EVIL: lurking in the heavenly places... but not from God at all; the other red meat; hypocrisy spells TOMBSTONE. It is long standing precedent that prosecutors must release evidence to the defense that is exculpatory or relevant to punishment. If they don’t, however, they are rarely disciplined. Why should prosecutors get away with this when they are the ones supposedly charged with upholding the law? Let’s take the Supreme Court case of Cone v. Bell as an example. Gary Cone was found guilty of a brutal double homicide in 1980. For more than a quarter century the case has maneuvered through the courts, (typical of capital punishment cases), with the latest installment coming today in Washington D.C. Memphis prosecutors failed to release evidence to the defense that Cone was high on amphetamines at the time of the murder. The defense’s main argument was insanity, something that would have spared their client the death penalty. (And prevented 25 years of appeals and millions of dollars in court fees, paid by taxpayers.) Being high on amphetamines would have lent credence to their claim, but Prosecutors today told the High Court such evidence was irrelevant. Some of the justices fervently disagreed, with Souter going so far as to call the respondent’s argument “utterly irrational.” Justice Stevens commented on the record that he worried about the ethics of the profession. lawblog.legalmatch/2009/01/05/the-hypocrisy-of-unethical-prosecutors/
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:06:41 +0000
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