Nifong announces he's leaving

Looks like Mr. Bacon has gotten his wish.

Not the ending i would have preferred in this case, but after the Attorney General dismissed the charges against the Duke lacrosse players and said what he said, this really should have happened much sooner.

UPDATE: Michael makes a point i tried to make a lot last year, but much more cogently than any of my efforts:

Nifong served honorably and exceptionally as an assistant DA for quite a while, and the good of that service shouldn't be completely obliterated by his severe and unforgivable mistakes leading the department. It bears remembering that one of the reasons so many of us found it hard to believe that the case was going so far off of the rails is because of Nifong's long established reputation for carefulness and thoroughness.

It seemed to me, and i posted this thought not only here but in comments on a number of other folk's blogs throughout the spring and summer of last year, that Nifong had to have something to hang the case on, otherwise he wouldn't even be taking it to the grand jury.

The most difficult aspect of the case for me is that, after trying to argue for the better part of a year that it shouldn't be seen as a lens through which to view the societal faultlines of race, gender, and privilege, what's happened has served to wedge those faults further apart, to the extent that they'll continue to trap people in the future.