A prosecutor’s duty is to the truth

It’s all about winning, right? I mean, if you’re going to participate in something — whether it be politics, your job, sports, the pursuit of the opposite sex — you might as well do your best to win. At least that seems to be the mindset of our society. While I’m in favor of healthy competition, it’s often taken too far. Take the job of a prosecutor for example. He or she probably wants to win just as much as the next guy or gal. Problem, winning isn’t the end goal in prosecution. A prosecutor’s duty is to strive for the truth, even if that means exoneration of the accused. Hell, especially if the truth exonerates the accused.

Bennett L. Gershamn discussed this very topic in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. In his abstract, he says: “Prosecutor’s violate their duty to truth by engaging in conduct that impedes the search for truth.”

Such conduct includes (1) distorting the truth by engaging in false, misleading, and inflammatory conduct; (2) subverting the truth by false statements and presenting false evidence; (3) suppressing the truth by failing to disclose potentially truth-enhancing evidence; and (4) truth-disserving conduct that exploits defense counsel’s misconduct and mistakes.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins agrees with this sentiment. He says that prosecutors who withhold evidence should be punished. “If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be criminalized,” he says. And really, why shouldn’t it?

It is the prosecutor’s job to find the truth. It is not to find any way possible to prove his opponent guilty. That mindset is completely antithetical to justice. If a prosecutor has evidence that would uphold a man’s innocence, then he has a moral, ethical, and what should be a legal obligation to bring that evidence to light. Because if that evidence, known to the prosecutor, remains unseen by judge and jury, an innocent man might go to jail.

While some people, namely prosecutors themselves, are against such a ruling, it seems to be gaining some steam.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, chief author of the Texas law that created the compensation system for wrongfully convicted inmates, said he, too, would support criminalizing the intentional withholding of evidence by prosecutors. No criminal charge exists in Texas for a prosecutor who intentionally commits a “Brady violation.”

That term refers to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady vs. Maryland, which held that prosecutors violate defendants’ constitutional rights if they intentionally or accidentally withhold evidence favorable to the defense.

“What better way to get to the truth?” said Mr. Ellis, a Houston Democrat who will chair a summit on wrongful convictions Thursday in Austin. “Why wouldn’t we have a criminal statute to keep prosecutors from lying when they know the truth?”

Good question, Rodney. Why wouldn’t we? Are we so bent on protecting prosecutors that we can turn a blind eye when they violate moral, ethical, and constitutional standards? It seems a rather silly notion when you put it that way. Such a law would create accountability among prosecutors, and would eventually bring the benefit of fewer innocent people going to jail.

Without laws that mandate that a prosecutor brings all evidence, without bias, to the knowledge of the court, we’re sending a horrible message to America: That ego is more important than justice. That letting an accused-but-innocent man go free is somehow a “loss,” and should be avoided.

It doesn’t sound like justice at all, does it?