Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Subverting Brady V. Maryland And Denying A Fair Trial: Studying The Schuelke Report, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Schuelke Report about the ill-fated federal prosecution of the late-Senator Ted Stevens is an extraordinary contribution to criminal procedure. No other official documentation or investigative study of a criminal prosecution to my knowledge has dissected and analyzed as carefully and thoroughly the sordid and clandestine actions of a team of prosecutors who zealously wanted to win a criminal conviction at all costs. In examining this Report, one gets the feeling that as the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens unfolded, and the prosecution’s theory of guilt unraveled, the prosecutors became indifferent whether the defendant was really guilty; they just …

Minding The Court: Enhancing The Decision-Making Process, Pamela Casey, Kevin Burke, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

A compelling and growing body of research from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience provides important insights about how we process information and make decisions. This research has great potential significance for judges, who spend much of their time making decisions of great importance to others. For most judges, this research literature is not part of their judicial education. This article reviews cutting edge research about decision making and discusses its implications for helping judges and those who work with them produce fair processes and just outcomes. It builds on a 2007 American Judges Association paper that encouraged judges …

Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

Prejudicial psychiatric labels such as antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy have an inherently prejudicial effect on courts and juries, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. This article explains how and why these labels are inherently aggravating, and also discusses the mental health literature indicating that they are subjective, unreliable and non-scientific. The authors conclude that no competent defense lawyer would pursue a mitigation case based on such a damaging and scientifically questionable psychiatric label. Further, a proper life history investigation conducted in accordance with the ABA Guidelines on the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases …

Reassessing The Citizens Protection Act: A Good Thing It Passed, And A Good Thing It Failed, Rima Sirota

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Citizens Protection Act (CPA) of 1998 has always been a lightening rod for criticism, and it remains so today. This article reassesses the CPA’s perceived inadequacies in light of how it has actually affected (or, not affected) federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations. The article takes issue with the critics and demonstrates that the CPA succeeded where it should have, failed where it should have, and left us—however inadvertently—with a remarkably coherent and consistent approach to regulating federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations regardless of whether a suspect retains counsel early in the proceedings.

The CPA requires federal prosecutors …

Prescriptions For Ethical Blindness: Improving Advocacy For Indigent Defendants In Criminal Cases, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

The reasons criminal lawyers so often fail to provide adequate legal representation to indigent defendants are well-­known: severe underfunding, excessive workloads, and other disincentives for competent representation work together to encourage quick disposition of cases, with little regard for the quality of legal services that are provided. Yet, largely overlooked in this equation is whether defense lawyers who provide subpar representation are aware of their own shortcomings. To answer this question, this Article focuses on the psychology of ethical decision making. Relying on research that reveals the subtle ways that self-­interest can cause people to overlook unethical behavior, it argues …

Motivation Matters: Guideline 10.13 And Other Mechanisms For Preventing Lawyers From Surrendering To Self-Interest In Responding To Allegations Of Ineffective Assistance In Death Penalty Cases, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

Defense lawyers whose clients are sentenced to death are virtually guaranteed to be accused of ineffective assistance of counsel. The question is how they will respond. On one hand, lawyers alleged to be ineffective are obligated under Guideline 10.13 of the American Bar Association’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases to continue to safeguard the interests of their former clients, a duty that includes full cooperation in appropriate legal strategies chosen to pursue the ineffectiveness claim. On the other hand, lawyers who are accused of ineffectiveness often react defensively to the allegation, reflexively …

Plea Bargaining And The Right To The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: Where The Rubber Hits The Road In Capital Cases, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reverberations Of The Victim's "Voice": Victim Impact Statements And The Cultural Project Of Punishment, Erin L. Sheley

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Municipal Liability? Not So Fast: What Connick V. Thompson Means For Future Prosecutorial Misconduct, T. Owen Farist

Mercer Law Review

In Connick v. Thompson, the United States Supreme Court held that, under section 1983 of title 42 of the United States Code, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's actions failed to rise to the level of deliberate indifference required for municipal liability. The Court affirmed the possibility of "single-incident" municipal liability hypothesized in City of Canton v. Harris as an exception to the ordinary requirement of a pattern of similar violations necessary to prove the stringent standard of deliberate indifference to a known or obvious consequence. Despite upholding the validity of the exception, the Court found that Thompson's case did …

Panel On Prosecutorial Immunity: Deconstructing Connick V. Thompson, Dane Ciolino, Gary Clements, Bennett L. Gershman, Adam M. Gershowitz, Kathleen Ridolfi, Samuel R. Wiseman, Stephen Singer

Faculty Publications

In November 2011, the Journal hosted a symposium on prosecutorial immunity at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. The symposium included an in-depth analysis of Connick v. Thompson. As part of the symposium, the Journal organized a Panel, the transcript of which follows. This transcript consists of the speakers' remarks along with audience participation and questions. The Journal has attempted to preserve the character and substance of the discussion. While this is not a traditional article, the Journal felt that it would be fitting to include it in its spring volume.

Raising The Bar: How Rompilla V. Beard Represents The Court's Increasing Efforts To Impose Stricter Standards For Defense Lawyering In Capital Cases, Whitney Cawley

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rule 3.8, The Jencks Act, And How The Aba Created A Conflict Between Ethics And The Law On Prosecutorial Disclosure, Kirsten M. Schimpff

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecutors And Professional Regulation, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Prosecutors often express mistrust of professional regulators, their rules and their processes. This may have been more understandable twenty years ago, when prosecutors perceived that the organized bar had been captured by defense lawyers seeking to use professional regulation as a means of imposing limits on criminal investigative authority that the law did not otherwise recognize. Although that criticism no longer has much basis in reality, it has persisted in the rhetoric prosecutors employ in advocacy regarding their professional conduct. This article explores prosecutors’ public attitude toward professional regulation, beginning with a brief account of their responses two decades ago, …

Up Against The Wall: A Guide To The Effective Screening Of Former Government Attorneys In New York, Shira Mizrahi

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The note examines New York Rule of Professional Conduct 1.11, which governs conflicts of interest for former government attorneys transitioning to private practice. It highlights the rule's strict requirements for screening to prevent conflicts and the "appearance of impropriety" standard, which allows courts to disqualify firms even without evidence of wrongdoing. The analysis critiques the rule's effectiveness, particularly in small firms, and proposes reforms to balance public trust, client interests, and attorneys' career mobility.

Lawyers Judging Experts: Oversimplifying Science And Undervaluing Advocacy To Construct An Ethical Duty?, David S. Caudill

Working Paper Series

My focus is on an apparent trend at the intersection of the fields of evidentiary standards for expert admissibility and professional responsibility, namely the eagerness to place more ethical responsibilities on lawyers to vet their proffered expertise to ensure its reliability. My reservations about this trend are not only based on its troubling implications for the lawyer’s duty as a zealous advocate, which already has obvious limitations (because of lawyers’ conflicting duties to the court), but are also based on the problematic aspects of many reliability determinations. To expect attorneys—and this is what the proponents of a duty to vet …

Changes To The Culture Of Adversarialness: Endorsing Candor, Cooperation And Civility In Relationships Between Prosecutors And Defense Counsel, Stacy Caplow, Lisa Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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. …

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 …

Criminal Acts & Ethical Dilemmas: Some Client Nightmares Sneak Up On You, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Brady's Bunch Of Flaws, Daniel S. Medwed

Washington and Lee Law Review

The 1970s television program The Brady Bunch provided a lighthearted and optimistic portrayal of American family life. A divorced man with three brown-haired boys married a divorced woman with three blonde daughters. They melded together into a happy, well-adjusted crew committed to mad-cap adventures accompanied by syrupy background music. Yet the promise of The Brady Bunch was illusory. Divorce has wreaked havoc on this country. The problems that derive from divorce and remarriage are multifaceted; they seldom lend themselves to tidy resolution in thirty minutes, let alone a lifetime. The show provided a distractionand a disservice. It sent an inaccurate …

The Worldwide Accountability Deficit For Prosecutors, Ronald F. Wright, Marc L. Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review

In democratic governments committed to the rule of Law, prosecutors should be accountable to the public, just like other powerful government agents who make important decisions. The theoretical need for prosecutor accountability, however, meets practical shortcomings in criminal justice systems everywhere. Individual prosecutors everywhere express allegiance to the rule of Law through the wise decisions made by each prosecutor and across offices as a whole. But the claim "trust us" does not in fact generate the level of public trust that one should expect in a government of Laws. Institutional strategies to guarantee prosecutor accountability all fall short of the …

Conflicts Of Interest In Criminal Cases: Should The Prosecution Have A Duty To Disclose?, Anne Poulin

Working Paper Series

This article addresses two types of conflicts of interests that arise in criminal cases: 1) when defense counsel has an employment relation to the prosecutor’s office, and 2) when defense counsel faces criminal investigation or charges. Both these situations threaten both the defendant’s representation and the actual as well as apparent fairness of the proceeding. Yet, only in extreme cases are these conflicts likely to result in a reversal of the defendant’s conviction. As a result, protection of the defendant and the fairness of the process often depends on early intervention, which allows the court to advise the defendant of …

Shari'ah And Choice: What The United States Should Learn From Islamic Law About The Role Of Victims' Families In Death Penalty Cases, 44 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1 (2010), Susan C. Hascall

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

It's Not My Problem? Wrong: Prosecutors Have An Important Ethical Role To Play, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Company Of Scoundrels, Ronald J. Bacigal

Washington and Lee Law Review

My initial reaction to Brett Shockley's Note, Protecting Due Process from the PROTECT Act: The Problems with Increasing Periods of Supervised Release for Sexual Offenders, was to admire his courage. Not many people would undertake a discussion of possible injustice to child pornographers, who surely rank with terrorists and drug dealers as the most reviled and least sympathetic claimants for fair treatment. Shockley puts aside the moral condemnation these people deserve, and focuses on the morality of Procedure-the rule of Law if you will-divorced from the worthiness, or lack thereof, of particular defendants. As students of criminal Procedure come to …

Prosecuting Political Defendants, Anthony S. Barkow, Beth George

Georgia Law Review

Prosecutors are obligated to enforce the law without bias or prejudice. Prosecutors will face cases, however, where a prosecution has political overtones due to the substance of the underlying crime or the identity of the defendant. Maintaining public confidence in the impartiality of such prosecutions is vital to protecting the public's trust in the criminal justice system. This Article explores three recent federal cases where the defendant's identity added a political element to the prosecution. It then examines how the Department of Justice regulates prosecutors' release of information to the public, including its charging policy and its interactions with the …

Deferring Ineffectiveness Claims To Collateral Review: Ensuring Equal Access And A Right To Appointed Counsel, Thomas M. Place

Faculty Scholarship

The article addresses a problem in criminal procedure that leaves an increasingly large number of defendants without a remedy to protect their right to effective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal. The problem stems from the decision of states to move ineffectiveness claims from direct appeal to the post-conviction process and the fact that over half the states limit access to post-conviction remedies to defendants who are in custody. If the defendant’s prison sentence is completed during the period direct appeal is pending, or, in some jurisdictions, before the collateral review process is completed, the defendant is …

Constructing Systemic Safeguards Against Informant Perjury, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Reliance on an informant's testimony as the primary basis for charging and convicting the accused is fraught with problems. While the hypothetical explicitly addresses the ethical dilemmas defense counsel faces when her client is trading false testimony in exchange for a reduced charge and shorter sentence, the hypothetical also implicitly illustrates the inadequacies of our criminal justice system's current handling of testimony from cooperating witnesses.

The focus on the ethical, and perhaps moral, obligations of Lawyer representing a potentially perjurious Client begs larger questions. Are there safeguards the prosecutor's office could employ to ensure that the trial prosecutor, who is …

The Prosecutorial Ethic: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Maureen Howard

Articles

Although the American trial system has been likened to an arena in which mental combatants fight “to the death ” (the verdict ), each warrior similarly skilled and equally committed to vanquishing the other in a forum with formal rules of engagement enforced by a learned and impartial judge, the role of the criminal prosecutor is qualitatively different from that of other advocates. This is because, unlike any other lawyer, a criminal prosecutor has an affirmative duty to the opposing party.

Liberty Lost: The Moral Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

Marijuana policy analyses typically focus on the relative costs and benefits of present policy and its feasible alternatives. This Essay addresses a prior, threshold issue: whether marijuana criminal laws abridge fundamental individual rights, and if so, whether there are grounds that justify doing so. Over 700, 000 people are arrested annually for simple marijuana possession, a small but significant proportion of the 100 million Americans who have committed the same crime. In this Essay, we present a civil libertarian case for repealing marijuana possession laws. We put forward two arguments corresponding to the two distinct liberty concerns implicated by laws …