And What Happens to the Perpetrators of These Crimes? Nothing. They Have Immunity.

by Bill Anderson, LRC Blog

Nearly every day, we read about new exonerations of people wrongfully convicted of crimes, and in almost all of those cases, the main reason for the wrongful conviction was prosecutorial misconduct. Two exonerations in Texas and California highlight the role of prosecutors who wanted convictions more than they wanted the truth. We read:

(Obie) Anthony spent 17 years in prison after he was convicted of shooting and killing a man outside a brothel in Los Angeles. The prosecution's star witness, a pimp, eventually recanted his testimony. The pimp was offered a lighter sentence for his own crimes in order to testify against Anthony, the L.A. Times reports, and no one else at the crime positively identified Anthony as the shooter. Anthony said he was never there.

The case of Michael Morton, wrongfully imprisoned for 25 years for the murder of his wife is even worse and highlights just how callous and dishonest American prosecutors have become:

Morton, a Texan who spent nearly 25 years in prison on charges of beating his wife to death, was also released on Tuesday after a long campaign by the Innocence Project to uncover evidence they say was deliberately suppressed by the prosecution.

DNA testing on a bandana found near the scene of the crime found blood from Morton's wife and an as-yet-unnamed convict who is suspected of killing another woman in a similar way two years later, while Morton was in jail. (When Morton was convicted in 1987, current DNA testing didn't exist.) The Innocence Project says the prosecution hid from the jury that Morton's three-year-old son, who witnessed the murder, told a relative that a "monster"--not his father--was the perpetrator. The jury was also never told that Morton's wife's purse was stolen and her credit cards used in the weeks after her death, when Morton was in custody, the Innocence Project says.

Prosecutors for many years blocked DNA testing, and even after the results were made known continued to concoct wacky theories that would justify their own version of events, versions that violated the Laws of Time and Space. In other words, they wanted a conviction, and it was easier to get one against Morton than to find the real killer.

These atrocities occur for many reasons, but the main one is that prosecutors have immunity for any actions they committed while doing their "duties" as prosecutors. That means that outside people who actually have been harmed by wrongful prosecutorial actions cannot sue their tormenters and must depend upon the state apparatus itself to punish these prosecutors, something that almost NEVER happens.

This is the inevitable result of leaving matters of "justice" in the hands of the State, and specifically protected state employees who always will favor their careers more than actual justice. Lew Rockwell in an excellent commentary a few days ago wrote:

...the rise and entrenchment of the American police state are rarely questioned. Public opinion is mostly happy with the whole thing. There can never be too much prosecutorial power, never too many police, never too many prisons, never sentences that are too long. No one says: "We should not be so tough." The entire ethos is the opposite.

He then gets to the heart of the issue, and that is the granting of these powers to the State:

How could this have happened in America? Well, looking back, it seems that it all stems from a single flaw: the belief that the most essential institution in society is the state that protects us from criminality and must maintain a monopoly over justice. Some of the greatest defenders of freedom otherwise have been happy to make this one concession to the state. And this one concession is now a major source of our undoing as a free people.

People have told me that unless we grant prosecutors immunity, they "cannot do their jobs in fear of being sued." Well, if "doing their jobs" is subornation of perjury, lying to the courts, making false and inflammatory public statements and hiding exculpatory evidence -- something prosecutors do on a regular basis -- then maybe we might be better off if prosecutors DID have to fear the lawsuit.

NOTE: One of the prosecutors in the Morton case, Ken Anderson, now is a Texas state district judge. And people wonder why the "justice" system in this country has run off the rails?

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