Who Will Prosecute the Prosecutors?

Todd Schultz

News outlets such as CNN, USA Today, and the ABA Journal are all reporting on the alleged abuses of justice taking place in the court rooms, and the near absence of justice that is taking place to check such behavior.

Anderson Cooper released a segment devoted to the topic on his prime time news vehicle, Anderson Cooper 360. Cooper pointed the Northern California Innocence Project out that is based at Santa Clara University School of Law which found that since 1997 there was, on average, one case a week in which prosecutors were charged by a court for prosecutorial misconduct. That equates to 707 documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct in California from '97-'09.

Of those 707 cases, 548 of the convictions were upheld, mostly due to overwhelming proof of guilt, while in 159 of those convictions, the courts found the prosecutorial misconduct to be harmful to the judicial process, and mistrials were declared.

Another report conducted by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility studied 756 complaints reported between 2000 and 2009. Of the over 700 cases involved, 196 of them were found to have contained misconduct. In that report, however, the justice officials are pleading the fifth, stating that details of the investigations are protected by privacy laws.

According to Tracy Schmaler, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, ''An internal review conducted by the Department last year found prosecutorial misconduct in a small fraction of the 90,000 cases brought annually, and when mistakes occur, we correct them as quickly and transparently as possible within the bounds of the law, which restricts what information we can release about personnel matters.''

According to USA Today, the majority of these types of violations do not result in irrevocable damage to the prosecutors who are convicted, or their reputation.