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DURHAM – Superior Court Judge Jim Hardin has chastised District Attorney Tracey Cline over her handling of demands for information about the prison-visitation records of three state inmates.
“In respect to motions in this court, and any others, please ensure they are factual,” Hardin told Cline near the end of a 47-minute hearing on Wednesday. “Consider this a warning and a public admonition as to that.”
Hardin was reacting to Cline’s admission that motions for two of the inmates, convicted murderers Angel Richardson and Keith Kidwell, had falsely stated the inmates had filed motions demanding new trials.
Neither in fact had done do. The third inmate involved, convicted rapist David Yearwood, has moved for a new trial.
Cline said the Richardson and Kidwell documents had mistakenly been prepared using a “form motion we use in our office” that includes mention of new-trial motions.
“I apologize to the court for the wrong heading on these two different motions,” she said. “We had no intention of misleading the court.”
Richardson, Kidwell and Yearwood were targeted because Cline suspects lawyers involved with the defense of the men have been working behind the scenes with Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson to push claims she’s engaged in prosecutorial misconduct.
That’s the issue at the center of a high-profile feud between Cline and Hudson, one that prompted the DA’s abortive bid to have Hudson disqualified from hearing cases in Durham and that’s prompted a local lawyer to call for Cline’s resignation.
Lawyers for the three men objected to Cline’s seeing the visitation records because they’re supposed to be confidential. But Hardin signed off on her request for them in early October, without either necessarily telling the lawyers it was in the works.
On Wednesday Hardin instructed Cline to “scour her office” for any copies of the records and turn them over to him by the weekend.
He vowed to have them “destroyed and shredded,” along with a copy of Kidwell’s records previously sent to his office.
Hardin noted that N.C. State Bar ethics rules forbid lawyers from making any “false statement of material fact to a tribunal” or failing “to correct a false statement of material fact previously made to the tribunal.”
“That rule is designed for a lot of reasons,” he told Cline. “It relates to ensuring the integrity of the court, as a fact of the matter. As professionals, we have to rely on each other’s integrity, character and reputation for truthfulness. If that’s lost, it’s very difficult to impossible to regain.”
Hardin is a former Durham district attorney and was once Cline’s boss.
Wednesday’s hearing preceded the continuation of a different hearing, before Hudson, that resulted in Hudson tossing out the verdict in Hardin’s signature prosecution, the 2001-03 Michael Peterson case.
Cline in that hearing opposed Peterson’s request for a new trial.
