RALEIGH, N.C. – In a tearful speech Friday afternoon, Mike Nifong announced he would resign as Durham’s district attorney regardless of whether the state bar decides to punish him for his handling of rape charges against Duke lacrosse players.

“To the extent that my actions have caused pain to the Finnertys, Seligmanns and Evanses, I apologize,” Nifong said, referring to the families of the three now-exonerated players. “To the extent that my actions have brought disrespect, disrepute to the Bar, to my community, I apologize.”

Nifong’s wife, Cy Gurney, dabbed her eyes with a white hankerchief as she sat in the courtroom and watched her husband break down.

Nifong stopped short of admitting that he intentionally withheld evidence that could have exonerated the accused.

“Much of the criticism against me is justified,” Nifong said. “The accusation that I’m a liar is not justified.”

Some did not buy Nifong’s apology, calling it a scam to dodge the toughest penalty the state bar’s disciplinary panel could unleash.

“This was a cynical ploy designed solely to save his law license,” said Joseph B. Cheshire V, a defense attorney representing Dave Evans, one of the accused.

“His tepid apology is far too little and far too late,” Cheshire said. Cheshire said Nifong continuously undercut evidence the defense presented that could have proved their clients’ innocence.

Nifong spent more than three hours trying to explain his statements and actions over the past 14 months since Crystal Gail Mangum, an exotic dancer, told police three men gang-raped her at a party.

At several points, he conceded he made mistakes and violated professional codes of conduct.

The State Bar also has charged Nifong with making inflammatory, prejudicial public comments about the case. Nifong conceded Friday morning that he had made improper comments, which would give the panel grounds to punish him.

At the time, he said, he did not watch broadcasts of many of his comments.

“I saw a clip this week that I had not seen before,” he said. “It made me cringe. It did not come across at all like what I was trying to do.”

He added: “Maybe if I’d seen some of these things, I’d have shut up sooner.”

Lane Williamson, chairman of the state bar Disciplinary Hearing Commission, was skeptical of Nifong’s testimony Friday afternoon. For more than a half-hour, Wiliamson took over the questioning from Nifong’s attorney and drilled him about his interactions with Mangum over the course of the investigation.

When Nifong explained that he sent an investigator in his office to talk to Mangum in December to untangle statements she had made about the incident, Williamson questioned:

“Why did you ask him to do it? You must have realized this was a pretty critical interview?”

Nifong’s afternoon testimony followed emotional statements from Reade Seligman, one of the accused. Seligman had left the party by the time Mangum said she was raped and had provided prosecutors a photographic alibi.

Friday morning, Seligman told the commission how the rape allegations “really turned our world upside down.”

“I never thought in a million years that I would ever be a suspect,” Seligmann said, becoming emotional at points. “I wasn’t even listed as having been at the party.”

Seligmann, 21, said he had assumed his DNA sample would show that he had not raped the dancer. A Durham police officer, Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, had assured him and other players that their DNA samples would clear them, he said.

Later, when he learned that the dancer had picked him out of the photo lineup, Seligmann said, “the room felt like it was spinning.”

“My father fell on the floor, and I sat on the ground, and I said, “My life is over,’ Seligmann said.

He described his mother’s reaction: “The life was sucked right out of her, and then I tried to calm her down. I told her everything was going to be all right and that we were going to prove this didn’t happen.”

Seligmann said people had been assuming the worst about the lacrosse players after the allegations became public, even before anyone was charged.

“Everybody looks at you a little bit differently,” he said. “It was as lonely a feeling as you could ever imagine.”

Seligmann said he endured verbal abuse from onlookers before the start of one court proceeding. He recalled one person calling out, “You’re a dead man walking!”

Nifong eventually dropped the rape counts but continued to press other, related charges of sexual assault and kidnapping.

“At that point it felt almost like a sick joke, like we were being toyed with, like he was doing it maliciously to us,” Seligmann said.

The state Attorney General’s Office dismissed all the charges this year after launching an independent investigation. Attorney General Roy Cooper declared the three players innocent. “He gave me my life back,” Seligmann said.