Government Is NOT Good, Will NOT Protect You
Or the truth, justice, or much of anything good. Bureaucracy's foremost job is perpetuating itself. Don't forget that.
Via @radleybalko, the DOJ wanted to pay just $5K a year to a man who was wrongly jailed. Scott Gunnerson writes at USAToday that they ended up paying him $140K, which still seems very low to me for three years of having your freedom robbed from you via fraudulent evidence:
Lyons, whose case was documented in a 2010 USA TODAY investigation of misconduct by federal prosecutors, was arrested in 2000 on drug and counterfeit merchandise charges. He was found guilty the following year, based mostly on the testimony of convicted felons.A federal judge threw out the charges in 2004, blasting prosecutors for a "protracted course of misconduct" that "caused extraordinary prejudice to Lyons, exhibited disregard of the Government's duties, and demonstrated contempt for this court."
In 2010, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell took the unusual step of declaring that Lyons was actually innocent, partly because "the most damning testimony against Lyons had come from people who had been allowed, if not encouraged, to lie under oath."
Nothing's going to happen with these injustices until prosecutors who do these kinds of things are fired, disbarred and jailed. Unfortunately, this will never happen, since judges and members of the state legal review boards are too often the golfing buddies of the worst offenders.
As long as prosecutors who have never learned basic scruples let career and political ambitions, instead of justice, rule how they conduct their business, this kind of story will only get more frequent. The public's only recourse will be to make a BIG stink when it happens, and politicians might take notice and do something, which relatively speaking, would be better than the nothing being done now.
cpabroker at March 19, 2012 3:51 AM
Most systems (including criminal justice) are inherently incapable of policing themselves, for all the usual dreary human reasons.
Weakening the qualified immmunity protections of state employees in civil court would go a long way to curbing these abuses.
phunctor at March 19, 2012 4:56 AM
I don't want their protections weakened. I want them criminally liable.
If it can be shown that the prosecutors should have known the evidence was fraudulent, they were professionally negligent and should be prosecuted. If it can be shown that the prosecutors knew the accused was innocent, the appropriate charge would be kidnapping.
MarkD at March 19, 2012 10:44 AM
Who will guard the guards? It was ancient when Juvenal asked. Limited and separated powers, guarding each other, is our unique American response.
Setting civil justice as watchdog over criminal justice has more chance of success than relying on the ethics and humanity of prosecutors. We need to restore this system to functionality, among so many other things.
I'd love to have some practicing lawyers weigh in on this, there's a lot I don't know about how the system currently works.
phunctor at March 19, 2012 10:08 PM
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