An attorney who is the State Bar’s grievance committee chairman. He’s a member of the State Bar Council.
Explains substance of the grievance, mainly saying outrageous stuff before trial, as documented during the testimony of Marsha Goodenow.
Reads from an August NC Bar letter of notice giving Nifong 15 days to respond. Says Nifong did respond in a timely fashion. Says Nifong denied all of the allegations against him when he responded.
Fox says the Bar sent a second letter of notice, on Dec. 19, 2006, to Nifong after the defense had filed a motion to compel Nifong to provide evidence that he had not already provided. This was after seeing reports that he and Meehan had agreed to keep some information from the defense and for his telling the court that he didn’t know anything about it.
Fox says Nifong did respond in a timely fashion. He sent a 7-page, point-by-point rebuttal to the charges.
Jean: What did he say about the discovery?
Fox: He said he had turned everything over. Reading from Nifong’s letter, Fox says Nifong said each defendant had everything the prosecution had at the time the prosecution had it. Nifong claims in the letter that the Oct. 17 data dump included everything he needed to give and snarkily says that the defense’s claim amounts to saying they didn’t give us everything because they gave us everything.
Nifong didn’t tell the Bar he met with Meehan on April 10. Only talked about April 21 and May 12, says Fox. Fox reads from Nifong’s letter in which he says he indicted Finnerty and Seligmann before even talking to Meehan about DNA results. Said this was a victim ID case.
Jean: Did Nifong ever explain why he felt the defense was not entitled to the DNA showing males that weren’t lacrosse players? Fox: He later said that they were entitled to the information but denied he kept it from them intentionally. In his letter, Nifong blamed the exigencies of his political campaign for not getting it to them on time and also blamed a legal assistant.
In his response letter Nifong denied he made a false representation to Judge Smith. Said he was not referring to the existence of evidence but to the charges that he was intentionally keeping evidence from the defense. (???)
Jean: If the Bar can’t get full, fair and honest responses to letters of notice, does that impact the policing of lawyers? Fox: Yes, it makes it much more difficult to get to the bottom of things.
Freedman now on cross. This is just a complaint, right? And the Bar has the burden of proving them.
Fox: Right.
Freedman: And the grievance committee is sort of like a grand jury who decides to send the case up?
Fox: Sort of. Not completely.
Freedman’s upset that Fox didn’t watch Meehan’s testimony yesterday. Now he’s saying there were complaints against him when he was chairman of the Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which rules on lawyer misconduct. That was a pretty sleazy thing, just like yesterday’s comment that just because there is no DNA doesn’t mean there wasn’t a rape.
Fox is excused.
