No Constitutional Right NOT To Be Framed
This story from NPR has me just a bit pissed off.
It's OBVIOUS that a Crime was committed - by the Prosecutor!!! But there's not a damned thing that can be done about it.
It's OBVIOUS that JUSTICE has NOT been served... nor does it appear it will be.
Furthermore... What does this MEAN? Seriously.
They are literally claiming that there's "No Constitutional Right Not To Be Framed".
Are you kidding?
Check out the story linked below... read it... listen to it... Tell me what you think.
Legal minds in the house, I'd really like to hear what you have to say (from a legal perspective) as well.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120069519
Do prosecutors have total immunity from lawsuits for anything they do, including framing someone for murder? That is the question the justices of the Supreme Court face Wednesday.
On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend "there is no freestanding right not to be framed." They are backed by the Obama administration, 28 states and every major prosecutors organization in the country.
On the other side are two black men -- Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee -- men who served 25 years in prison before evidence long hidden in police files resulted in them being freed.
Harrington, McGhee And The Principal Witness
Back in 1977, Harrington, captain of his Omaha high school football team, was applying to college and being recruited for a possible scholarship at Yale.
Then he and McGhee were arrested for the murder of a retired police officer in neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the state line.
The principal witness was 16-year-old Kevin Hughes, who had a criminal record, and after being arrested in a stolen car, first fingered two other men, one of whom turned out to have been in jail on the night of the crime.
After his first stories didn't pan out, Hughes implicated Harrington and McGhee, but his eyewitness account was riddled with errors.
He initially got the site of the shooting wrong and the weapon. He said the murder was committed with a handgun, then said a 20-gauge shotgun and finally a 12-gauge shotgun.
He also failed a polygraph
test. According to lawyers for Harrington and McGhee, the Council
Bluffs police and prosecutors knew all this and more. But they went
ahead and indicted the two men, winning convictions before an all-white
jury.
........
The Council Bluffs prosecution team, while still maintaining that Harrington and McGhee are guilty, contends that even if the men were in fact framed, prosecutors, under established Supreme Court precedent, have total immunity from being sued.
The Supreme Court has indeed said that prosecutors are immune from suit for anything they do at trial. But in this case, Harrington and McGhee maintain that before anyone being charged, prosecutors gathered evidence alongside police, interviewed witnesses and knew the testimony they were assembling was false.
The prosecutors counter that there is "no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed." Stephen Sanders, the lawyer for the prosecutors, will tell the Supreme Court on Wednesday that there is no way to separate evidence gathered before trial from the trial itself. Even if a prosecutor files charges against a person knowing that there is no evidence of his guilt, says Sanders, "that's an absolutely immunized activity." _____________________________________________________________________
So very wrong.
Aren't we supposed to have a right to petition for redress of grievances?
You mean to tell me that a prosecutor can KNOWINGLY "FRAME" an innocent person and send them to prison... and the prosecutor has done nothing "Illegal".
C'mon.
What's this all about?
A former DOJ prosecutor friend of mine has suggested that this story is being "framed" incorrectly... But he's a bit tied up right now and will elaborate later.
In the meantime...
November 4, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm interested in this as well. If you hear of any reasonable justification, please share!
November 4, 2009 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder about the rules of disclosure and if the prosecution withheld evidence which they were legally bound to disclose. I assume since this is before the supreme court those rules were not violated. Either way, this case puts a new twist on the old chestnuts, "innocent until proved guilty" and the "burden of proof rests on the prosecution".
November 4, 2009 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think this case has much to do with innocence or guilt.
The Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors may not be sued for damages for anything they do at trial. Thus, they are immune and cannot be required to answer in damages for having called a perjurious witness to the stand even if they knew he was going to give false testimony.
The issue is whether these prosecutors did anything for which they can be sued before trial. The prosecutors say they performed no act to the plaintiffs' detriment until they called the witness at trial (and there, they're immune).
The plaintiffs say that the injurious act was the knowing encouragement of false swearing which took place before the trial.
We shall see -- guess, prosecutors win (6-3).
November 4, 2009 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Note: Had the prosecutors not called the witness at trial, what they had earlier wrongfully done would not have harmed these civil plaintiffs at their criminal trial back in 1978.
Where's our own pirate when you need him?
November 4, 2009 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I heard this story on NPR this morning. This young man was on his way to Yale (if I remember correctly), and had no connection to the man who was murdered. He has spent 25 years in prison and has no recourse after truly being framed by police, the prosecution, and a "witness" whose testimony didn't implicate him until the police told him what to say.
He cannot get anything monetary for what was done to him unless the Supreme Court finds in his favor. I hope we keep this alive, because the precedent involved here may prevent them from doing the right thing -- SHOCK!
I will personally donate to this guy if he loses in court. This is a travesty.
November 4, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can't he -- hasn't he -- sued the police? They're not immune.
November 4, 2009 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Evidently they are. The legal question comes in here:
Police and everyone else is immune once the trial starts. The point they are making is that he was framed long before that time. The attorney who is on the side of the police and prosecutor says that there is no effective difference between BEFORE trial and DURING trial. That is why it went to the Supremes, as far as I understand it.
November 4, 2009 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not being a lawyer, I'll tentatively suggest the following:
1. To "frame" someone is to invent a story implicating the accused in a crime. It appears that witness Hughes did that, but the prosecutors did not. They may have abetted the framing, but did not commit it.
2. The dangers of opening these cases to lawsuits seem to me to be enormous. After all, the facts in this case, as told to us via the media, appear to support a claim against the prosecutors, but imagine the vast numbers of false claims that might ensue, particularly if an accused individual has the wealth to hire a suit-minded lawyer.
3. Ickyma, in his post, states that it's obvious a crime has been committed, but the proper remedy for criminal conduct is investigation, indictment, and if necessary and warranted, a trial, conviction, and sentencing. Lawsuits are sometimes called on as an alternative, but they are not really intended for that purpose, particularly since the principle that conviction requires guilt to be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a standard higher than that required in a lawsuit.
4. Finally, although I haven't read the arguments in this case, it might reasonably be argued that although the prosecutors can't be sued, the city, state, or other entity for whom they work can be sued. That might more properly balance the need to avoid intimidating prosecutors by the threat of lawsuits with the need to make sure that their superiors hold them accountable for egregious misconduct, while at the same time compensating the victims of the misconduct.
November 4, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
On a criminal action as remedy --
It's probable that the statute of limitations on the prosecutors' crime ran decades ago.
And too, it's not in the interest of prosecutors to bring criminal actions against other prosecutors -- it would be sort of like a POTUS instructing his AG to investigate or charge senior members of a preceding administration.
"It wouldn't be prudent." GHWB
November 4, 2009 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Google provides numerous examples of the conviction of prosecutors for criminal acts. Proving criminality in the case of prosecutorial misconduct would likely be difficult, but there is no reason to believe that it would not be pursued if feasible.
Regarding the statute of limitations, which may well have expired in this particular case, I was making a general point, of the kind the Court must weigh in making a decision with generalizable implications for the future.
November 5, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Without googling I'm going to guess that a vanishingly small number of criminal prosecutions were for "prosecutorial misconduct" -- receiving and paying bribes or other emoluments of office are usually what prosecutors get in trouble for.
November 5, 2009 4:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
1. To "frame" someone is to invent a story implicating the accused in a crime. It appears that witness Hughes did that, but the prosecutors did not. They may have abetted the framing, but did not commit it.
BUT THEY KNEW ABOUT IT! THEY WERE A PART OF THE SCAM. AND THEY COACHED THE WITNESS.
How far do you want to go, Fred, to do the WRONG THING?
The dangers of NOT making "law enforcement" aware that they have to enforce LAW are worse than establishing the scary precedent you bring up.
November 4, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
CVille - For goodness sake, please read what I wrote. All of it!
I would also be interested in the views of others regarding the thoughts I expressed.
November 4, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll extend a point I made earlier about the dangers of opening prosecutors up to lawsuits (as opposed, for example, to permitting lawsuits against the city, county, or state, as I had mentioned).
A lawsuit needn't succeed in order to intimidate the defendants. This principle is well understood by wealthy corporations and individuals, who use their wealth, and its ability to hire high-powered lawyers, to prevent an action against them. It won't be the poor, homeless street person who gets to sue lawyers for misconduct, but the billionaires - the Bernie Madoff's and others - who will make prosecutors think twice before proceeding with a prosecution in which some minor inadvertent prosecutorial error can be turned into a devastating personal assault. These lawsuits will be the tools by which the wealthy press their advantage over everyone else.
I don't know enough of the law to predict how the Supreme Court will reason, but I will be surprised if they simply abolish current protection for prosecutors.
November 4, 2009 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
YEAH BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.
November 5, 2009 5:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
This from my former Fed Prosecutor friend:
and...
as for prosecutors, we are no different that any other gaggle of humans-you will find saints, sinners, liars and crooks if you rub the crystal ball long enuff
Another friend commented:
If the Prosecutor knowingly altered evidence or aided in concealing evidence from the Defense during disclosure that would have exonerated the accused he has violated the "good faith" portion of the immunity presumption and would both provide grounds for an appeal and open himself a revue of his license by the State Bar Association.
That's it, huh? I guess it's better than nothing...
This just seems wrong to me.
It seems clear to me that a Crime has been committed... and it wasn't by the two fellas who went to jail. They did NOTHING.
The prosecutor just flat out sent two people (who he KNEW were innocent) to jail.
Sejanus, you mention "Sovereign Immunity" beginning with the King... We have no Kings here. As a matter of fact, any power our Gov't has, it has because WE grant it. It says so right here in the Constitution. The Gov't doesn't choose what powers we have.... we get to choose what powers the Gov't has.
I can't imagine a well informed public would grant such power of "immunity" to such a criminally acting prosecutor.
It simply cannot be "OK" for a prosecutor to pick an easy mark and throw him/her in jail just because he wants to... just because "somebody" (it doesn't matter who) has to go to jail for something...
November 5, 2009 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
One more response from him
I disagree with the statement to receive absolute immunity you must be acting in good faith-to the contrary absolute immunity means what its says-it is immunity respective of the motive of the perpetarator-it is only in qualified immunity does the actor's good faith become an issue
to repeat, under common law a prosecutor or judge is immune from anything which they do or say during prosecution of a case in a courtroom-as the post makes clear, they are challenging the proscutor's conduct outside the courtroom in interviewing witnesses and yakiing about absolute immunity to get press
November 5, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
All of that should have been blockquoted... for some reason the last half wasn't...
November 5, 2009 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Further
MANY MANY thanks to Sejanus for his insights and opions on this.
November 5, 2009 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink