THE OPEN FILE
Prosecutorial Misconduct and Accountability
OR/LA: Prosecutors Mislead U.S. Supreme Court and the Public in Jury Non-Unanimity Case
In addition to run-of-the-mill misconduct, our blog often draws attention to cases in which prosecutors make questionable claims. It happens with surprising regularity; it turns out that prosecutors are often willing to take seemingly indefensible positions if it...
Alabama Death Sentence Should Be Tossed Over Misconduct and Other Issues
Radley Balko is an invaluable national resource as a long form journalist who does a spectacular job covering criminal justice issues in general and the problem of prosecutorial powerand misconduct specifically. Late last week, Radley wrote a very...
KS: Federal Prosecutors Demonstrate Unparalleled Levels of Contempt, Unethical Behavior, and Plain Bad Lawyering
After reading all 188 pages of Judge Julie Robinson’s opinion addressing how prosecutors have dealt with the multi-year attorney-client phone/visit-recording scandal in Kansas, it is astonishing that the US Attorney’s Office in Kansas continues to employ so many of...
MO: Craig Wood’s Death Sentence Flawed in Part Because of Prosecutorial Misconduct
“The facts presented by the underlying crime are appalling and horrifying.” That is a line not from the Missouri Supreme Court’s majority opinion affirming the death sentence of Craig Wood, but instead from the dissent. And it is undeniably true. The evidence that Mr....
OR: Multnomah Prosecutors Reprimanded, Change Practices to Ensure More Due Process Violations
Two weeks ago, a news report in Oregon announced that a judge found senior prosecutors in Multnomah County had violated their obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence in a high-profile murder case. Rather than encourage law enforcement to do the right thing and...
NM: DA’s Office Files Bar Complaint Against One of Its Own
Long-time readers of The Open File have often heard us lament that, despite Justice Thomas’s insistence that state bars are the proper avenue for dealing with prosecutorial misconduct, bar complaints are rarely filed against prosecutors and even more rarely lead to...
NY: A Redeeming Story of Prosecutorial Accountability?
A Suffolk County prosecutor in Long Island, NY recently lost his job, evidently because he poorly represented the State in a recent high-profile criminal prosecution and withheld exculpatory evidence. Late last month, leaders in the DA’s office came to court in the...
CA: A Closer Look at Los Angeles County’s Troubling Death-Penalty Track Record
A new report just published by the ACLU calls our attention to Los Angeles County. There, District Attorney Jackie Lacey—who has been under increasing scrutiny despite her claims of being a reformer—has presided over an organization that continues to waste the...
Will NC State Courts Finally Recognize And Correct Their Batson Smoking Gun?
Much about the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply opaque. It’s very hard – maybe impossible – to know which petitions the Justices will grant, what issues they care about, or how they will adjudicate any given case. One thing we do know is that several Republican-appointed...
TX: Governmental Immunity Protects District Attorney who Fired His Assistant for Acting Ethically
Over four years have passed since we last covered the wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by a former assistant district attorney, Eric Hillman, against the Nueces County District Attorney’s Office in Corpus Christi, Texas. Hillman alleged that then-District Attorney,...
CA: The Pathetic and Predictable Path to Prosecutorial Impunity in Orange County
It feels like the Orange County Snitch Scandal has been going on for years without real accountability. The only concrete actions the public has seen anybody with a position of authority take against the prosecutors were Judge Goethals’s groundbreaking decisions to...
DE: State High Court Reprimands and Disqualifies Prosecutors for Stealing Attorney-Client Information from Defendant’s Cell
Wildly inappropriate behavior from the office of the prosecutor in Delaware’s largest city generated fascinating discussion among the justices in a recent Delaware Supreme Court opinion. The decision concerns the court’s review of a lower court’s dismissal of Jacquez...
Preet Bharara’s Troubling Abuses of Prosecutorial Power Detailed in New Report
The publication of a new report presents hard questions of one of the country’s most famous prosecutors, making a case that he used his discretion in unrestrained and unfair ways to bring charges against young people of color. The report, published by CUNY Law...
Putting Prosecutors in Check: Let Jurors Know the Potential Sentence
The right to a jury trial is a constitutional treasure. It is often held up as a cornerstone of American democracy—a person charged with a crime can trust fellow citizens to operate as a bulwark between him and government overreach. But, just how effective can a jury...
New Investigative Reporting Uncovers Uncomfortable Truths About Prosecutors’ Search for Child Pornography
Few crimes are as emotional and tragic as those related to the sexual exploitation of children, so it follows that the allegation of participating in child pornography is among the most serious crimes to be charged with. It’s no exaggeration that such an accusation...