Day one of hearings commenced Thursday morning in Durham County's District 14 Court to determine whether disbarred former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong should be held in contempt of court. If convicted, Nifong could serve up to 30 days in jail and could be forced to pay fines up to $500.
In June, Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith found probable cause to believe that Nifong made intentional false statements during the Sept. 22 hearing against the three former men's lacrosse players accused of sexual assault by dancer Crystal Mangum in March 2006.
At Thursday's hearing, Nifong pleaded not guilty to contempt charges.
Jim Glover, Nifong's attorney, said his client did not intentionally lie to the court last fall, adding that Nifong believed he had turned over all results of DNA testing in the case.
Nifong did not realize until months later that additional DNA data was missing from the report, Glover said.
"The question is not whether those statements Mr. Nifong made are literally true or literally false," Glover said during his opening statement. "The question is, were they willfully and intentionally false and were they also part of an effort... to hide potentially exculpatory evidence, and that's the issue before the court."
Last summer, Smith's report cited at least 12 violations against Nifong, including withholding potentially exculpatory evidence that would clear the three players, David Evans, Trinity '06, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann.
The report stated that Nifong learned April 10, 2006 that a private laboratory found DNA from multiple males at the scene of the party near or around Mangum, none of it belonging to the indicted Duke players. Nifong alledgedly withheld this information from the court until October.
During a preliminary hearing last month, Nifong publicly stated for the first time that nothing criminal happened at the lacrosse party held March 13, 2006.
"I have admitted on more than one occasion that I have made mistakes in the prosecution of these cases," Nifong said. "For that, I sincerely apologize to Mr. Seligmann, Mr. Finnerty, Mr. Evans and to their families."
Nifong dropped the rape charges in December of last year and later recused himself from the case after being charged with ethics violations by the North Carolina State Bar. State prosecutors appointed by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper took over the case and dropped all remaining charges against the players.
During cross-examination Thursday, Glover tried to portray the DNA report released by Nifong on May 12 as adequate and argued that no additional information would have exonerated the players.
Glover told defense attorney Brad Bannon that other than the report, he has nothing "significantly exculpatory."
"That's absolutely false," Bannon said. "And you know it."
Defense attorneys for the lacrosse players contend that Nifong worked in collaboration with Dr. Brian Meehan, laboratory director of DNA Security, Inc., to release the DNA report without the exonerating information.
But the lead investigator in the case, Benjamin Himan, testified that he was with Nifong and Meehan for several visits to DNA Security and he never heard talk about leaving information out of the report.
"Mr. Nifong asked for the report," Himan said. "He was sitting right there with me. I felt if he thought something should have been in that report he should have said something."
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