http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/prosecutorial-misconduct-new-orleans-louisiana_n_3529891.html
An excerpt from the article of local note:
.
"A CULTURE OF CONVICTION
....In fact, there's a growing body of empirical data
showing that the legal profession isn't really addressing prosecutorial
misconduct at all.
- In 2003,
the Center for Public Integrity looked at more than 11,000 cases
involving misconduct since 1970. Among those, the center found a little
over 2,012 instances in which an appeals court found the misconduct
material to the conviction and overturned it. Less than 50 cases
resulted in any professional sanction for the prosecutor.
- In 2010,
USA Today published a six-month investigation of 201 cases involving
misconduct by federal prosecutors. Of those, only one prosecutor "was
barred even temporarily from practicing law for misconduct." The Justice
Department wouldn't even tell the paper which case it was, citing
concern for the prosecutor's privacy.
- A 2006 review
in the Yale Law Journal concluded that "[a] prosecutor's violation of
the obligation to disclose favorable evidence accounts for more
miscarriages of justice than any other type of malpractice, but is
rarely sanctioned by courts, and almost never by disciplinary bodies."
- An
Innocence Project study of 75 DNA exonerations -- that is, cases where
the defendant was later found to be unquestionably innocent -- found
that prosecutorial misconduct factored into just under half of those
wrongful convictions. According to a spokesman for the organization,
none of the prosecutors in those cases faced any serious professional
sanction.
- A 2009 study
(PDF) by the Northern California Innocence Project found 707 cases in
which appeals courts had found prosecutor misconduct in the state
between 1997 and 2009. But of the 4,741 attorneys the state bar
disciplined over that period, just 10 were prosecutors. The study also
found 67 prosecutors whom appeals courts had cited for multiple
infractions. Only six were ever disciplined.
- Most recently,
in April, ProPublica published an investigation of 30 cases in New York
City in which prosecutor misconduct had caused a conviction to be
overturned. Only one prosecutor was significantly disciplined.
The
2011 Yale Law Journal survey of state disciplinary systems also found a
host of problems with the way misconduct complaints against prosecutors
are handled. In many states, for example, the entire disciplinary
process occurs in secret, ostensibly to protect the reputation of the
accused attorneys. (Nevermind that the people who were harmed by the
misconduct weren't afforded the same courtesy.)
...
In
2007, a California Court of Appeals found that a Tulare County deputy
district attorney, Phil Cline, had improperly withheld an exculpatory
audiotape of a witness interview in the murder trial of Mark Soderston.
The tape was so damning to the prosecution's case, the court wrote, that
"[t]his case raises the one issue that is the most feared aspect of our
system -- that an innocent man might be convicted.” Unfortunately,
Sodersten had had already died in prison. The court was so troubled by
the case that it took the unusual step of evaluating his claim even
though he was dead.
.
Not only was Cline never disciplined by the
state bar, he was elected district attorney in 1992 and continued to win
reelection, even after the court opinion chastising him. The other
prosecutor in the case, Ronald Couillard, went on to become a judge. ..."
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