Law Commons^™

Retrying The Acquitted In England Part Iii: Prosecution Appeals Against Judges' Rulings Of "No Case To Answer", David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

The Order in Council permitting the prosecution appeal of "Mo" Courtney's acquittal and allowing him to be retried for the same offense of which he had previously been acquitted stems from the Criminal Justice Act 2003. That Act, which applies in England and Wales, grants the government the right to appeal certain rulings by the trial judge in criminal prosecutions on an indictment, including a ruling that there is no case to answer, i.e., a directed verdict of acquittal, and if the appeal is successful, allows the reviewing court to order that the acquitted defendant?s trial be resumed or that …

Facing The Unfaceable: Dealing With Prosecutorial Denial In Postconviction Cases Of Actual Innocence, Aviva Orenstein

San Diego Law Review

This Article develops a question that intrigued Fred: prosecutors’ duties postconviction to prisoners who might be innocent. Although Fred wrote about a panoply of questions that arise regarding the prosecutor’s duty to “do justice” after conviction, this Article will address one specific area of concern: how and why prosecutors resist allowing DNA testing and, more startlingly, deny the obvious implications of DNA evidence when that evidence exonerates the convicted.

Part II of this Article briefly summarizes two of Fred’s major articles on the subject of prosecutorial ethics. Part III documents the problem of postconviction DNA exonerations and prosecutors’ varied reactions. …