Week Four Word list- Discipline Vocab

The new "open files" law and the public controversy over the Gell case were not enough, however, to prevent another North Carolina prosecutor from making a similar mistake and, this time, paying a dear price for his misconduct.

Prosecutors "have a spectacular degree of discretion that is just about unmatched in any other system," says Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School in New York City and a former chief of the appellate section in the U.S. attorney's offi

Prosecutors can make some public comment about a pending case but cannot mention a confession, tarnish the defendant's character or make pejorative references to the offense.

Michael B. Nifong, the district attorney (DA) in Durham County, was disbarred in June 2007 after the state bar found he had withheld evidence and made prejudicial pretrial statements in the nationally sensationalized rape case against three members of Duke University's varsity lacrosse team.

The suit seeks unspecified amounts in compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys' fees along with a long list of law-enforcement reforms.

Satisfied that the mistake was unintentional, the bar hearing panel cited Hoke's and Graves' remorse and clean record after leaving the state attorney general's office in deciding on a reprimand instead of suspension of their law license or disbarment.

Many factors militate against more frequent or more severe disciplinary sanctions — including disciplinary bodies' limited resources, prosecutors' personal ties to judges and defense lawyers and the difficulties in applying sometimes murky rules to sometimes murky circumstances.

As his detailed case-analysis shows, the line between ethical and unethical conduct is sometimes unclear.

The three ex-Duke defendants are relying on that exception in including Nifong in a federal civil rights suit that also names the city of Durham, individual police officers and officials of the private DNA testing lab implicated in the withholding of evidence in the case.

The Nifong case, he says, "reinforces the feeling that prosecutors out there engage in that kind of misconduct frequently without any accountability to speak of."

Defense lawyers and many legal ethics experts contend that prosecutorial misconduct is more common than prosecutors acknowledge and that Nifong's disbarment is a fortuitous exception to the general lack of discipline for errant DAs.

"It was a perfect storm of events that brought a case to fruition with stunning quickness measured against the speed with which lawyer-discipline cases normally go," says Donald Lundberg, executive secretary of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Com...

The court has allowed suits, however, when prosecutors engage in investigative activities.

The suit seeks unspecified amounts in compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys' fees along with a long list of law-enforcement reforms.

In a treatise on prosecutorial misconduct, Gershman divides possible prosecutorial infractions into 13 categories spanning the course of a criminal case from investigation and grand jury indictment through trial and sentencing.

Despite the rule's longevity, defense lawyers say that — as in the Duke case — it is often violated, typically with impunity.

Prosecutors and other law-enforcement experts say blatant ethics violations like Nifong's are rare and the eventual outcome a testament to a well-functioning disciplinary system.

Defense lawyers and many legal ethics experts contend that prosecutorial misconduct is more common than prosecutors acknowledge and that Nifong's disbarment is a fortuitous exception to the general lack of discipline for errant DAs.

"It was a perfect storm of events that brought a case to fruition with stunning quickness measured against the speed with which lawyer-discipline cases normally go," says Donald Lundberg, executive secretary of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Com...

Michael B. Nifong, the district attorney (DA) in Durham County, was disbarred in June 2007 after the state bar found he had withheld evidence and made prejudicial pretrial statements in the nationally sensationalized rape case against three members of Duke University's varsity lacrosse team.

The criticism was so widespread, in fact, that the state bar conducted an unprecedented public examination of its disciplinary processes.

"Nobody is more sorry about that than Debra and I."

For her part, Graves blamed the prosecutors' failure to turn over the evidence that Gell's lawyers used to win his acquittal in a February 2004 retrial to "blinders" she put on because of her role in the case.

Defense lawyers and many legal ethics experts contend that prosecutorial misconduct is more common than prosecutors acknowledge and that Nifong's disbarment is a fortuitous exception to the general lack of discipline for errant DAs.

"It was a perfect storm of events that brought a case to fruition with stunning quickness measured against the speed with which lawyer-discipline cases normally go," says Donald Lundberg, executive secretary of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Com...

Despite the rule's longevity, defense lawyers say that — as in the Duke case — it is often violated, typically with impunity.

In a treatise on prosecutorial misconduct, Gershman divides possible prosecutorial infractions into 13 categories spanning the course of a criminal case from investigation and grand jury indictment through trial and sentencing.

"It was an honest mistake on our part," Hoke said in sworn testimony read at the Sept. 23, 2004, ethics hearing before a three-member panel of the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Commission.

Nifong resigned from office and also served one day in jail for contempt of court after a judge found he had lied about turning over evidence to the defense.

After a retrial found him innocent, Hoke and Graves offered apologies but no admissions of guilt when they explained the ethical lapse that helped send him to death row.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions impose specific constraints on prosecutors.

In a treatise on prosecutorial misconduct, Gershman divides possible prosecutorial infractions into 13 categories spanning the course of a criminal case from investigation and grand jury indictment through trial and sentencing.

Two Justice Department units are investigating, among other things, whether the prosecutors were ousted because of partisan considerations and whether politics influenced any cases handled by their offices.

In Jena, La., LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters is defending his handling of a case against six black teenagers charged in the beating of a white student after nooses had been hung from a tree on the high school's campus.

The suit seeks unspecified amounts in compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys' fees along with a long list of law-enforcement reforms.