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The Prosecutor In The Mirror: Conviction Integrity Units And Brady Claims, Lissa Griffin, Daisy Mason
The Prosecutor In The Mirror: Conviction Integrity Units And Brady Claims, Lissa Griffin, Daisy Mason
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a due process obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence that is material to guilt or punishment. The failure to fulfill this duty is particularly insidious because it bears directly on both whether an innocent defendant may have been convicted as well as on whether the adjudicatory process was fair. The failure to disclose exculpatory evidence has been characterized as “epidemic” and has been documented to have made a major, outsized contribution in cases that resulted in exonerations. It is not surprising, then, that conviction integrity units in prosecutor’s offices …
Pretrial Procedures For Innocent People: Reforming Brady, Lissa Griffin
Pretrial Procedures For Innocent People: Reforming Brady, Lissa Griffin
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In this article, the author proposes that the prosecution’s obligation to disclose exculpatory information to the defense be formalized by statute, court rule, or internal protocol in ways that would reflect the current state of our knowledge of and experience with both Brady and wrongful convictions. This would improve on the current ineffective constitutional protection—and any existing statutory or rule-based regimes—in several ways. First, such a formalized regime would require disclosure of all materials that are reasonably helpful to the defense. Second, unlike the constitutional doctrine, which provides no reliable mechanism for monitoring police disclosure to the prosecution, an accompanying …