Our justice system, both criminal and civil, is based on an adversary system that pits lawyers on one side against the lawyers on the other side. Success is all about one side defeating the other. Justice comes in as a distant second. That leads to a ‘win at all costs’ attitude. It leads lawyers to lie – the only difference between a lawyer and a liar is the spelling – and to suppress evidence that might be helpful to the other side.
In criminal cases, the ‘win at all costs’ adversary system is the root cause of prosecutorial misconduct. And the defendants that get shafted are usually the ones without the means to hire the best law firms, firms that employ high-dollar investigators and expert witnesses.
Although I am a strong law and order advocate, I abhor prosecutors who suppress evidence, use witnesses they know to be lying and otherwise resort to unethical or even illicit tactics in order to defeat the defendant’s lawyers. The prosecutor who is more interested in winning than in seeking justice should not only be barred from prosecuting criminals - he should also be disbarred from the practice of law!
The following editorial is about Texas, but the problem of prosecutorial misconduct is certainly not unique to the Lone Star State.
EVIDENCE HIDDEN?
Another DNA exoneration raises troubling questions that need to be answered
Houston Chronicle Editorial
January 14, 2012
Texas has the distinction of having more convicts exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence than any other state.
Forty-five individuals have been cleared of serious crimes in the last decade, including murder.
One of them is Michael Morton, who was sentenced to life in prison for the beating death of his wife in their Georgetown home in 1986.
Morton had no criminal record. There were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence to link him to the crime.
In 2010 after years of pleading by Morton, a court ordered DNA testing of evidence related to the crime. It connected a felon, Mark Norwood, to the murder of Christine Morton and to the murder of an Austin woman two years later. In October, Morton was released after serving 25 years behind bars.
How was former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson - now a state district judge - able to obtain a conviction? Morton's attorneys claim evidence that would have weakened the prosecution's case was suppressed.
Last month, visiting District Judge Sid Harle of San Antonio formally cleared Morton of the murder charge. Harle has yet to rule on Morton's request that he seek the establishment of a court of inquiry to determine whether evidence was withheld illegally in this case. Harle should rule affirmatively.
Anderson's prosecution resulted not only in a miscarriage of justice against Morton. It was also an injustice for Debra Masters Baker, the Austin woman who Norwood is suspected of killing after prosecutors blindly went after the wrong man and declared the Morton case closed.
The final report of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions cited evidence that seven of the first 39 DNA exoneration cases in Texas "involved suppression of exculpatory evidence or other prosecutorial misconduct."
Why wasn't exculpatory evidence shared with the defense team or trial judge in the Morton case, as required by law?
Texans deserve to know.
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