Land of free: "We have decided a case that appears to say just the opposite," he wrote. "In Arizona v. Youngblood, we held that unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police," the defendant does not have a right to obtain all "potentially useful evidence."
There is no duty under the Constitution for prosecutors to turn over test results "which might have exonerated the defendant," Scalia said, quoting the Youngblood decision.
I totally get it now. With vast majority of HN users being Americans, there is just one comment on this post about trampling the innocent and that is a quote! No wonder the rights and freedoms of the common men of west are being subjugated more and more day after day.
The justice system is a system, in the engineering sense of the word. Like any system in real life, its design involves balancing. The negative impact of false convictions is weighed against the cost and practicality of measures to avoid false convictions. Prosecutors have broad immunity from suit because otherwise the system would be unworkable. Every aggrieved convict would sue his prosecutor for anything he could think of.
The context of this case is a suit for money damages against prosecutors for "concealing" exculpatory evidence. You can't take the word "concealing" at face value. Prosecutors make judgment calls every day about whether evidence is important or not. This case took place long before DNA testing was either effective or common. Prosecutors could have legitimately known about it and considered it "not potentially exculpatory." Scalia's quote from Youngblood simply says that prosecutors can't be sued for such judgment calls unless it can be shown they were not acting in good faith.
One of my big beefs with articles like this one is that they paint everything in hindsight. But if you create a duty on the part of prosecutors to not be negligent, you can't just hear the cases that are neatly wrapped in a package by some wrongful convictions organization. Negligence is a factual determination, and in criminal cases the defendant is entitled to have such facts tried in front of a jury. Convicts will sue saying the police should have swabbed beneath the carpet or whatever, and you have to give them full process.
As an aside, I came across a case yesterday. It's only salience is that it it's close to home and quite recent. It involves a couple who goes on vacation, leaving their three youngest children with a neighbor (husband and wife). When they return, two of the children, girls, tell them that they were sexually assaulted by the husband, Joe. The police work with the father, Michael, and talk Joe into coming over to Michael's house on the premise that he just wants to talk. Joe makes incriminating statements about the sexual assault to Michael, in the presence of the Chief of Police. When Michael decides to press charges, Joe goes ballistic. He stalks the police chief, and the day before his trial goes to Michael's place of work and shoots him in the head. See: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1915239094303815....
Nobody is going to write an LA Times Article about Joe Stacey and Michael Walter, about the wife left without a husband, the ten children left without a father, or the two girls who will carry the scars of sexual assault at the hands of someone they trusted.
Let's be clear here that the majority opinion was far more nuanced than this article gives credit. The argument made in the original lawsuit against the DA's office was that the DA's office was failing to train its attorneys on the requirement to report exculpatory evidence (established by Brady v Maryland). However, they did not show that there was a pattern of failing to report such evidence at the DA's office, they just used the one instance and claimed, more or less, that it was obvious that the training was necessary. The Supreme Court case in question specifically addressed whether or not that was true—whether or not it was obvious that the training was necessary, and therefore whether it was a systemic problem that it was being left out.
Scalia's opinion, which gets flak for citing Arizona v Youngblood, makes quite a few arguments, of which that is only one. It also brings it up solely to indicate that you can't train people in something that isn't actually true, something that was made untrue by that decision. The main thrust of his argument is that even if you could establish a pattern with a single violation in this case, there wasn't actually a violation at all, because the withholding of evidence was willful. Scalia also points out that the failure to train argument has to be applied carefully, lest it become something that every prosecuted individual can use to attack the municipality.
These are all important distinctions because the Supreme Court generally decides the matter at hand. The case was about something very specific, and the justifications for awarding damages were also specific. The Court's task was to decide whether those justifications were valid, according to the law, not whether Thompson was morally wronged. If those things do not square with each other, then we have ways of revising the law or the Constitution to deal with it. But keep in mind that the verdict in the original trial was vacated after the evidence was discovered, and that the evidence was originally withheld intentionally by an attorney who died before the case was brought, and that the attorney who knew about it but didn't disclose it after the original attorney's death was sanctioned by the prosecutor's office. So this is all about what, if anything, Thompson deserved in compensation for the DA's office's errors, and there's a line to be tread there between compensation for mistakes and the acknowledgement that mistakes will be made by all human beings, and that burdening a municipality with dealing with all of them (particularly to the tune of several million dollars per case) might be unrealistic.
We could pay to have every prosecutor shadowed by an auditor who would be charged with catching any mistakes the prosecutor makes that might have made an acquittal less likely. We could even hire an auditor to check the first auditor! At some point you hit severely diminishing returns, all while making the justice system slower and more complex, which can cause harm to both sides.
Considering how intrusive SOX auditors are for business, why shouldn't the government take some of its own medicine. The amount of paperwork SOX rules give me on a daily basis is pretty silly. Worse it the quarterly visits with auditors to review sample documents.
The minimum we should require would be all death penalty cases and any where prison terms exceed a threshold, say those over five years? We cannot write off justice just because the process is difficult. Considering the power of prosecutors and countless stories of intimidation of both the accused and witnesses it should be a requirement
I wouldn't mind. Peoples' lives are on the line. I'd rather it be 99.99% right than the 90% as it currently is. As it stands the justice system is so overwhelmingly one-sided people are forced to take plea less they run out of money and have their case bounced from one disinterested PD.
Also, I was being reductive because of the tone of your last sentence. Prosecutions are expensive and so are prisons.
I would assume that the reason you're here goofing around on HN instead of making something so important to you a reality would be... hell, I can only think of "hypocrisy".
As a person of color I would say less hypocrisy and more cynicism. I've experienced the injustice of the US justice system and until the current lawmakers drop dead I don't see how it's going to change when 70% of the population think everything is fine (though that number is decreasing) and the justice system works and works fairly.
What is your definition of hypocrisy? Perhaps it's just me, but I don't see, first of all, how he was being hypocritical. Second of all, you are also "goofing around on HN" so why are you giving this person so much crap? Last time I checked saying something should change and saying you would do it are different things.
> I wouldn't mind. Peoples' lives are on the line. I'd rather it be 99.99% right than the 90% as it currently is.
The justice system has two basic functions: to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. False positives means there is a trade-off between how well it can do both functions at the same time. Society makes the decision about the appropriate balance between the two. If courts make it too burdensome to prosecute and punish the guilty, people will respond with harsher laws, longer sentences, etc. You might be okay with setting the burden at 99.99% certainty, but the history of votes on the issue suggest that most Americans want a lower burden than that.
Auditors would be a lot cheaper than opening prosecutors to civil liability. The basic problem is that you'd be putting a powerful retaliatory tool in the hands of a group of people (convicts) who are: 1) very likely guilty; 2) have all the time in the world; and 3) can't effectively be sanctioned for filing meritless litigation.
People justify opening prosecutors to civil liability by saying that "they need to be held accountable." But prosecutors are already accountable. Their actions take place on public record. They have to justify themselves to defense counsel, a judge, and possibly a jury and an appellate panel. On top of all that, their immunity does not protect them from suits alleging bad faith.
We put humans into the legal system because of the assumption that some common sense goes into their decisions. So now every time some legal decision here is questioned on that level, the recourse is always "according to the law, not [..] moral". (on a supreme court case, of all things!)
The brilliant thing then is to go back to "mistakes will be made by all human beings" and deny all legal recourse in the end.
We put humans into the legal system to exercise legal judgment, not to substitute the law with their personal moral sentiments. The place for moral sentiments is the legislature.
It should be noted that legislatures have weighed the moral issues, and in most states have set out the recourse for the wrongfully convicted to be statutory restitution, not civil suits against prosecutors. Arizona, one of the two states mentioned in the article, has declined to implement any such statutory restitution.
So then what of the people who think, say, that white supremacy is common sense? Why should we let a very vague concept of "common sense" prevail, especially when "common sense" seems to change every other decade?
How about holding lawsuits against private companies and corporations to the same standard: they should take no legal liability for actions that are not approved by the corporation undertaken by employees working for them under contract. They should have a limited burden to train people to avoid those incidents. For instance, in order to file fraud claims against Enron we should have to beyond a reasonable doubt identify the specific people responsible and charge them. Investors damaged civilly should have any cases for damages against the company itself thrown out unless they are suing the specific individual or individuals involved. I didn't do it, it was my employees shouldn't be a special case exemption for the government, and if we want to make it a standard of law I think it goes badly.
If we're holding everyone to the same standard, then let's require corporations to run business decisions by a judge first, on the public record, with counsel arguing the other side. Then let's make each and every decision of the judge subject to an as-of-right level of appellate review, then make those decisions subject to a third level of discretionary appellate review. Then also open up those decisions to collateral review and the ongoing possibility of revisiting the case, potentially decades later. In the background of all that, we can require business executives to be members of associations that can take away their licenses and their livelihoods for ethical failures.
Do you see how you're comparing apples and oranges?
Protecting prosecutors is just like protecting police officers that plant evidence.
The power relationship between the government and the people is horribly skewed towards the government.
This is just another piece of the puzzle. As soon as the government (police, prosecutors, homeland security, NSA) have their eye on you, you are screwed.
It doesn't matter if you are right or innocent.
It's sad how far it has come and how much are rights have disappeared.
23 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 40.3 ms ] threadThere is no duty under the Constitution for prosecutors to turn over test results "which might have exonerated the defendant," Scalia said, quoting the Youngblood decision.
The context of this case is a suit for money damages against prosecutors for "concealing" exculpatory evidence. You can't take the word "concealing" at face value. Prosecutors make judgment calls every day about whether evidence is important or not. This case took place long before DNA testing was either effective or common. Prosecutors could have legitimately known about it and considered it "not potentially exculpatory." Scalia's quote from Youngblood simply says that prosecutors can't be sued for such judgment calls unless it can be shown they were not acting in good faith.
One of my big beefs with articles like this one is that they paint everything in hindsight. But if you create a duty on the part of prosecutors to not be negligent, you can't just hear the cases that are neatly wrapped in a package by some wrongful convictions organization. Negligence is a factual determination, and in criminal cases the defendant is entitled to have such facts tried in front of a jury. Convicts will sue saying the police should have swabbed beneath the carpet or whatever, and you have to give them full process.
As an aside, I came across a case yesterday. It's only salience is that it it's close to home and quite recent. It involves a couple who goes on vacation, leaving their three youngest children with a neighbor (husband and wife). When they return, two of the children, girls, tell them that they were sexually assaulted by the husband, Joe. The police work with the father, Michael, and talk Joe into coming over to Michael's house on the premise that he just wants to talk. Joe makes incriminating statements about the sexual assault to Michael, in the presence of the Chief of Police. When Michael decides to press charges, Joe goes ballistic. He stalks the police chief, and the day before his trial goes to Michael's place of work and shoots him in the head. See: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1915239094303815....
Nobody is going to write an LA Times Article about Joe Stacey and Michael Walter, about the wife left without a husband, the ten children left without a father, or the two girls who will carry the scars of sexual assault at the hands of someone they trusted.
Scalia's opinion, which gets flak for citing Arizona v Youngblood, makes quite a few arguments, of which that is only one. It also brings it up solely to indicate that you can't train people in something that isn't actually true, something that was made untrue by that decision. The main thrust of his argument is that even if you could establish a pattern with a single violation in this case, there wasn't actually a violation at all, because the withholding of evidence was willful. Scalia also points out that the failure to train argument has to be applied carefully, lest it become something that every prosecuted individual can use to attack the municipality.
These are all important distinctions because the Supreme Court generally decides the matter at hand. The case was about something very specific, and the justifications for awarding damages were also specific. The Court's task was to decide whether those justifications were valid, according to the law, not whether Thompson was morally wronged. If those things do not square with each other, then we have ways of revising the law or the Constitution to deal with it. But keep in mind that the verdict in the original trial was vacated after the evidence was discovered, and that the evidence was originally withheld intentionally by an attorney who died before the case was brought, and that the attorney who knew about it but didn't disclose it after the original attorney's death was sanctioned by the prosecutor's office. So this is all about what, if anything, Thompson deserved in compensation for the DA's office's errors, and there's a line to be tread there between compensation for mistakes and the acknowledgement that mistakes will be made by all human beings, and that burdening a municipality with dealing with all of them (particularly to the tune of several million dollars per case) might be unrealistic.
We could pay to have every prosecutor shadowed by an auditor who would be charged with catching any mistakes the prosecutor makes that might have made an acquittal less likely. We could even hire an auditor to check the first auditor! At some point you hit severely diminishing returns, all while making the justice system slower and more complex, which can cause harm to both sides.
The minimum we should require would be all death penalty cases and any where prison terms exceed a threshold, say those over five years? We cannot write off justice just because the process is difficult. Considering the power of prosecutors and countless stories of intimidation of both the accused and witnesses it should be a requirement
Also, I was being reductive because of the tone of your last sentence. Prosecutions are expensive and so are prisons.
I would assume that the reason you're here goofing around on HN instead of making something so important to you a reality would be... hell, I can only think of "hypocrisy".
The justice system has two basic functions: to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. False positives means there is a trade-off between how well it can do both functions at the same time. Society makes the decision about the appropriate balance between the two. If courts make it too burdensome to prosecute and punish the guilty, people will respond with harsher laws, longer sentences, etc. You might be okay with setting the burden at 99.99% certainty, but the history of votes on the issue suggest that most Americans want a lower burden than that.
People justify opening prosecutors to civil liability by saying that "they need to be held accountable." But prosecutors are already accountable. Their actions take place on public record. They have to justify themselves to defense counsel, a judge, and possibly a jury and an appellate panel. On top of all that, their immunity does not protect them from suits alleging bad faith.
The brilliant thing then is to go back to "mistakes will be made by all human beings" and deny all legal recourse in the end.
It should be noted that legislatures have weighed the moral issues, and in most states have set out the recourse for the wrongfully convicted to be statutory restitution, not civil suits against prosecutors. Arizona, one of the two states mentioned in the article, has declined to implement any such statutory restitution.
Do you see how you're comparing apples and oranges?
The power relationship between the government and the people is horribly skewed towards the government.
This is just another piece of the puzzle. As soon as the government (police, prosecutors, homeland security, NSA) have their eye on you, you are screwed.
It doesn't matter if you are right or innocent.
It's sad how far it has come and how much are rights have disappeared.
The government is for the government.