A lot has been said lately about wrongful convictions that landed people on death row. There has been a growing recognition in society that a lot of innocents may have been put on death row, and a lot of innocents may have been executed already.
There has been a growing recognition also that in many cases of wrongful death penalty convictions, such convictions were obtained at the time when prosecutors knew that the person they were putting on death row were factually innocent and withheld that evidence from the defense and the court.
Yet, there are not many reports of discipline against the prosecutors.
And I did not read any reports that prosecutors who KNOWINGLY put people on death row, were tried for murder (if the innocents were executed) or for attempted murder, if the innocents were either rescued from the death row or remain their awaiting an execution while the fight for their release and exoneration continues.
And my question is - WHY such prosecutors, and all members of investigative, prosecutorial and judicial teams who may have had knowledge of the factual innocence of criminal defendants who were convicted and sent to the death row are not prosecuted for attempted murder and for the actual murder?
No immunity protects from criminal prosecution.
Let's put pressure upon our representatives in the State and Federal Legislatures to pass laws making mandatory the criminal murder and attempted murder prosecutions of prosecutors and investigators who knowingly withheld exonerating evidence in death penalty cases.
There is no statute of limitations for murder, and there should be no status protection for murder.
Let's put pressure upon our representatives in State and Federal Legislatures to mandate criminal investigations and prosecutions in ANY case where exonerating evidence is withheld in criminal cases, whether in death penalty cases or not. That will bring a swift end to both prosecutorial misconduct and the position of prosecutors as coveted positions, which will only make the bench clean since now most of judges have a prosecutorial background, and thus an experience of misconduct without accountability ingrained in them as a matter of right before they come to the bench.
If such laws are passed and if a couple of prosecutors, especially well-connected ones, end up on death rows themselves, for murder no less, you will see how quickly the death penalty itself will be deemed unconstitutional and abolished.
It takes a high-ranking pig about to be "lawfully" killed by the government to for the "rule of law" to start working in this country.
So let's require that such laws be put on the books.
It's high time to end prosecutorial misconduct in this country that ruins and sometimes very literally ends people's lives.
THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:
"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.
“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).
“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.
It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.
" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.
"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.
“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.
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