Supreme Court shields prosecutors in wrongful convictions

[The Straight Story]

One innocent man, from Arizona, was sent back to prison for raping a child when the Supreme Court ruled he had no right to evidence that would later set him free.

Another innocent man, from Louisiana, was convicted of murder and came within weeks of being executed because prosecutors had hidden a blood test that later freed him.

The two men were linked at the Supreme Court last week by Justice Antonin Scalia, who argued that criminal defendants have no right to "potentially useful evidence" that "might" show they were innocent.

Since the 1990s, the advent of DNA evidence has swept across the American criminal justice system and revealed that hundreds of convicted prisoners were innocent. Yet, throughout that time, the Supreme Court has shielded prosecutors from claims that they hid evidence that could have revealed the truth and has been reluctant to give prisoners a right to reopen old cases.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-innocence-20110403,0,1867335.story

[WCGreen]

1. What the fuck....

What fucking country are we living in...

[inademv]

2. The solution to that problem isn't to prosecute the prosecutors

it is to fix the system that allows them to suppress the kind of evidence in question.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. We don't need dirty prosecutors in our world today.

[DFW]

3. New legislation is needed

Prosecutors who suppress exonerating evidence need to serve the same sentences that were or would have
been handed down to innocent people wrongly convicted. As for Scalia, as he has acquiesced to many rulings
against the rights of the individual, he should serve out the rest of his days in Angola, and I don't
mean the one in Africa.

[Old Codger]

4. In some states

Cal. is one, planting evidence can have you charged with the same crime as the defendant. I see no real difference, hiding evidence that is exculpatory should have the same penalty.

[DFW]

7. My point exactly.

Deliberately hiding exculpatory evidence has the same effect as manufacturing fake evidence, and has
the same result: railroading an innocent into prison or the death chamber. There are two main motives
for doing this: 1.) political expediency or 2.) bigotry.

Whichever it is, the bad apple needs to be sentenced to the full term meted out to the innocent convict
with his personal assets seized to help with material compensation, as there is no way to compensate for
the time lost or the personal anguish.

Going after a person the prosecutor is convinced is guilty is one thing. Going after someone because a
prosecutor sees it as an asset in his future campaign for Governor or Senator is quite another. There is
supposed to be a difference between a tough prosecutor and a cowardly, ambitious asshole, although coming
from the South, I am the first to admit there is far too little difference far too often.

[The Magistrate]

9. Hear Hear, Sir

[TheKentuckian]

6. A great flaw in the adversarial system, truth is of no importance other than as a "gotcha".

[G_j]

8. very bad news

:-(

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2057836,00.html


"The decision should have wide impact, despite Ginsburg's narrow ruling, says David Protess, a journalism professor and director of the Medill Innocence Project. "It will profoundly affect other postconviction DNA cases in which prosecutors are withholding physical evidence," Protess tells TIME. "Now prisoners will have a federal civil right to sue stonewalling prosecutors to get access to the evidence that could prove their innocence.""

[mrmpa]

10. The SCOTUS had an invalid argument-stating that the

new Louisian DA's should have received training about the Brady Act(?). These DA's graduated from Law School, they should have already known it was illegal to keep evidence away from the Defendant and his/her attorney.

This is like saying that the emergency room doctors (not residents or interns) but fully licensed doctors, should have been trained in the fact that antibiotics should be used to fight infections.

[G_j]

11. really

a ridiculous argument indeed...