By AARON BEARD, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

RALEIGH, N.C. - More than a year after shocking allegations emerged about Duke University’s lacrosse team, prosecutor Mike Nifong was back in court Tuesday - this time, as the defendant.

The North Carolina State Bar charged the Durham County district attorney with several violations of the state’s rules of professional conduct, all tied to his handling of the lacrosse case.

His trial is expected to run for five days, and as it started Tuesday, the hearing commission chairman promised a quick verdict. If convicted, Nifong could be disbarred.

Well before the start of the hearing, reporters and observers - including the mothers of David Evans and Collin Finnerty, two of the once-charged and now cleared lacrosse players - packed the state Court of Appeals courtroom to watch. Finnerty and the third player, Reade Seligmann, were expected to attend the trial at some point, as were their attorneys.

Nifong won indictments against the three last year after a woman hired to perform as a stripper for a lacrosse team party in March 2006 said she was raped there. He aggressively pursued the case, at one point calling the lacrosse team “a bunch of hooligans” in a newspaper interview.

That interview, along with several others made in the case’s early days, formed the basis of the bar’s initial complaint against Nifong, which said he made misleading and inflammatory comments to the media about the athletes.

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