Former Durham DA loses bid to regain law license

The State Bar suspended Cline's law license in 2015 for five years but determined that only two years of that would be an active suspension.

Cline requested reinstatement in August, but State Bar officials said she hadn't met various conditions outlined in her suspension, such as maintaining communications with the organization, paying outstanding fees and costs of her 2015 disciplinary hearing and certifying how long she hadn't practiced law.

A disciplinary committee scheduled a Dec. 20 meeting to review Cline's request and even delayed it for 35 minutes waiting for her to show up, but she never did, according to an order filed the same day.

"The Motion to Reinstate License does not contain clear, cogent and convincing evidence that Cline has satisfied all conditions for a stay," the order states. "Cline did not attend the hearing and presented no evidence in support of her Motion to Reinstate License."

Cline hasn't practiced law since she was ousted from the District Attorney's Office in March 2012.

She had been accused in a series of newspaper stories of prosecutorial misconduct, and when Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson wouldn't help her figure out why and ruled against her in several high-profile cases, she repeatedly criticized him in public, accusing him of bias and corruption.

Another judge ruled that her accusations were groundless and had harmed Durham County's justice system, and he ordered her removed from office.

The State Bar ruled in 2015 that Clines's criticism of Hudson violated several rules of conduct and that she also violated conduct rules when she got an investigator for her office to file bogus motions in late 2011 seeking the prison visitation records of three inmates, never told the prisoners or their lawyers about the filings and misled a judge about them.