Prosecutors play a crucial role in holding individuals accountable for crimes. They have a lot of power and work closely with the police to collect evidence and build a case against a suspect. Once the case is ready, they present it in court and must persuade a jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, a legal burden they must meet.
The American Bar Association (ABA) defines a “prosecutor” as any attorney, regardless of agency, title, or full or part-time assignment, who acts as an attorney to investigate or prosecute criminal cases or who provides legal advice regarding a criminal matter to government lawyers, agents, or offices participating in the investigation or prosecution of criminal cases. The ABA further emphasizes that a prosecutor should seek to protect the innocent and convict the guilty, consider the interests of victims and witnesses, and respect the constitutional and legal rights of all persons, including suspects and defendants.
In light of such a great responsibility, a prosecutor has a heightened duty of candor to the courts and in fulfilling other professional obligations. This includes turning over exculpatory evidence or disclosing to a court legal authority in the controlling jurisdiction known to the prosecutor to be directly adverse to the prosecution’s position and not disclosed by others.
However, despite these additional ethical duties mandated by the ABA, prosecutorial misconduct has been a leading contributing factor in a significant number of recorded wrongful convictions since 1989. Prosecutorial misconduct happens when a prosecutor breaks the law or acts unethically during a legal case.
Prosecutors often face the pressures of an elected office, the media, overwhelming caseloads, and a strong desire to seek justice which could lead to unethical conduct to secure convictions. As a result of prosecutorial misconduct, people have been wrongly convicted of crimes in some cases.
Especially in very serious crimes, like the ones investigated by innocence organizations all over the country, a prosecutor often invests months or years in preparing their case to secure a conviction. Sometimes, those prosecutors find evidence that may exonerate the person they are trying to convict. A prosecutor in this position must turn over this evidence to the defense, even if it goes against their theory of the case and benefits the defendant. The adversarial nature of the criminal legal system, where the prosecution and defense confront each other within legal boundaries, can create a personal ethical dilemma for the prosecutor in deciding to provide evidence that might undermine their case. Despite this ethical complication, it remains the prosecutor’s obligation to do so and when this duty is not carried out it is considered prosecutorial misconduct.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, prosecutorial misconduct was involved in 30 percent of exonerated cases on record. In 1999, Ken Armstrong and Maurice Possley reported in the Chicago Tribune that since 1963, at least 381 homicide convictions across the United States were reversed “because prosecutors concealed evidence suggesting innocence or presented evidence they knew to be false.”
In 1980, Michael Hanline was convicted of murdering J.T. McGarry primarily based on information from a confidential informant. During the trial, the prosecutor withheld crucial information – conflicting statements from the victim’s former girlfriend and the informant. The judge agreed to keep these details from Hanline’s defense. The case relied heavily on the victim’s testimony, accusing Hanline of threatening McGarry and being involved in the murder.
In 2010, a federal magistrate recommended that Hanline’s conviction be vacated and a new trial held because of the failure to disclose the inconsistent statements from the victim’s girlfriend and the confidential informant. A federal judge, however, refused to accept the recommendation and denied Hanline’s petition.
In the meantime, DNA tests were performed on some of the evidence in the case—the prosecution declined to be specific as to what was tested. Hanline’s DNA was not found on the evidence, but a DNA profile of an unidentified individual was identified.
In November 2014, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office requested that Hanline’s conviction be vacated because of the “flaws” in Hanline’s trial.
