gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM – A judge on Friday suspended District Attorney Tracey Cline from all her official duties, pending a Feb. 13 hearing on whether she’s engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.
Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood issued his order a day after beginning his review of the controversy sparked by Cline’s public feud with Durham’s senior resident Superior Court judge, Orlando Hudson.
Hobgood said there was “probable cause to believe” that much of local attorney Kerry Sutton’s formal complaint against Cline is true because it was corroborated by what he could glean from studying court documents.
The Feb. 13 hearing could end with Cline’s removal from office. She will be able to mount a defense, and Sutton will be allowed to argue for removal. Both will be able to testify personally and call witnesses.
Hobgood cautioned that just because he saw probable cause to schedule a hearing, he “will not automatically” sustain Sutton’s claims at the hearing.
His decision to suspend Cline – with pay – nonetheless stunned local officials.
“Wow,” Mayor Bill Bell said late Friday when told of the decision. “That’s unfortunate. Unfortunate. That’s an unfortunate situation, for Tracey and for the county.”
Bell added that “we’ll just have to see where it goes from here,” and that he wished “all this could have been avoided.”
The controversy has been simmering for months and has played out in repeated motions by Cline to have Hudson disqualified from hearing criminal cases in Durham.
Cline alleged that Hudson was biased against her and was working with local defense lawyers and a Raleigh newspaper to discredit her.
Two other judges, Carl Fox and Henry Hight, reviewed and brushed aside the DA’s claims against Hudson.
Hobgood’s order focused on Cline’s anti-Hudson filings. He said they seemed to stem from Hudson’s decision earlier this year to dismiss murder and sexual assault charges against Derrick Allen.
Allen had been accused of killing a then-girlfriend’s 2-year-old child. But Hudson ruled that Cline, former Assistant District Attorney Freda Black and the State Bureau of Investigation had hidden evidence Allen’s lawyers were entitled to see.
Hobgood saw nothing to quarrel with in Hudson’s decision, as “full discovery was absolutely necessary” to Allen’s defense because the SBI hadn’t fully tested a key piece of evidence.
But “it is apparent to this court that the dismissal … was extremely frustrating to the district attorney in that she had spent several years of her professional career as a prosecutor handling child sex crimes,” Hobgood said.
“Thereafter, signals began to appear that … Cline was losing her ability to exercise professional restraint and civility toward Judge Hudson,” he added.
Hobgood said the case comes down to the motions Cline filed against Hudson in the cases of Michael Dorman, David Yearwood, Michael Peterson and Clint Pollard.
Dorman and Peterson are accused of murder. Hudson tossed Dorman’s case because officials allowed the victim’s family to cremate her remains without giving Dorman’s defense team a chance to have them tested. He ordered a new trial in Peterson’s case because an SBI agent who’d testified against Peterson in 2003 lied on the witness stand.
Yearwood was convicted of rape in 2000 but is seeking a new trial. Pollard faces allegations that he sexually abused a child in the 1980s. Hudson earlier this month tossed the most serious charge against Pollard and barred prosecutors from calling as a witness an expert in repressed memories.
Fox and Hight weighed in against Cline in the Peterson and Pollard cases, respectively. She withdrew her motions in the Dorman and Yearwood cases.
Hobgood issued the suspension order late Friday afternoon and directed Clerk of Court Archie Smith and Sheriff Mike Andrews to have copies served on Cline, Sutton and Hudson.
Smith learned of the decision from a reporter and one of his subordinates, who had another clerk take a copy of the order to him.
“Oh Lord, is it what I think it is?” Smith said after the subordinate told him civil clerks had received a document from Hobgood. “I’ve got some work to do.”
Bell’s reaction also included a question. “Who’s the acting DA?” he wondered.
An answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, as neither Cline nor her chief deputy, Assistant District Attorney Jim Dornfried, could be reached for comment.
Sutton’s motion was the second in recent years to ask a judge to remove a sitting Durham DA.
The first, filed in 2007, targeted former District Attorney Mike Nifong over his handling of the Duke lacrosse case.
Hudson, in that instance, opted to delay making a decision until a N.C. State Bar disciplinary proceeding against Nifong had played out. The regulatory group wound up taking Nifong’s law license away from him, and Hudson issued a suspension when the disgraced prosecutor dallied about resigning.
Local political activists had speculated that Hobgood would emulate Hudson and wait to see if the State Bar moves against Cline. Bar investigators are known to have obtained copies of numerous documents related to the Cline-Hudson feud.
Hobgood’s decision to suspend Cline was discretionary, as state law also would have allowed him to let her remain on duty pending next month’s hearing.
