HUFFINGTON
08.04.13
THE UNTOUCHABLES
ted misconduct again, he’ll never
have to serve the suspension. The
court noted that it was the first
time it had ever disciplined a prosecutor for misconduct.
Another occasion was the action taken against Mike Riehlmann, the attorney who heard the
deathbed confession about the
blood evidence in Thompson’s
case. Riehlmann played no part in
the actual prosecution of Thompson, and he eventually worked
with Thompson’s attorneys to
help set Thompson free. Yet he
was the only attorney involved in
the entire affair to face any discipline. Because Riehlmann did
not disclose the confession for
five years, Connick filed an ethics
complaint against him. (Riehlmann was once a prosecutor, but
not under Connick, and not at the
time Connick filed the complaint.)
Connick’s complaint was upheld,
and Riehlmann’s law license was
suspended for six months.
Dalton attended the hearing
where the Louisiana Supreme
Court suspended Riehlmann’s law
license. “Under the Louisiana Bar
code of ethics, any attorney who is
made aware of ethical misconduct
by another attorney is obligated to
file a complaint,” Dalton says. But
Riehlmann’s sanction illustrates
what may be the biggest barrier
to self-regulation: Lawyers do not
want to report other lawyers for
ethical violations. “As I sat there
and listened to these justices come
down on this guy, really scolding him, I wanted his attorney to
challenge them,” Dalton recalls.
“Those justices are all licensed
lawyers in Louisiana. And some
of them had found that prosecutors had withheld evidence in that
“[A] prosecutor’s
violation of the
obligation to disclose
favorable evidence
accounts for more
miscarriages of justice
than any other type of
malpractice.”
same case, in violation of Brady.
I wanted to ask them, why didn’t
you file a complaint?”
It’s a good question. According
to Plattsmier, Louisiana judges
are bound by a code of judicial
conduct that supersedes the bar’s
code of ethics. But that doesn’t
get them off the hook. The code
“instructs judges to report and assist in misconduct investigations.