HUFFINGTON
08.04.13
THE UNTOUCHABLES
least one exoneree from all 50
states,” he says. “And we’re going
to take a petition to Eric Holder
demanding that he go after these
prosecutors. That’s his job. He’s
the attorney general. He should
be protecting us from the people
in the legal system who would do
us h arm, and he hasn’t done anything about it.”
Nationally, the public is becoming more aware of prosecutor
misconduct, thanks in part to
the Ken Anderson and Mike Nifong prosecutions, the seemingly
endless stream of DNA exonerations and publicity over cases
like Thompson’s.
After a first term in which he
became the national face of reforming the culture in prosecutors’ offices, Dallas County District
Attorney Craig Watkins won reelection by a slim margin in 2010.
And on a few occasions, voters
have chosen to punish wayward
prosecutors. The same year in
Colorado, for example, voters declined to retain state judges Terence Gilmore and Jolene Blair, two
former prosecutors who in 1999
won a murder conviction against
Tim Masters. Masters was later
exonerated, and in 2008 Gilmore
and Blair were reprimanded by the
Colorado Supreme Court for their
misconduct in the case.
But in much of the country,
prosecutors still mostly earn voter
favor by racking up convictions.
And the political and criminal
justice systems present some formidable obstacles to reform.
When a defense
attorney does find
evidence of misconduct,
it can be a bargaining
chip… with the
understanding that
the misconduct not be
made public.
In 2004, for example, the California legislature created the
California Commission on the
Fair Administration of Justice,
a panel of current and former
judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and police officials. They
were charged with coming up with
policies that could help prevent
wrongful convictions. In 2006 the
group delivered a series of sensible recommendations, including
simple changes to the way eyewitnesses are presented with lineups,
requiring corroboration before
using testimony from jailhouse