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The US prosecutor of a high-profile sex abuse case in which three former Duke University students were cleared of all charges has said he will resign.

North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong, who once called the lacrosse players a bunch of hooligans, said the "community had suffered enough".

He announced his resignation at his own ethics trial on charges he broke rules of professional conduct in the case.

The three white men had been accused of raping a black woman at a party.

But in April, North Carolina's attorney general threw out all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, all members of Duke University's lacrosse team.

He said that, based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, a 27-year-old student from another college, he believed the students to be innocent.

The case was one whose apparent racist overtones had shocked America, with many people reminded of the treatment of black people by privileged whites in years gone by.

Law licence

Mr Nifong has been accused by the North Carolina State Bar of withholding DNA evidence from the students' lawyers.

He also allegedly lied to the court and made misleading and inflammatory statements about the accused.

These included declaring that he would not let Durham, the town where Duke University is based, become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl".

Mr Nifong has acknowledged making inappropriate comments but says he is not guilty of all the charges against him. He says he did not become aware that some of the DNA evidence was missing until months later.

If the bar's disciplinary committee finds him guilty, he faces losing his licence to practise law in the state.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Mike Nifong broke several rules of professional conduct during his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, committing "deceit and misrepresentations," a disciplinary committee ruled Saturday.

The committee must now decide if the longtime prosecutor in Durham County, who has already pledged to resign his post as district attorney, should be stripped of his law license.

The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.

The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge -- including the most serious allegations -- that Nifong's actions involved "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."

"Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice," state bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker said Saturday morning in his closing statement.

Brocker told the disciplinary hearing committee that as Nifong investigated allegations that a stripper was raped at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team, he charged "forward toward condemnation and injustice," weaving a "web of deception that has continued up through this hearing."

The bar charged Nifong, a prosecutor in Durham County for his entire three-decade legal career, with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.

Nifong acknowledged Friday he was likely to be punished by the disciplinary committee for maybe getting "carried away a little bit" when talking publicly about the case. He said he regretted some of his statements, including a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl."

Brocker pounded on such comments Saturday, saying Nifong had to have known he was making improper comments to reporters.

"They [were] clearly going to cause public condemnation of anybody who was charged," Brocker said.

If convicted, the committee could suspend Nifong's law license or take it away entirely.

Nifong tearfully said Friday he would resign as district attorney, stunning his staff in Durham and his own attorneys. They had insisted for weeks their client had no plans to leave the office he was elected to for the first time in November.

"It has become increasingly apparent, during the course of this week, in some ways that it might not have been before, that my presence as the district attorney in Durham is not furthering the cause of justice," Nifong said, adding later: "My community has suffered enough."

Even if he is disbarred, Nifong's troubles aren't over -- the players' attorneys have pledged to seek criminal contempt charges next week in Durham.