U.S. Prosecutors: Breaking the Law for a Conviction

A six month investigation by reporters Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy at USA Today has revealed more than 200 cases where prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department -- the elite of the elite -- either broke the law or ethics rules to obtain a conviction, sending dozens of innocent people to years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit.

And the prosecutorial misconduct uncovered -- condemned by judges as "outrageous" and "flagrant," ranging from lying to juries to withholding key evidence that could free a defendant -- wasn't limited to certain corrupt pockets of the country here and there, but was widespread. And experts say it's only the tip of the iceberg.

"It's systemic now," Pace University law professor Bennet Gershman told the paper. "[T]he system is not able to control this type of behavior. There is no accountability."

And we're not talking about little white lies on the part of prosecutors; we're talking about the knowingly-try-to-put-an-innocent-person-behind-bars kind of lie, which you'd have to agree is on the extreme end of the lying spectrum. (Read more after the jump.)

To take just one example of the kind of misconduct the investigation revealed -- literally chosen at random -- consider the case of Steven and Marlene Aisenberg. In 1997, their 5-month old daughter went missing from her crib, resulting in an intense manhunt for a kidnapper. She has still not been found to this day.

But the tragedy of the apparent kidnapping of the Aisenberg's daughter was compounded when, after an investigation by Florida prosecutors revealed no evidence of a crime, lawyers with the Justice Department charged that the couple were involved in the disappearance of their own child, engaging in a prosecution that a district court would later term "vexatious" for its "element of oppression ... although 'bad faith' (or even 'frivolous') might serve as well."

And what sort of bad things were the prosecution up to? In its indictment of the couple, Justice Department lawyers claimed that wiretaps placed in their home had recorded them outright confessing to killing their child. But when a judge listened to the recordings himself, "he could not find the incriminating statements the government had alleged in the indictment, at the defendants' arraignment and in a public news conference." The distance between the prosecution's claims and the actual evidence was "shocking," the judge said.

But what's perhaps more shocking at a moral level, though sadly not entirely surprising, is that the lawyers who tried to frame an innocent couple got away with it. Oh, to be fair the Justice Department did go after one of its lawyers, a prosecutor by the name of Stephen Kunz. After an investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility found he had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct in "reckless disregard" of his obligations to the public, officials at DOJ strictly punished Kunz with a suspension. For two days. On a Saturday and Sunday.

Kunz now works out of the Justice Department's Tallahassee office.

And Kunz is far from the only one whose career hasn't suffered from a little prosecutorial misconduct (the same can't be said for the victims). While the department has taken steps to address some of the misconduct -- by requiring prosecutors to take a half-day course on sharing evidence with the defense -- the absence of accountability for gross violations of a person's civil rights, literally framing people for crimes they did not commit, is widespread. Indeed, Kunz appears to be the only prosecutor USA Today could find who was even temporarily suspended by the Justice Department.

Check out one of the 201 cases USA Today has profiled on its website for more evidence of injustice carried out by the government's top lawyers. And remember: these are the best of the best -- and these are only the cases we know about.

Photo Credit: Steve Fernie