Holding Prosecutors Accountable

“We do not agree with the district court that the prosecutor may have been innocent of deliberate false statements.” It’s a rare bright moment in the legal saga told in Rich-Hunt : the Ninth Circuit’s recognition that Greg Reyes had been the victim of prosecutorial deception.

And last summer, I noted the light penalty a federal prosecutor had received for failing to reveal evidence.

How common is prosecutorial misconduct?

You might begin exploring that question with a visit to the Open File , a relatively new website dedicated to holding prosecutors accountable. The Open File blog notes new studies, but its most interesting entries are probably among those on individual cases. Here are a few:

• Terry Williams nearly went to his death before a judge decided he deserved a new sentencing hearing: the prosecutor, the judge found, had denied having evidence she in fact had. “First, Ms. Foulkes identified what she believed to be the reason that the jury returned a ‘compromised’ verdict. And then she attempted to eliminate evidence which caused the ‘compromised’ verdict from being presented to the jury.”
• A prosecutor failed to reveal evidence that a murder defendant was in police custody at the time of the murder .
• After a suspect crashed his car into an unmarked police vehicle, the cops involved were charged with a stack of felonies that didn’t involve brutality. Yet in a closing argument, the prosecutor said the officers “beat the crap out of” the suspect.

The Open File is the product of an anonymous, “informal collection of lawyers, law professors, law students and policy advocates.” It can be found at prosecutorialaccountability.com .

Related reading:

• Alexander R. Cohen,  Aaron Swartz Had A Reasonable Option: Plead Guilty, Holder Says
• Alexander R. Cohen,  Waiting for Gershon
• Roger Donway, Rich-Hunt: The Backdated Options Frenzy and the Ordeal of Greg Reyes

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