I didn’t get around to posting on the completion of Mike Nifong’s DA tenure today. I frankly wasn’t that interested in what last night was obviously inevitable. But in the interest of putting it here for the record, here it is.
Nifong’s announcement that he would resign not immediately but as of July 13 outraged anti-Nifong partisans and seemingly confused North Carolina’s officeholders. Gov. Mike Easley announced he thought that was not the right thing to do, though state law apparently allowed it. And Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson at first hemmed and hawed, but later in the evening, apparently having had a change of heart or maybe a few phone calls, decided to act on a petition for Nifong’s removal from office filed months ago by private citizen Beth Brewer.
Hudson had refused to address Brewer’s petition until after Nifong’s State Bar trial. But that ended on Saturday, after which Hudson at first said there was no reason to act on Brewer’s petition because by the time all the paper work was done, it would be July 13. The uproar over Nifong’s effrontery, apparently, led him to reconsider that course.
The upshot is that Durham Sheriff Worth Hill this morning went to Nifong’s house and took his badge and office keys. ABC11 in Durham has the video. State lawmakers quickly shored up language that allowed a disgraced and disbarred DA to stay in office for nearly a month. Ironically, without Brewer’s action some months ago, for which she was roundly criticized as an anti-Nifong zealot, Mike Nifong would still be Durham’s DA.
