Law Commons^™

Brady Misconduct Remedies: Prior Jeopardy And Ethical Discipline Of Prosecutors, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

In an Arkansas capital murder prosecution that resulted in conviction and sentences of death based on the killing of a family offour, defense counsel learned after the conviction had been reversed that a key prosecution witness, the defendant's son, who testified against his father, implicating him in the murders at trial, had also given prosecutors a statement in which he claimed responsibility for the crimes and exculpated his father. Defense counsel moved to dismiss the prosecution on the ground of prosecutorial misconduct, then raised a prior jeopardy claim in an effort to bar retrial by taking an interlocutory appeal to …