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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defendants Guilty Of Being Innocent; Prosecutors Guilty Of Being Human, Keith Swisher
Defendants Guilty Of Being Innocent; Prosecutors Guilty Of Being Human, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
A published debate between Professor Keith Swisher and the Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery (Phoenix) over prosecutorial ethics in the face of wrongful convictions. The debate focuses on whether the state should adopt ethical rules requiring post-conviction disclosure of expulatory evidence.
Prosecutorial Conflicts Of Interest In Post-Conviction Practice, Keith Swisher
Prosecutorial Conflicts Of Interest In Post-Conviction Practice, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Prosecutors, our ministers of justice, do not play by the same conflict of interest rules. All other attorneys should not, and cannot, attack their prior work in transactional or litigation matters; nor should other attorneys unquestionably represent clients in matters in which the attorneys themselves face disciplinary, civil, or criminal liability. When prosecutors have likely convicted an innocent person, however, prosecutors are asked to review their own prior work objectively and then to undo it. But they understandably suffer from a conflict between their duty to justice and their duty to themselves — their duty to seek the release of …
The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher
The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Judges in the United States regularly (and often harshly) are disciplined for “bad” criminal law decisions. On a number of levels, it is baffling that this ethical “Rule” — punishing judges for errors of adjudication — has never been the subject of in-depth critical analysis. Thus, this Article is surprisingly the first scholarly work fully deconstructing the Rule (along with attendant considerations in criminal law adjudication) and addressing directly many of the tough questions that have been avoided or mistreated. This Article begins by examining an unexamined, “yet earthshaking” movement—that is, the modern invention of using judicial conduct commissions (“judge …