all charges after the state attorney general took over the case earlier this year. North Carolina's State Bar has charged Nifong with violating the rules of professional conduct, alleging he withheld the DNA test results from the defense, lied to the court and bar investigators, and made inflammatory comments about the athletes during his investigation.

Nifong had calling the players a "bunch of hooligans" and had confidently proclaimed last year that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl."

"My fervent desire was to keep the Duke lacrosse case from either being affected by politics or affecting politics in Durham," Nifong said. " ... I didn't want the political climate to be based on the case."

On the stand Friday, Nifong said, "The comment about race was not a comment that should have been made."

If convicted by the bar's disciplinary committee, the Durham County district attorney could be stripped of his license to practice law in the state.

One of the three players also testified Friday about his fear when he heard he had been indicted and the faith he and his teammates had that DNA testing would clear their names.

"We went from being viewed as athletes to being viewed as rapists," Reade Seligmann testified.

He said he had been "more than happy to give DNA." Those DNA tests failed to show any physical contact between the accuser and the members of the lacrosse team, but Nifong still pressed ahead with the case and won indictments against Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, who was also in the courtroom Friday.

Seligmann broke into tears as he described how his attorney got a call from Nifong notifying him of the indictment. He said the attorney glanced his way and said, "She picked you."

"My dad just fell to the floor, and I just sat on the ground," Seligmann said. "And I said, 'My life is over.' ... The first thing I thought about was, 'How am I going to tell my Mom.'"

His attorneys quickly pulled together ATM receipts, cell phone records, time-stamped photos and the testimony of the cab driver who took Seligmann home the night of the off-campus party where the woman, hired to perform as a stripper, said she had been attacked.

"I just felt helpless," Seligmann said. "I don't know much about the law, but you hear the word alibi, and you think that's one of the first things a prosecutor would want to have. You don't charge an innocent person. I could never understand it."

Nifong's attorneys hoped to finish presenting their defense by Friday evening.

The three-member panel hearing the case is expected to deliver a verdict not long after the trial concludes, perhaps as early as Saturday.

Since opening its case on Tuesday, the state bar has largely focused on the DNA testing, specifically when Nifong learned about the results and when he shared that information with the defense.

The party was in March, 2006. Nifong released an initial report on the DNA testing in May 2006, and defense attorneys quickly trumpeted that private lab DNA Security Inc. had been unable to find a conclusive match between the accuser and any lacrosse players.

However, lab director Brian Meehan testified Wednesday that he had told Nifong about the full extent of the test results — specifically, that the lab had found matches to other men — as early as April 10, 2006, a week before the first indictments.

Meehan said he and Nifong never conspired to keep the results from defense attorneys. He said that the initial DNA report was never intended to be all-inclusive and that Nifong never asked for a final and complete report on his lab's findings.

Evans' defense lawyer Brad Bannon testified Thursday that Nifong had said in court documents and hearings in May, June and September that he had no more evidence that could be considered helpful to the defense, yet it wasn't until Oct. 27 that Nifong gave the defense the raw test data from DNA Security.

"It just kept getting worse," Bannon recalled. "I would find another one of the items that had male DNA that excluded our clients, and their teammates, and then another, and then another, and then another. ...

"We were all bewildered at the fact that it hadn't been provided to us before."

Nifong has declined several requests for interviews in recent months. His last public comment on the case before the ethics trial was a one-page statement released the day the case collapsed. In it, he apologized, but only "to the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect."