Prosecutorial Misconduct

09/18/2012

Debt Collectors Aren’t Prosecutors and Shouldn’t Pretend to Be

By Kara Dansky, Senior Counsel, ACLU Center for Justice at 12:02pm

According to a recent New York Times article, prosecutors and debt collectors are working together to threaten bad check writers with jail, even when no crime has been committed.

Here’s how it works. Someone writes a check to a merchant such as Wal-Mart (whether the person intends to defraud the merchant is irrelevant). The check bounces. The person then receives a letter signed by the local district attorney, on official letterhead, stating that the person can be sent to jail unless he or she agrees to pay the amount of the check, plus fees, plus the cost of a “financial accountability” class. The person is not informed that the letter is actually sent by a debt collection company or that no one at the district attorney’s office has reviewed the case. If the person agrees to take the class, the class participation fee is split between the debt collection company and the district attorney’s office.

11/28/2012

U.S. Death Penalty

New Film Highlights the Gross Injustices of the West Memphis Three Case

By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:44pm

In June 1993, Damien Echols, 18, Jason Baldwin, 16, and Jessie Misskelley, 17, who would come to be known as the “West Memphis Three,” were wrongfully arrested for the murders of three young boys in the small Arkansas town of West Memphis, just across the Tennessee border.

You may be familiar with HBO’s Paradise Lost three-part series on the case, which helped expose the gross injustices that led to the convictions against these three young men – and a death sentence against Damien – for crimes they did not commit. Now, a new, powerful documentary,West of Memphis, tells the story from the defense team’s perspective as the prosecution’s case against the three teenagers unravels.

02/07/2012

Prosecutorial Misconduct

If a Lawyer Stole $5 From a Client...

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 5:25pm

"If a lawyer stole $5 from a client, he would probably be prosecuted and might even go to jail — but that prosecutor stole 18 years of my life and what happened to him? Nothing."

This from John Thompson last night in New York, as he kicked off a multi-state speaking series on prosecutorial misconduct in the criminal justice system. You may remember Thompson as one of the men Harry Connick, Sr.’s Orleans Parish (Louisiana) District Attorney’s Office sent to death row by hiding evidence that would have proven his innocence. You may also remember that Thompson was released after 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row awaiting his execution, that he sued for the damage done to his life, and that a jury awarded him $14 million. And you may recall that last year the United States Supreme Court denied him that reward, refusing to find the prosecutor’s office that broke the rules to send Thompson to death row liable for monetary damages for his stolen life.

05/15/2012

U.S. Death Penalty

New Proof of an Old Fear: Execution of the Innocent

By Cassandra Stubbs, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 4:58pm

The State of Texas, long the nation's leader in executions, has now earned the dubious title of the state most likely to execute the innocent. In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, despite compelling evidence that he was actually innocent of the arson which caused the death of his three small children. Now, newly assembled evidence suggests that Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989, was also innocent. A team of researchers from Columbia Law School today released a new report about DeLuna's case, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction. The full report, along with video clips and interviews about the case, are available at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review's website.

03/15/2012

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Brady Reform: New Legislation Is a Win for Justice

By Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:47pm

In the 1963 Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a defendant’s fundamental right to any and all favorable information that might prove he or she was innocent of a crime. From that case came the “Brady Rule” –the constitutional obligation for the prosecution to disclose any material evidence favorable to the accused.

11/09/2011

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Time to Confess Error on the Death Penalty

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 4:16pm

Yesterday at the Supreme Court, a New Orleans prosecutor defended the conviction of a man despite the admitted failure of her office to turn over evidence they were required to provide to his defense team. This fraudulently obtained conviction was then used to help send Juan Smith to death row. The prosecutorial misconduct was so severe — and the shameful history of New Orleans prosecutors so blatant — that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan asked the hapless prosecutor: “Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?”

10/19/2011

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Execution Based On Lies

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:50pm

Manuel Velez was sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of a 1-year-old boy based on the false testimony of his live-in girlfriend and mother of the child. The woman, Acela Moreno, failed to admit she had separately pleaded guilty to inflicting her son with head injuries the day he died. Medical experts made clear these injuries were consistent with those that led to the child's death. At Velez's trial, Moreno testified she pleaded guilty not to committing violence against the child but rather to having failed to alert authorities that Velez had allegedly been hurting the child.

06/14/2012

U.S. Death Penalty

Spared From a Death Sentence Based On Falsehoods

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:52pm

An almost-certainly innocent man was spared from death at the hands of the state of Texas yesterday when the highest criminal court in Texas threw out the death sentence of ACLU client Manuel Velez, ruling it was based on the false testimony of a state expert.

Velez was awaiting execution after the state’s expert witness falsely told the sentencing jury that, if sentenced to life without parole instead of death, Velez would be permitted lenient prison conditions and thereby pose a greater threat of danger to the public.

12/11/2012

New York

Project Liberty Takes on Indigent Defense

By Lauren Alexander, ACLU of New York at 11:19am

Project Liberty, the New York Civil Liberties Union very own television show, is back and broadcasting across New York State. Our fourth episode highlights the NYCLU’s relentless fight to guarantee that New York’s criminal justice system respects the rights of all New Yorker’s, not just those who can afford their own Johnny Cochran.

This episode marks five years since we filed Hurrell-Haring v. State of New York – our landmark, class-action lawsuit challenging New York’s failed system for providing effective legal counsel to poor people accused of crimes.

02/29/2012

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Editorial: We Need Reforms to Increase Confidence in the Justice System

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:40pm

An excellent op-ed in the Times-Picayune (New Orleans) today begins, "Our justice system makes two promises to its citizens: a fundamentally fair trial and an accurate result. As Justice Cochran of Texas' highest criminal court observed, 'If either of those two promises are not met, the criminal justice system itself falls into disrepute and may eventually be disregarded.'"

American Civil Liberties Union