Prosecutors Must Disclose Exculpatory Evidence

05/15/2009 - Suskauer Law Blog - Link to This Entry

On April 7, 2009, a Federal Judge in Washington dismissed an ethics conviction of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. In dismissing the case, the judge focused on disclosures that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence from the defense attorneys. The judge noted a “troubling tendency” among prosecutors by concealing evidence to win cases. The Obama Justice Department had actually decided beforehand to dismiss all seven felony convictions against the former senator. The new Attorney General acknowledged that the wing of his office which handles public corruption cases had committed egregious misconduct.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated instance in our nation’s history of prosecutorial misconduct. While most prosecutors are honest hardworking attorneys, unfortunately there have been too many instances of overzealous prosecutions resulting in tremendous injustice. Consider the Duke University rape case of 2006. There the reputations of 3 students were destroyed by a corrupt district attorney who withheld key exculpatory evidence just to get a conviction. That prosecutor has since been disbarred and convicted of criminal contempt. Those (3) Duke students’ charges were dismissed but look what they had to go through! One of their attorneys told me that nothing ever happened in the first place; that is, the entire rape accusation was a concocted story since no sexual act occurred in the first place.

Under what is called the “Brady doctrine”, prosecutors throughout our country are required under U.S. Supreme Court case law to disclose to the defense evidence which is favorable to the defendant. The rules regulating the Florida Bar also require the prosecutor to do so as well.