Tag: prosecutorial misconduct
Baby Steps
As LASIS has previously reported, former Texas prosecutor and judge, Ken Anderson, was found guilty of prosecutorial misconduct in a murder case that put an innocent man behind bars for almost 25 years. Just this month, in a special court of inquiry, Mr. Anderson was sentenced to ten days in prison on charges of criminal contempt for lying about exculpatory evidence. As the New York Times points out, ten days in jail for taking away 25 years of one man’s life is a mere pittance. But in the world of prosecutorial misconduct, jail time for a deviant prosecutor is unprecedented.
And then there’s the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, which has figured large in our discussion of guilty prosecutors. The New York Times recently reported that the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, which, as we’ve previously discussed, was sued by Jabbar Collins for wrongfully convicting him of murder, is being investigated by federal authorities for forcing a newbie assistant district attorney to lie about the Jabbar Collins investigation while under oath.
If these accusations are true, not only did the new assistant district attorney commit perjury, which is a federal offense, but the senior attorneys who convinced the young lawyer to commit perjury engaged in ethical misconduct as well, and can be disciplined by the New York State Bar. We expect they will be.
Mere baby steps on the road to change, perhaps, but we have reason to be cheered by seeing prosecutors being held to account. That’s some good news on a very grim subject, just in time for the holidays.
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Tags Brooklyn District Attorney's office, ethical misconduct, Jabbar Collins, Ken Anderson, prosecutorial misconduct |
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Date 12/03/2013 |
Mapping the Landscape
In 1999, the Chicago Tribune ran a nine-part series on the criminal justice system —investigative reporting at its finest. The first chapter dealt exclusively with prosecutorial misconduct. Tribune reporters churned over 11,000 court rulings dating back to 1963, the year the Supreme Court decided Brady v. Maryland, and separated out homicide cases that were overturned because prosecutors either withheld potentially exculpatory evidence, or used false evidence altogether. The Tribune found 381 examples of these most grievous forms of misconduct, but also noted that it is impossible to determine just how often misconduct occurs because, like all abuse, it’s done in secret, and often goes undiscovered.
In 2008, the New York State Bar Association convened a Task Force on Wrongful Conviction. In 2009, the Task Force released a cursory report on wrongful convictions in the New York State. The Task Force examined 53 cases in which convictions were overturned and determined that in at least 27 of them, poor prosecutorial or police behavior may have been factor contributing to the wrongful conviction.
Chief among the Task Force’s findings was the use of perjured and false testimony or evidence. Yet the findings stopped short of assigning blame, and there were no words of admonishment for prosecutors.
Could this have something to do with the fact that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes was a member of the Task Force? Perhaps.
District Attorney Hynes’ office was accused in 2010 of committing prosecutorial misconduct to convict Jabbar Collins of homicide in 1994. Mr. Collins, who served 16 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, is suing the District Attorney’s office, and various other law enforcement officials, for $150 million. More recently, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office has had yet another accusation of misconduct lobbed its way, this time, in connection with a particularly shady police officer.
As we’ve reported, in 2010 The Northern California Innocence Project released an extensive report on prosecutorial misconduct committed over a 12-year period in California. Investigators reviewed over 4,000 appellate state and federal court decisions, news reports, and trial court rulings between 1997 and 2009 that had allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Investigators discovered that in 707 of these cases, the presiding judge found that the prosecutor had committed misconduct. That, the report noted, translates into prosecutorial misconduct occurring once a week, every week, for 12 years.
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Tags Charles J. Hynes, evidence, false testimony, perjury, prosecutorial misconduct, Task Force on Wrongful Conviction |
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Date 09/30/2013 |
Prosecutorial Misconduct: Above the Law
Though it may be surprising to some, American lawyers are actually governed by a code of ethics. In fact, all aspiring lawyers must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination to be admitted to the bar. And if you’re admitted and still confused, the American Bar Association developed the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, upon which many states have based their own rules of ethical conduct, to guide you through the haze. While the Model Rules are just a model, state ethics rules are binding, and breaching them can have serious professional consequences.
First enacted in 1908, the current Model Rules address a wide-range of situations, but give prosecutors their own ethical shout-out. Rule 3.8 provides a framework for what prosecutors ought to do in situations when they either uncover evidence that “tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense,” or know of “new, credible and material evidence creating a reasonable likelihood that a convicted defendant did not commit an offense of which the defendant was convicted.”
Legalese much? Boiled down, the rule basically tells prosecutors to disclose evidence to the defense that could show that someone is not guilty, either before his trial or after he was convicted.
Prosecutors acting outside the law is nothing new, of course. In the 1935 Supreme Court case Berger v. United States, Justice Sutherland eloquently explained the aim of criminal prosecutions: “that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.” The Court continued, “It is as much his [the prosecutor’s] duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”
The Berger Court then helpfully listed the improper methods the prosecutor used to secure conviction at trial: he misstated facts, bullied witnesses, and “conduct[ed] himself in a thoroughly indecorous and improper manner.”
In 1961, Illinois state prosecutor Blaine Ramsey used these same “improper methods,” in addition to withholding and mischaracterizing key evidence, to (wrongly) convict Lloyd Eldon Miller Jr. for the barbaric sexual assault and murder of an eight year old girl.
The evidence in question was a pair of allegedly bloody undershorts that Mr. Miller had allegedly worn when he killed the little girl. Turns out, the shorts weren’t Mr. Miller’s and the “blood” was actually paint.
Allowing these facts to surface would have pretty quickly torpedoed the prosecution’s case.
So, they didn’t.
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Tags 14th Amendment, Berger v. United States, Brady v. Maryland, Justice Sutherland, Lloyd Eldon Miller Jr., Miller v. Pate, Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, MPRE, prosecutorial misconduct |
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Date 09/23/2013 |
The Guilty Prosecutor
It was the 1960s in America. The nation was undergoing a deep, almost existential crisis, and change was in the air. LBJ took the helm after President Kennedy was assassinated and declared a “War on Poverty,” overhauling oppressive and racist civil rights, voting rights, and education laws. The Freedom Rides commanded national attention and challenged the Southern status quo, the Black Panthers were gaining traction (as was COINTELPRO, courtesy of the FBI), and race riots after Dr. King’s assassination almost burned Washington DC to the ground. Anti-Vietnam War protesters filled the nation’s college campuses, and John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” became their call to arms.
Onward we marched.
By the 1970s, Americans started demanding government accountability. We were shocked and angered by the Kent State shooting, in which four peaceful, Vietnam-protesting college students were murdered by the Ohio National Guard, and betrayed by President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. In New York City, the Knapp Commission was established to investigate charges of deep-seated corruption in the NYPD. And corruption, it did find. Bribes, shake-downs, and cover-ups, corruption was endemic to the fabric of the New York City police force.
Yet, as the New York Times’ obituary of Detective David Durk, who, along with fellow Officer Frank Serpico, blew the whistle on the systemic corruption in the NYPD in the1960s, noted, while “dozens of officers were prosecuted…no senior police or city officials were charged”, even though the Commission found that higher-level officials did not act when they should have. (Read here for a scathing review of what the Knapp Commission failed to do).
Wait, senior city officials slow to respond to, or even refusing to investigate, allegations of corruption or abuse?
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Tags corruption, Innocence Project, prosecutorial misconduct, Serpico |
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Date 09/20/2013 |