Study finds DA's ROUTINELY LIE, CONCEAL EVIDENCE to win cases by Ken Armstrong and Maurice Possley Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1999 With impunity, prosecutors across the country violated their oaths and the law, committing the worst kinds of deception in the most serious of cases. They have prosecuted black men, hiding evidence the real killers were white. They have prosecuted a wife, hiding evidence her husband committed suicide. They have prosecuted parents, hiding evidence their daughter was killed by wild dogs. They do it to win. They do it because they WON'T get punished for it. They have done it to defendants who came within hours of being executed, only to be exonerated. In the first study of its kind, a Chicago Tribune analysis of thousands of court records, appellate rulings and lawyer disciplinary records from across the United States has found: *Since a 1963 US Supreme Court ruling designed to curb misconduct by prosecutors, at least 381 defendants nationally have had a homicide conviction thrown out because prosecutors concealed evidence suggesting innocence or presented evidence they knew to be false. (Of all the ways prosecutors can cheat, those two are considered the worst by the courts.) And that number represents only a FRACTION of how often this occurs. *The US Supreme Court has declared such misconduct by prosecutors to be so reprehensible that it warrants criminal charges and disbarment. But NOT ONE of those prosecutors was convicted of a crime. NOT ONE was barred from practicing law. Instead, many saw their careers advance, becoming judges, district attorneys, or [POLITICIANS]. *Of the 381 defendants, 67 had been sentenced to death ... Nearly 30 of those 67 death row inmates --about half of those whose cases have been resolved-- were subsequently freed. But almost all spent at least 5 years in prison. One served 26 years before his conviction was reversed and charges dropped. Next week three former DuPage County, Ill. prosecutors will face trial on charges of conspiring to frame Rolando Cruz, who served about 10 years on death row before being acquitted at his third trial on charges of murdering 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The case is exceptionally unique -- not because prosecutors have been accused of concealing evidence and knowingly using false evidence, but because they have been INDICTED for doing so. If convicted of a felony for such misconduct, it would be the FIRST TIME that has happened in the United States. ... The kind of DELIBERATE misconduct that contributed to those 381 defendants' homicide convictions is so grave that courts believe it should NEVER [be allowed to] occur. But, although prosecutors often downplay individual cases involving such deceit as "aberrations," the body of cases turned up by the Tribune's search reveals that it happens FREQUENTLY and in nearly limitless ways ... Prosecutors have concealed evidence that discredited their star witnesses, pointed to other suspects, or supported a defendant's claim of self-defense. They have suppressed evidence that a murder occurred when the defendants had alibis, or that it occurred not in a defendant's home, as alleged, but in a someone else's cornfield far away. In one case prosecutors depicted red paint as blood. In another they portrayed hog blood as human ... In 1998 alone, at least three people were freed after being retried because prosecutors had concealed evidence ... In a 1963 case, Brady vs. Maryland, the US Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must disclose evidence favorable to a defendant (exculpatory evidence). But even when prosecutors are caught hiding evidence, courts [[often staffed by judges who began as prosecutors themselves]] will reverse a conviction only if the evidence was so strong that its disclosure would have created a "reasonable probability" of a different verdict. Courts use a similar threshold in cases where prosecutors presented evidence they knew to be false. The result is that courts frequently uphold a conviction EVEN WHEN prosecutors suppress evidence or allow witnesses to lie -- ruling that the prosecutor's actions, while reprehensible, "probably" would not have changed the trial's outcome ...
