Tagged: police practices

Let’s Make Brady v. Maryland Meaningful

The Brooklyn District Attorney has promised to review 50 convictions that relied on the work of police detective Louis Scarcella – linked to “troubling aspects” of one case that was recently overturned.

The newly established Conviction Integrity Unit will review all of the cases where Scarcella was the lead detective and where the police investigation culminated in a conviction after trial.  

The New York Times reported that Scarcella relied on a single eyewitness to make at least a dozen cases.  The witness was known to be a drug-addicted prostitute who claimed to have seen multiple different murders happen before her eyes.

We applaud DA Hynes for establishing a Conviction Integrity Unity, and for focusing on the work of Scarcella. However, we believe that broader interpretation of the Brady rule would have prevented these convictions and could prevent other miscarriages of justice going forward.  Any time a police informant takes the stand, the prosecution should be required to discover and disclose not just a witness’s prior record and the benefit expected in exchange for testimony (that information is required to be disclosed now – pursuant to the current conservative interpretation of Brady), but also information about all the other cases where the informant has testified in the past.  If defense counsel had been told that Scarcella’s informant had traveled around Brooklyn spotting murders, counsel might have argued to the jury that the informant’s testimony was simply not credible. The prosecution might have reached that same conclusion on its own. But, since Scarcella was not required to enlighten the prosecution regarding the informant’s special history, the prosecution could turn a blind eye and keep defense counsel in the dark too.  A broader reading of the Brady obligation would put a stop to such willful ignorance.  

Read the New York Times May 19, 2013 editorial on Brady here:  

Related Readings

 

Do Prosecutors Face Consequences for their Misconduct?

On April 3, 2013 ProPublica has brought to the forefront of discussion, once again, the always passionately debated topic of prosecutorial misconduct. Joaquin Sapien and Sergio Hernandez published their investigation and outlined the analysis of more than a decade’s worth of cases in which prosecutors have committed errors resulting in wrongful convictions or allowing the guilty walking free. The analysis includes a closer look at what consequences, if any, the prosecutors have faced as a result of their misconduct.

A ProPublica analysis of more than a decade’s worth of state and federal court rulings found more than two dozen instances in which judges explicitly concluded that city prosecutors had committed harmful misconduct. In each instance, these abuses were sufficient to prompt courts to throw out convictions.

Yet the same appellate courts did not routinely refer prosecutors for investigation by the state disciplinary committees charged with policing lawyers. Disciplinary committees, an arm of the appellate courts, almost never took serious action against prosecutors. None of the prosecutors who oversaw cases reversed based on misconduct were disbarred, suspended, or censured except for Stuart.

Between 2001 and 2009 (the latest year for which data are available), just 1 percent of the roughly 91,000 complaints received by the First and Second Department committees resulted in public sanctions. And just 5 percent of all the complaints resulted in even so much as private letters of caution or admonition, which remain confidential to all but complainants and the attorneys who receive them.

This article will be followed by a live online discussion on Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 12 PM ET. Join ProPublica’s Joaquin Sapien (@jbsapien), reporter Sergio Hernandez (@cerealcommas), and legal experts including Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles Bennett Gershman of Pace University School of Law. You may tweet your questions with the hashtag #PolicingProsecutors, or leave them in the comments on ProPublica’s Facebook.

Read the full article

Joaquin Sapien & Sergio Hernandez, Who Polices Prosecutors Who Abuses Authority? Usually Nobody, ProPublica, April 3, 2013.

Readings related to prosecutorial misconduct

Update on Stop and Frisk

In case anyone missed the New York Daily News article on Wednesday,  January 23, 2013, Judge Shira Scheindlin acquiesced to the NYC lawyers’ request to allow police maintain  “stop and frisk” procedures outside “Clean Halls Buildings” until the police can conduct new training. To read the complete story, click here.