The North Carolina State Bar, in my opinion, affected the outcome of the 2006 Duke lacrosse case when it intervened by removing Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong.

In good faith, Nifong pursued the prosecution of the three Duke student-athlete defendants while facing overwhelming political opposition, displaying what I define as “Nifongian courage.”

With his removal from the case and replacement by Attorney General Roy Cooper, the charges against the Duke lacrosse defendants were dismissed, and the defendants were unprecedentedly declared “innocent” by the attorney general.

The State Bar is now trying to affect the outcome of the murder charge against Duke lacrosse victim/accuser Crystal Mangum, to her detriment, by using the Wake County civil courts to enjoin me from providing assistance to her. Being a retired physician, I readily recognized problems with the April 14, 2011, autopsy report of Reginald Daye. It contained findings with substantial and significant disparities and contradictions when compared with medical records and police reports.

The autopsy report’s conclusion that Daye “died due to complications of a stab wound to the chest” presented no nexus between the lesion and Daye’s death. The report omitted the pertinent fact that symptoms and signs secondary to delirium tremens led to an intubation by Duke Hospital staff which was mistakenly placed in Daye’s esophagus instead of the trachea and resulted in his brain death and cardiac arrest. It also failed to mention that Daye died after his elective removal from life support following a week’s observation of his comatose state.

Daye’s autopsy report is the document used by Durham prosecutors to charge Mangum with murder. I am the only one willing to publicly challenge the accuracy and legitimacy of the report and to demand that all criminally related charges against Mangum be dismissed. In fact, a little over a year ago, on this very op-ed page, my opinion piece titled “Autopsy reports don’t add up” was published.

On Dec. 4, 2012, the State Bar filed its injunction-seeking complaint against me, and I responded on Dec. 17, 2012. In my reply, I denied the Bar’s allegations that I was acting lawyerly when I filed two petitions as a Pro Se third party in Mangum’s case. Additionally, I refuted its claim that writing a letter to a judge constituted unauthorized practice of law. Then I filed a motion to have statutes waived in order to allow me to represent Mangum at trial because I felt that it would be impossible for Mangum to receive representation by a state-licensed attorney who would put her best interests before that of protecting the medical examiner and Duke University Hospital.

On Jan. 14, the State Bar, utilizing Rule 12(c), filed a motion asking the judge to make a ruling based on the submitted pleadings alone – that is, dispense with oral arguments in open court. Such an action would essentially deprive me of my day in court. What is also disconcerting is that the Feb. 18, hearing is scheduled to go before Orange County Judge Carl R. Fox. He has strong ties to UNC-Chapel Hill. Fox graduated from UNC-CH and its law school, and he worked as an Orange County prosecutor for more than two decades. Prosecutor Fox worked with the same medical examiner team that is responsible for the Daye autopsy report.

On February 1, 2013, I filed a motion to disqualify Judge Fox due to partiality. In defending myself against the State Bar, I deserve to have my day in court before a sitting judge with absolute impartiality. Anything less would bring disrepute to the Tar Heel state legal system.