COMMON FAILURES OF ETHICS

Common Failures of Ethics

Common Failures of Ethics

1. Name the seven common failures of ethics encountered in criminal justice, and give an example of each type potentially involving misconduct by a prosecutor.

Ans.

Prosecutors play a unique role in the American criminal justice system. Unlike defense attorneys, who act as advocates for their clients, a prosecutor advocates for no single individual. Rather, a prosecutor advocates for a just outcome.

With the unique role of prosecutors comes enormous power. Prosecutors decide which charges to bring, what sort of plea bargain to offer, and what sentence to request. Unfortunately, prosecutors can wield their power in a careless or even intentionally unfair manner. The adversarial nature of the prosecutor's job can lead to an “ends justify the means” mentality. Prosecutors wield immense power to authorize arrests, bring charges, dismiss charges, recommend punishment, help prisoners win early release or work to keep them behind bars. When prosecutors cheat, the consequences can be devastating when a conviction is obtained by the presentation of testimony known to the prosecuting authorities to have been perjured, due process is violated. The clause "cannot be deemed to be satisfied by mere notice and hearing if a State has contrived a conviction through the pretense of a trial which in truth is but used as a means of depriving a defendant of liberty through a deliberate deception of court and jury by the presentation of testimony known to be perjured. Such a contrivance . . . is as inconsistent with the rudimentary demands of justice as is the obtaining of a like result by intimidation." (Young, D 1999)

1- In Miller v. Pate overturned a conviction obtained after the prosecution had represented to the jury that a pair of men's shorts found near the scene of a sex attack belonged to the defendant and that they were stained with blood; the defendant showed in a habeas corpus proceeding that no evidence connected him with the shorts and furthermore that the shorts were not in fact bloodstained, and that the prosecution had known these facts.

2- In Brady v. Maryland, the Court held "that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution." In that case, the prosecution had suppressed an extrajudicial confession of defendant's accomplice that he had actually committed the murder. The heart of the holding in Brady is the prosecution's suppression of evidence, in the face of a defense production request, where the evidence is favorable to the accused and is material either to guilt or to punishment. Important, then, are (a) suppression by the prosecution after a request by the defense, (b) the evidence's favorable character for the defense, and (c) the materiality of the evidence.

3- In Giglio v. United States the Supreme Court extended the obligation to share exculpatory information with the defendant to include information concerning the credibility of government ...