Tagged: prosecutorial misconduct

Is Open File Discovery a Cure for Brady Violations?

Prompted by a tweet from Scott Greenfield this morning, we read a short editorial the New York Times did a couple of days ago, arguing that federal and state prosecutors should adopt open-file discovery policies, in order to limit Brady violations and promote justice. We’d missed it the first time...

Manhattan D.A. has problems. This may be why.

This morning’s WSJ has a short article with a long headline, “Manhattan DA Is Put on Defensive: Vance’s about-face on bail in sexual-assault case follows two high-profile court defeats for office.”  The blurb from the website’s front page summarizes the story pithily: “The newly surfaced problems in the sexual-assault prosecution...

ABA Tells Courts to Provide Detailed Brady Checklists

We wrote recently on our distaste for those on the defense side who persist in playing games.  It should go without saying that it is far worse for the prosecution to play games.  And yet it happens all the time. Ideally, when the prosecution has done its job right, it’s...

Study Finds Rampant Prosecutorial Misconduct in California

The Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law has released a troubling study of prosecutorial misconduct in California.  The report, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009,” opens by pointing out that of course the majority of prosecutors behave ethically, but then it...

A Pattern of Misconduct by Federal Prosecutors?

When we left the Manhattan DA’s office some years ago, we firmly believed that prosecutorial misconduct was as rare as it was despicable.  We can’t think of a single one of our colleagues for whom it would have even occurred to cut corners, and it certainly would not have been...

Another reason to hate NY’s “Hate Crimes” law

“Hate” is not an element of New York’s “hate crime” law.  You don’t have to hate to commit a hate crime.  Instead, the law merely requires that you have “a belief or perception” regarding a person’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation. ...

Prosecutorial Extortion

  Extortion is a kind of threat.  A threat that’s so bad, it’s criminal.  For a threat to be criminal extortion, it needs to be of a kind to make someone do something against his will, that’s adverse to his own interests. Threatening to kill a child if the parents...

Federal Sentencing: A Long Way to Go

Tonight, we attended a panel discussion on federal sentencing that was actually worth commenting on. Usually, these things are either so basic or insubstantial as to be a waste of time. But this one had a few choice moments we’d thought we’d share with our readers.

The panelists included John Conyers (Chairman of the House judiciary committee), William Sessions (Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and Chief Judge of the District of Vermont), Jonathan Wroblewski (policy director for the DOJ, among other things), Alan Vinegrad (former US Atty for the EDNY and now a white-collar partner at Covington), Tony Ricco (mainstay of the federal defense bar), and Rachel Barkow (NYU professor, didn’t speak much). It was moderated by Judge John Gleeson of the EDNY, and we recognized in the standing-room-only audience a number of distinguished jurists and counsel.

Everyone seems to agree that the Guidelines are in need of a major overhaul. As Judge Gleeson put it, “when even the prosecutors are saying that sentences are too severe… the sentences are too severe.”

But not everyone agrees on what changes ought to be made, how drastic the changes ought to be, or even what’s causing the problems in federal sentencing.

Here’s the take-away: Everyone knows what the right thing to do is. Judges want to do the right thing, regardless of what the Guidelines say. The DOJ forces its prosecutors to do what the Guidelines say, regardless of what they think is just. Congress is incapable of doing the right thing, in its efforts to pander and blame rather than solve. And the Sentencing Commission is afraid to be independent of Congress, preferring instead to make baby steps toward eventually maybe doing the right thing.

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For as long as we’ve been practicing law, everyone has been complaining bitterly about …

Conviction Rates Matter

On Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a lengthy article on that city’s abysmal conviction rate for violent crimes. For every three violent-crime arrests in Philadelphia, only one results in a conviction. There are a lot of worse-sounding statistics in that article, but they’re completely meaningless, as they refer only to...

We’re Back, Did Ya Miss Us?

Finally, the trial that would. not. end. is over. Three weeks to try a case that should have taken no more than five days. In the case that just would not end, either. The arrest was more than three years ago — that’s plenty long to have a felony case...

Yet More Prosecutorial Misconduct by the Feds

We’ve asked it before, but what the heck is going on with some of these federal prosecutors nowadays? There was the whole Ted Stevens fiasco over the winter, when the feds actively withheld exculpatory evidence and witnesses in their rush to convict the former Senator. Then the 7th Circuit directed...

DOJ Tries To Sweep Its Ted Stevens Fiasco Under the Rug

We try not to report here on matters that everyone else in the world is already talking about. That’s why we’ve said nowt on Bernie Madoff and other headline-grabbing stories. For the same reason, we decided yesterday not to mention the DOJ’s request to dismiss the charges in its prosecution...

Supreme Court: If Prosecution Breaches Plea Deal, OBJECT!

Voting 7-2, the Supreme Court today ruled that a defendant cannot appeal when the prosecution reneged on a plea bargain, unless the issue was preserved before the trial court. In his majority opinion for Puckett v. U.S., Justice Scalia cleared up a split among the circuits. There had been differing...

Food Fraud Prosecutors Caught Selling Snake Oil

Judge Posner issued a scathing decision yesterday for the 7th Circuit, reversing a jury’s fraud conviction and directing an acquittal. Why? Because the only fraudulent misrepresentations were those of the prosecutor. The decision is great, and we plan to use some of it in our own future arguments. Sadly, it...

Sen. Stevens Prosecutors Held in Contempt, Taken Off the Case

We took an unexpected trip out of state until yesterday, and so haven’t had a chance to catch up on the latest in the ongoing saga involving allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the Sen. Ted Stevens case. When last we left off, District Judge Emmet Sullivan had ordered a status...