-TheJoker- said:
msuhunter said:
the prosecution has an even more vested interest in making sure that all exculpatory evidence (texts included) is turned over to the defense than anyone else. prosecutors are held to a much higher standard than any other lawyer. failure to turn over such evidence is not only likely to lead to sanctions and a reverse on appeal (assuming a conviction is won at the trial level) but also disbarrment. i'm sure the prosecution has properly screened every bit of evidence and made the correct judgments.
and playerrape is an idiot. a whole new level of retarded has been displayed by playerrape on this thread :thumb:
I found an interesting law review article by Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky. 8 D.C. L. Rev. 275 (2004). It states in part, "Few public prosecutors are brought before disciplinary committees. While all courts, prosecutors and defenders would certainly agree that it is highly reprehensible to suppress facts or secrete evidence capable of establishing the innocence of the accused, when that happens the disciplinary consequence is often nil..."
A well known historian, Paul Johnson, recently noted as follows about the trial and conviction of Conrad Black, who wrote a book about his experience with the "justice" system:
In addition to Black’s understand-able desire to set the record straight in his own case, the book has the more important public object of exposing the faults in the American judicial system, which make such a miscarriage possible. I had for some years been worried about the deterioration in the American process of criminal law, and I am gratified, and also profoundly disturbed, to find my misgivings confirmed by this account. The process of decay seems to have begun in the 1970s, but it has reached the point where it now constitutes the most radical weakness in the entire American system and one which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
The fault can be summed up in a sentence: America’s criminal courts now insist on convictions at the expense of any other consideration, above all of justice. They are more like a court martial than a civilian establishment of law. The presumption of innocence has been abandoned. . . .
The assumption of guilt is sanctified in law by the grotesquely unjust plea-bargaining process, which saves the accused from total financial ruin by forcing him to plead guilty to some of the crimes with which he is charged, however innocent he or she may be. Plea-bargaining in turn leads to a multiplicity of indictments by prosecutors, which adds a judicial to the financial compulsion of the innocent to bargain.
Hence the American prosecution practices are what the law calls ‘a derogation from honest service’. The US prosecution service, in heedless pursuit of convictions, does what it wants and prosecutes whoever it wishes for as long as it likes. Thus, over 90 per cent of prosecutions are successful, a higher proportion than in either Putin’s Russia or Communist China. America, as Black puts it, has become a ‘prosecut-ocracy’.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/8756401/apologia-pro-vita-sua/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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The Duke La Crosse case was seen by many, not as an anomaly, but as a symptom, and it took wealthy families to overcome the overt bias and prejudice of the prosecuting attorneys, something that 95% of the people brought into the criminal justice system do not have. Even at that, wealthy families were fighting a systematic bias and control over both the process and the evidence available. It was a hard fought battle in that instance against, frankly, overwhelming odds and it took a couple of million dollars and some extremely good defense counsel. Otherwise, those boys would be in prison now.
And in the Duke LaCrosse case, even though the prosecutor was ultimately disbarred, it was for doing what he had always done; convicting thousands using the same bluster, withholding of evidence, twisting of evidence, trying the case in the media, using it as a political tool, another successful 'statistic' to tout about 'his record.' It took this one case to expose an entire career of maljudgment and abuse of process to get that one prosecutor. And if it hadn't been for this case, he would have retired at a full pension with the accolades of his peers for how "good" he had been at his job.
Indeed, Johnson's review above is about the conviction of a wealthy journalist who, by all appearances, was likely "railroaded" despite spending millions of dollars in his defense. And that's the problem. A determined prosecutor can not just control the process and the evidence, he controls the cost to the defendant, but never pays the price if he is wrong or loses, whereas the defendant always pays the price, whether he wins or loses.
The report condemning the US attorney's office in Anchorage for prosecutorial misconduct that unfairly led to a conviction of Senator Ted Stevens underscores that even wealth, power, and in that case, an honorable man, cannot withstand the onslaught of vindictive prosecutors determined to win a case. http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/stevens_report.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Others, of a 1950s vintage, might recall when Irving Younger was directed by US Attorney Robert Morgenthau and US Attorney General Robert Kennedy to "get" Roy Cohn no matter what it took.
My concern with the texts is simple competence. It takes a jeweler's eye to look at random evidence and see important patterns, something that stands out, a connection that only a thorough knowledge of the case permits. A judge, at this point in the process wouldn't have it. A special master couldn't have it. That's why rules of discovery permit much more wide-ranging review of events and information than the rules of evidence would allow at trial.
And that's what defense attorneys are supposed to do, and in this case, Judge Townsend stepped into the role that properly belongs to the defense attorneys. It's their call, not hers, and if there is one, this will become an issue on appeal.
