TheAgitator.com
Doubting Prosecutors
Monday, June 23rd, 2008So you’re a prosecutor. Your boss, the district attorney, asks you to prosecute a case in which you strongly believe the defendants are innocent. What do you do? Assume that the DA’s decision to prosecute is based on a good-faith belief in the defendant’s guilt, and there’s no evidence of evidence hiding or other extra-legal malfeasance.
I’m not sure that this guy’s approach was the correct one, but it sure makes for a fascinating story (for those of you who don’t want to click through and read–he took the case, then surreptitiously helped the defense lawyers— and deliberately lost the case in court).
But I’m not sure what the correct course of action should be, either. I’m tempted to say you resign in protest, then tell the defense team what you know. But what if sticking around for a bit longer could help you get access to more information confirming the defendants’ innocence—information that would likely be left undiscovered were you to resign?
Discuss.
Hmm. I think he did the wrong thing, for the right reasons. While some might want to (rightly) celebrate that justice was done, we also can’t condone lawyers throwing cases. What if a defense attourney throws a case cause he thinks his client is guilty (I’m sure this does happen)? What if a prosecutor throws cases against guilty parties because of race or other factors? Once again, I’m sure this does happen, maybe even frequently, but I can’t condone it even when it leads to a verdict I may think is correct.
You can tell a lot about a culture by its language. For example, we can tell how significant something is by the number of different words there are for it. For example, we have hundreds of words for food. Dozens of words that mean beautiful.
We have no word for a prosecutor with a conscience. Maybe now that the concept has finally occurred in nature, someone will invent one.
I would quit.
CC
There’s a difference between a prosecutor throwing a case and a defense attorney throwing a case.
As a prosecutor, your job is supposed to be (though rarely is) to pursue justice. As a defense attorney, your job is to defend your client. It’s like that on purpose.
But there were other ways to pursue justice in this case – resignation, maybe going to the press, whatever.
Yeah, I wouldn’t quit. It’s not like there are a lot of jobs out there that require prosecutor skills aside from being a prosecutor.
Chance: “But there were other ways to pursue justice in this case – resignation, maybe going to the press, whatever.”
Bingo. You do a press conference and say how DIFFICULT your case is, how you’d be SHOCKED if you actually won, how ALL THE EVIDENCE suggests innocence, that you have NOTHING TO WORK WITH, that it’s a HARD JOB, etc. The headline the next day by the NY Post: “Prosecutor: I have nothing.”
Those guys would be free even before the prosecutor stepped before a judge.
The thing that stands out to me is that the prosecutor should be ‘helping’ the defense all the time. What’s that deal about possibly exculpatory evidence being required to be released? If that’s not how it is, it’s how it should be. So I don’t see how helping the defense is a bad thing in a case where all the information should be available to both sides.
As for doing your job badly, or even negligently, because you want a specific outcome, that’s a different story. Certainly nobody should want innocent people prosecuted, and locking an innocent person up just because ’someone should pay for the crime’ is as wrong as wrong can be. But if it means being negligent in your job, then you’re doing the citizens a disservice. Now if ‘trying to lose’ means not using the normal tactics a prosecutor would, that are allowed but not really in the spirit of justice, I don’t really have a problem with that.
It’s certainly an odd situation, although maybe it shouldn’t be. And maybe if prosecuting attorneys stated their misgivings with cases more often – not with how little evidence or how hard a conviction would be, but with how they didn’t think a guy did it – we’d certainly all be better off.
I’d say that the prosecutor in this case chose the wrong path. He represents the D.A. It’s the D.A.’s decision on whether or not to pursue the case (and he’s the one who should be blamed if it’s a weak case). If the D.A. felt a trial was merited and the prosecutor disagreed, the prosecutor should have recused himself from that trial…but under no circumstances should he have decided to submarine the state’s case. Guilt or innocence is still for a jury to decide. The prosecutor deliberately shifting the balance in favor of the defense is merely another form of someone subverting the system and taking justice into his own hands (same as if a defender throws his case or a prosecutor refuses to disclose exculpatory evidence because he believes the defendant to be guilty), even though in this case it’s arguably being done for the right reasons.
Now if you want to make the argument that the system itself is flawed, or that the D.A. was wrong in pursuing this trial, that’s a completely different argument. But as it stands, I believe that prosecutor in this case was in the wrong and did violate his professional ethics, whether he believed the defendants to be guilty or not. And if he’s punished by his colleagues or by the bar for doing so, I’d say it’s probably justified.
I agree with UCarwford and Chance. I didn’t read through the whoel article but it sounds like the right reasons but wrong action.
The DA is elected (typically) to judge and pursue guilt, and his decision should have been controlling unless it was bad faith or politically motivated. The ADA should have explained his side or stated that another lawyer handle the case who could pursue it more vigorously. And if he had doubts as to whether or not the case would be followed ethically by another prosecutor, i.e. not turning over all exculpatory evidence, then he should have handed over all the exulpatory evidence before resigning from the case to make sure it was done.
The DA’s job is to see justice done and make a fair assessment of the facts, but once he or she arrives at a conclusion he or she must pursue that outcome vigorously just like any other lawyer representing a client. This one guy’s judgment is not any better than a jury’s or judge’s.
Sadly too, if this case involved unethical conduct by the DA that he was seeking to prevent or undermine it might help make the case for some needed reform, but this will probably make more ADAs LESS courageous in bucking their superiors to pursue justice in the future.
I agree with the sentiments above that this guy chose the wrong way to go about things. But the glaring caveat is that the prosecutor had to go about tracking down “hard to find or otherwise reluctant” witnesses and then get them to testify for the defense. This isn’t a slam against public defenders; it’s just a remarkable illustration that any given D.A.’s office has a much larger pool of resources than their public defender counterparts do. Would that all defenders had the ability to regularly fund efforts equivalent in cost, size and scope that D.A’s routinely can afford.
Scott,
No argument here.
What should probably happen in a case like this is that the prosecutor assigned the case should go back to the DA if he believes the case should not be tried and ask him to drop the charges. As things are now, the “tough on crime” attitudes that prosecutors need to have to get elected probably precludes this ever happening, but in my fantasy world, where prosecutors are after justice rather than convictions, that is how it should happen.
Agreed with the others who said he did the right thing for the wrong reasons. I like the idea of a prosecutor who sticks with his convictions (har har) and tries to see justice done. I don’t like the idea of one who decides to covertly sink a case he’s working on instead of doing the work in public.
Wrong thing, right reasons! Wow, that was dumb.
I have to disagree. Clearly some of what he did was exactly correct. Finding possibly exculpatory evidence and turning it over to the defence is part of the job of prosecutor. What wasn’t correct was such things as softballing attempts to impeach witnesses credibility. That’s rather minor in my mind.
Something from the article that is important:
That to me says that the policy should have been that it was his call. If that was the case, both sides (DA and him) failed because they were wrong to push him, but he had unclean hands for going along and sabotaging rather than confronting their corruption.
To me, this sums it up best:
This is everyday political corruption. I’m not surprised (especially nowadays) that the DA’s office is just as corrupt as everything else.
He did what prosecutors and defense lawyers are supposed to do in an ideal case, work together to find the truth. While that is far too Utopian for the real world, I am glad to see it worked out here. Unfortunately. prosecutors are graded on conviction rates, not on correct conviction rates. His courage to do the right thing is what all of have, but few of us are willing to enact. Thats the type of prosecutor I want working in my DA office.
If I ever had an attorney who thought he and the prosecutor were ideally supposed to “work together to find the truth”, I’d make sure he was disbarred (assuming I didn’t just shoot him). It’s not, even ideally, a cooperative effort to see to it that justice is done. It’s an adversarial system where they try to hang your ass and you try to avoid it.
I think I would just ride my dragon up to the castle, eat some magic beans, climb up the rope of hair let down from the window, slay the evil witch and free the princess from her 100 year sleep. Because THIS is a fairy tale. No prosecutor EVER declines to follow orders and helps the defense, period. They prosecute and say “hey, it’s a tough world.
apparently none of you have ever been where I am. Supporting a 15 year old child doing life who has seen freedom since 8th grade. Aa coerced illegal confession of a minor without parent or lawyer present and prosecutors who manufactured intent and got a phony murder conviction. And a quack as a medical examiner. I wish someone besides me could take his calls and here his anguish. They may try to be more honest and ethical, but probably not.
A prosecutor’s job is to seek justice, so some forms of “helping” the defense attorney is OK.
A defense attorney’s job is to safeguard the defendant’s rights (regardless of guilt/innocence).
Tanking a case because you believe it would yield the “right” result is unethical – there were so many other things the prosecutor could have done (some of the above suggestions were great – talking to you #7).
I kind of see this situation the same as a prosecutor hiding exculpatory evidence because he KNOWS the defendant is guilty. Not the way to go about getting “justice”.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for the right things. He should face disciplinary action because ethically, he screwed the pooch.
However, from what I gather by the story, being able to live with himself is more important than a career in law. Not many folks can say that.