By AARON BEARD
Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. - Former Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong walked out of jail Saturday morning after completing a 24-hour contempt sentence imposed by a judge for lying to the court about critical DNA evidence in the Duke lacrosse rape case. Nifong left the county jail shortly after 9 a.m., where he was greeted with cheers and applause by a crowd of about 20 supporters waiting for him in the lobby. As they did Friday when Nifong reported to jail, they surrounded the disgraced and disbarred prosecutor as he moved through a crowd of reporters to a waiting car.

“Other than that, I just want to go home and spend some time with my family,” he said, refusing to speak with reporters who peppered him with questions during his walk to the car.

“Other than that, I just want to go home and spend some time with my family,” he said.

The veteran prosecutor, who spent his entire career as an attorney in the Durham County district attorney’s office, won indictments last year against three Duke lacrosse players, charging them with raping a woman hired to strip at a March 2006 team party.

The players - Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans - were declared innocent earlier this year by state prosecutors, who concluded no crime could have occurred. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said the students were victims of Nifong’s “tragic rush to accuse.”

Nifong was later disbarred for more than two dozen violations of the state’s rules of professional conduct, including withholding exculpatory DNA evidence and making numerous inflammatory comments about the lacrosse players to the media. He resigned as district attorney in July.

Last week, Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III found that Nifong “willfully made false statements” to the court in September when he insisted he had given defense attorneys all results from a DNA test that helped exonerate the players.

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