This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear a case involving alleged misconduct by prosecutors in Iowa in a case dating back to 1977. An editorial today in the Washington Post titled The right not to be framed provides useful background on the case. Two black men convicted of murdering a retired white police officer are suing the prosecutors for fabricating evidence to frame the two men, who each spent 25 years in prison for the crime. The convictions were overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court, which concluded that the star witness was a “liar and a perjurer.” One of the two defendants was cleared. The other one initially sought a new trial, but eventually agreed to a conviction, with the sentence limited to time served.
It appears that the prosecutors are not seriously disputing the allegations of their own misconduct, because they are emphasizing not their innocence, but rather that “there is no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed.” According to the allegations, the prosecutors knowingly coaxed supposed witnesses to fabricate testimony against the suspects. The justification for claiming immunity to lawsuits based on malicious prosecutorial misconduct is based on the idea that if you let this suit go forward, then you would have to allow it for every acquitted defendant and every defendant whose case was subject to minor mistakes by the prosecution. That is ridiculous, and the U.S. Supreme Court should say so.
Prosecutors are an important part of protecting the public from the bad guys, and they should be immune from lawsuits based on innocent errors and “gray area” incidents of possible wrongdoing. Sometimes, the wrongdoing is apparently clear in hindsight, but seemed reasonable at the time it happened. Personally, I am not sympathetic to lawsuits based on alleged misdeeds of this kind. For a lawsuit based on prosecutorial misconduct to have legal standing, the alleged misconduct must far exceed the usual kinds of activity that might be of dubious legality. For the lawsuit to be successful, there should be a high burden of proof by the plaintiff. However, it is outrageous to suggest that such a lawsuit should never have legal standing, no matter how badly the public official abused his authority.
Readers of my past OFA postings might recall that I was opposed to bringing criminal charges against President Bush and/or Vice-President Cheney, as some of my fellow bloggers were inclined to do. As deplorable as some of their (Bush and Cheney) actions were, they can at least make the credible argument that they acted with the motive of protecting the American people from terrorists. I believe that some of their methods were illegal, and they deserve a very harsh judgment by future historians, but I have never thought that criminal charges against them would be appropriate. I mention this now, in order to make clear that I am not a big advocate for legal punishment of government officials for abusing their office. This appears to be one case where it is appropriate.
Here is a link to the Post editorial:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110101950.html?wpisrc=newsletter
