New Post on Prosecutorial Misconduct

According to a new article by the National Law Journal highlighted at Sentencing Law and Policy. This article comes on the heels of the article in the USA Today also discussing the most serious issues associated with prosecutorial misconduct (blogged about here). Among the highlights of the report noted by Professor Bergman:

Only a tiny percentage of prosecutors who engaged in misconduct were disciplined by the State Bar of California during a 12-year period, according to a report released Monday.

The report, issued by the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law, found 707 cases between 1997 and 2009 in which courts explicitly determined that prosecutors had committed misconduct. It examined more than 4,000 cases.

Among the 707 cases, only six prosecutors -- 0.8% -- were disciplined by the State Bar of California. Only 10 of the 4,741 disciplinary actions by the state bar during the same period involved prosecutors....

The project found that judges often failed to report misconduct to the state bar despite having a legal obligation to do so. Sixty-seven prosecutors committed misconduct more than once and some as many as five times. The majority of those prosecutors were never publicly disciplined, the project said....

The report included recommendations for reform. It called for district attorneys to adopt internal policies that do not tolerate misconduct. It also called for the state bar to increase disciplinary transparency.