The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it will not investigate potential criminal misconduct by former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong in his handling of the Duke lacrosse case.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Jim Cooney, lawyer for the exonerated former lacrosse player Reade Seligmann, requested that the Department of Justice look into the matter in October.
The department decided such an investigation would be better conducted at the state level, spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement.
"We believe the state of North Carolina has the primary interests in this matter: protecting the integrity of its judicial proceedings, holding Mr. Nifong accountable for his actions as an officer of its courts and vindicating the principles of justice under state law," he said.
Philip Seligmann, father of Reade Seligmann, said in an interview with The Chronicle that he expected the department to deny the request, but added that he is disappointed that the case will not be investigated on a national level.
"Given the performance of the Department of Justice in the past eight years, I'm not at all surprised at the decision they have made," he said. "It is right in line with the rest of their civil-rights efforts--effectively non-existent."
Duke law professor James Coleman, a frequent commentator on the case, said the Department of Justice rarely takes on investigations of this nature.
"As the Department of Justice said, it's a matter of state law with a local official prosecuting for state crimes," he said. "That's ordinarily the kind of investigation that would be done by state and local authorities."
Cooney wrote in a Oct. 9 letter to top department officials that state-level officials, such as the Office of the North Carolina Attorney General, might face a conflict of interest if they are asked to investigate the actions of law enforcement officials in their own state.
"On behalf of Reade Seligmann and his family, I respectfully request that the government of the United States grant the request of the North Carolina attorney general and participate in a joint investigation into the events of this prosecution," he wrote.
A federal probe has investigative powers unavailable to the state, such as the ability to call a prosecutorial grand jury and subpoena witnesses, said Duke Professor of Law Thomas Metzloff. He added that these powers would be very useful in looking into possible criminal misconduct.
"[This kind of investigation] is to find whether or not there would be additional criminal charges," Metzloff said. "It would be obstruction of justice questions.... What they're looking at is not the information we already know about-- but some of the other aspects of the police investigation."
Specifically, the families and lawyers of the former lacrosse players want authorities to determine if the accuser in the case, Crystal Mangum, was prodded to change her story during the investigation to strengthen weaknesses in the prosecution's case, Metzloff added.
State authorities also acknowledged the difficulty of continuing the case without the intervention of the more-powerful Department of Justice.
"It would be difficult to conduct additional investigation into this matter without federal participation," Noelle Talley, a spokesperson for the Office of the North Carolina Attorney General, said in a statement. "Our attorneys and the [State Bureau of Investigations] will discuss the impact of this refusal."
Philip Seligmann said he will continue to pursue a criminal investigation but declined to comment on specifics.
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