New Study Reports Prosecutorial Misconduct is Rarely Punished
A study issued by the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law reported some interesting findings regarding misconduct of prosecutors who, according to this study, continue to engage in misconduct and are rarely ever punished.
The report is entitled Preventable Error: A report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009. It states that between 1997 and 2009 there were 707 cases of prosecutorial misconduct. There were a total of 4,000 cases reviewed. Out of the 707 cases of misconduct, only 6 prosecutors (or .08%) were actually disciplined by the State Bar of California. Out of 4,741 disciplinary actions during this 12 year period, only 10 of these actions involved prosecutors.
These findings suggest that the entities that have the authority to address the problem fail to take any noteworthy action to correct it. The study found that despite their legal obligation to do so, judges failed to report cases of misconduct to the state bar. It was determined that 67 (11.2%) prosecutors had committed some type of misconduct repeatedly, some up to 5 times. The vast majority of these prosecutors have never been disciplined.
The report included recommendations to address the problem. It called for district attorneys to adopt policies that do not allow for misconduct. It also stated that the state bar should increase their disciplinary transparency.
In response to this report the State Bar of California issued a response which stated “prosecutorial misconduct as indicated in The Innocence Project report does not always equate to attorney misconduct for disciplinary purposes. The State Bar believes that it is disciplining criminal prosecutors where appropriate and where the misconduct was willful and can be established by clear and convincing evidence.” The State Bar went on to say that they are looking into the information released by the Innocence Project and that misconduct is a “serious issue.”
Prosecutorial misconduct fundamentally distorts the legal system and ultimately costs society millions of dollars in needlessly drawn out litigation. What is worse, it causes us to question the trustworthiness of our legal system.