Feb. 8, 2016

“Bob Orr, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice, says it’s time for a comprehensive outside review of the state agency that oversees lawyers.

“Orr… is part of a committee looking at legal professionalism as part of Chief Justice Mark Martin’s recently launched review of the state justice system….

“The call for evaluation comes amid questions about the bar’s aggressive prosecution of three defense attorneys who have worked on Racial Justice Act (text cache) and innocence inquiry cases….”

– From “Former NC Supreme Court justice calls for review of state bar” by Anne Blythe in the News & Observer (Feb. 6)  (text cache)

Right on, Justice Orr. And thanks to the N&O for its continuing attention to the flagrant self-dealing of the Prosecutors Club, most recently this account (text cache) by Joseph Neff contrasting the bar’s two sets of ethical standards:

“For most of 2015, the North Carolina State Bar vigorously and publicly pressed ethics charges against two anti-death penalty lawyers for what were eventually judged to be unimportant inaccuracies in two sworn affidavits.

“During the same time, the bar privately dismissed complaints that three prominent prosecutors – one running for attorney general, another now a Superior Court judge – used a false affidavit in a racially divisive case that has roiled Winston-Salem for more than a decade….”

I’ve even seen it suggested that the situation demands a separate panel specializing in prosecutorial misconduct (text cache).

Aug. 27, 2017

In 1999, when the last charges against Bob Kelly were dismissed, here’s how Joseph Neff of the News & Observer described the scene:

“The prosecutors in the longest, most expensive criminal case in North Carolina history picked a day when all attention was focused elsewhere to quietly throw in the towel.

“It was Sept. 15, as Hurricane Floyd churned northward toward landfall the next day, that Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb filed a two-page document with the Clerk of Superior Court in Edenton, dismissing eight counts of sexual abuse against Robert Kelly.”

 

April 5, 2015

William L. Anderson, professor of economics at Frostburg (Md.) State University, writes widely in opposition to big government. He has a particular aversion to overreaching prosecutors such as Mike Nifong and Nancy Lamb.

Anderson recently spoke to a North Carolina State University audience on “The Economic Calculation of Prosecutorial Abuse,” and afterward he shared these thoughts on how justice goes bad:

“The real problem is that people in the courts and law enforcement don’t have ‘fences’ that limit their behavior and also increase their liability. If the chances that they will face any meaningful sanctions for lying and lawbreaking are almost nil, then we can expect two things:

1. People in those lines of work are going to cut corners, to lie (even if they really do believe the person is guilty) and to manufacture ‘evidence,’ and
2. The kind of people who are most likely to cut corners are going to self-select into these lines of work…..

“Take Nancy Lamb, for example. While she narrowly lost the DA election last year, nonetheless she has ridden the Edenton fame for years and has done well in her career. It helped her gain money and what the late Murray Rothbard described as ‘psychic profit.’ She suffered no consequences that I know despite the horrendous train-wreck damage she caused not only the defendants, but also the taxpayers of North Carolina…. Lamb is protected by prosecutorial immunity and also by a media and legal culture that bows down to prosecutors and judges….

“A society that accepts and honors this kind of dishonest and destructive behavior is doomed. There is no other way to put it. The people from Edenton could never get back their lives; Betsy Kelly pleaded nolo contendere because she knew the North Carolina ‘justice’ system was utterly and hopelessly corrupt….”

Also seemingly immune to appropriate consequences: Chris Bean, who went on to a long career on the bench despite having provided flagrantly prejudicial testimony against former client Bob Kelly.

Nov. 16, 2011

“The Little Rascals defendants never wavered in their contention that the allegations were untrue. Not one testified against the other, even though prosecutors commonly offer leniency to accused people in exchange for damning testimony.

“If the defendants were so depraved that they in fact sexually abused small children wholesale, how is it that none was tempted to ‘tell all’ to save his or her hide?”

– From an editorial in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (June 2, 1997)