Reader Asks:

What About
CT Prosecutors?



Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Duke Rape Case":

I just have to comment on this story.

Mr. Meehan, I wish you could write about how common this sort of misconduct is and how it occurs in Connecticut. It is not even considered misconduct.

Brady material comes in very, very late and often prosecutors here won't turn it over until defense attorneys are threatening or have filed motions to demand compliance with their discovery motions. Often on the eve of trial or even during trial.

It si SO, SO disheartening to read a story about the Duke case that doesn't bring it home to Connectiut and reveal more to us about Connecticut.

I think readers have a right to know and should know it works the same way here as it did for those Duke players.

Take the Krayeske prosecution for example. It was unusual for his lawyer norm pattis to request a judge-mediated meeting with the prosecutor to quicken the confrontation with the lack of evidence in his case. This was because (i speculate) he knows that prosecutors will bluff it all the way through here, with no evidence, with no probable cause, prolonging the hardship on the accused.

Other prosecutors avoid evidence and ignore evidence deliberately. I personally know of a case where prosecutors deliberately avoided every bit of exculpatory evidence to falsely claim they were unaware of it, but as we all know, willful ignorance is knowledge.

Look, the Connecticut greivance panel WILL NOT discipline prosecutors for this, period.

IF there is certain political pressure or publicity in certain cases that go to the grievance panel then and only then might they be forced to seriously consider it. Everyone knows that the way prosecution is played here and everywhere in america, is in this cynical, horrible way. The idea that the Duke prosecutor was motivated by political ambition and acted differently than he usually would comes off as dubious to me. Surely he had political ambitions, but what makes us think he acted any differently in his prosecution standards and procedures in the Duke case than he did in general. If anything, considering how high profile the case was, he was probably more scrupulous and careful, which just goes to show you how screwed up criminal prosecution is in this country and what appetites we have for press narratives that are fantasies and feed our sense that everything is mostly OK rather than mostly not OK.

It is conventional practice, and that's why it happened in the Duke case. That case was in pretrial. This wasn't unusual, sorry, and if you are a defense lawyer here, it would not be credible AT ALL for you to act surprised at that. You either know it is true here, or you are a lousy defense lawyer.

So write about it -- why don't you guys write about it?



Posted by Anonymous to The Cool Justice Report at 4:37 PM