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Since I know your going to ask, prosecutors have absolute prosecutoral immunity from civil claims under state law. While I would like to see the immunity challenged based on Nifong's intentional bad acts, such as withholding key evidence, it would be a bad precedednt to set. Every defendant would claim the prosecutor did something intentional to secure a conviction. Prosecutors are still liable to ethics complaints and disbarment. The ethics charges in this case will require that he step down before too long anway, so justice is done...sort of.

There is a potential federal civil rights claim under section 1983, but that will hinge on the role Nifong was playing when he madwe those bad acts. The Supreme Court case Imbler v. Pachtman (1976) is often cited in discussion of prosecutorial misconduct. There, the court distinguished between "those aspects of the prosecutor's responsibility that cast him in the role of an administrator or investigative officer rather than that of advocate" [that is, a prosecutor]. It is only as a prosecutor that a D.A. has absolute immunity.

Otherwise, his immunity is qualified; he is not automatically immunized against misconduct that he should have known was a violation of law.

In short, Nifong’s immunity hinges upon the role he was playing when he acted, not upon the actions he took. For example, most of the press conferences held by Nifong occurred before an indictment was sought-- that is, before he became an advocate in a prosecution. The case was in the investigative phase. If the defense can prove Nifong knowingly made false statements then, prosecutorial immunity won’t necessarily protect him against a suit.

Consider the tainted photo I.D. upon which the indictments drew.

It was widely reported that Nifong directed the police to violate their own suspect-identification procedures.

Namely, he omitted non-suspects from the photo lineup and the accuser was told that all photos were of Duke lacrosse players who had been at the scene of the alleged rape. If this is true, then Nifong acted as an investigator and has qualified immunity.

Now where are the "gang of 88"? They have some :bannana crow: to eat.

NOTE: Large portions of this post were cut and pasted from the net, lest some retard with a hardon claim plagarism. If you want more effort than that, let me know who to send my bill to.

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Moxie, understand the immunity piece, since without it every criminal sitting in a jail cell would clog the courts with frivolous attempts to prevail in a tort case against their prosecutor, but I'm always suspecious of both the Bar and the AMA policing their own. Most examples I've seen end up with slaps on the wrist. That being said, Nifong's case has so much national attention believe the NC Bar will have to come down hard if he's found to have violated the tenants of the bar.