phill4paul
02-19-2014, 03:02 PM
I ain't holding my breath.....
Virginia prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence and defied a federal judge in a death-penalty case. Will the Supreme Court let them get away with it?
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is one of only two* current members of the United States Supreme Court with experience as a prosecutor and she has often said, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that this background pushes her to expect more and better from the prosecutors whose hands are forever dirtied by the cases they handle. If she is serious about this, she will able to demonstrate it Friday morning when she meets in private conference with her colleagues to discuss a Virginia case the Court has been asked to accept for review.
Wolfe v. Clarke is about a murder conviction and death sentence that unraveled under the force of the truth. It is a case about state prosecutors getting caught hiding exculpatory evidence, and getting scolded for it by the federal courts, and then violating the federal court order sanctioning them by threatening a witness and spoiling the retrial of a man they helped to wrongly convict. It is a case where prosecutors did all of this, right up to the brief they filed with the justices, without an evident shred of public contrition for their improper conduct.
If the Supreme Court lets Virginia get away with this, your fair trial rights will never be the same.
All of this makes me think one of two things will likely happen to Wolfe v. Clarke. Either at least four justices will agree that the prosecutorial misconduct that occurred here is so egregious that it merits review, in which case we’ll get an oral argument later this year and a ruling sometime after that. Or the Court will turn its back on this case and we will get a pointed dissent from the denial of certiorari from Justice Sotomayor in which she laments the Court's continuing abdication of its role as guardian of Sixth Amendment rights.
more: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/another-chance-for-the-justices-to-say-no-to-prosecutorial-misconduct/283731/
Virginia prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence and defied a federal judge in a death-penalty case. Will the Supreme Court let them get away with it?
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is one of only two* current members of the United States Supreme Court with experience as a prosecutor and she has often said, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that this background pushes her to expect more and better from the prosecutors whose hands are forever dirtied by the cases they handle. If she is serious about this, she will able to demonstrate it Friday morning when she meets in private conference with her colleagues to discuss a Virginia case the Court has been asked to accept for review.
Wolfe v. Clarke is about a murder conviction and death sentence that unraveled under the force of the truth. It is a case about state prosecutors getting caught hiding exculpatory evidence, and getting scolded for it by the federal courts, and then violating the federal court order sanctioning them by threatening a witness and spoiling the retrial of a man they helped to wrongly convict. It is a case where prosecutors did all of this, right up to the brief they filed with the justices, without an evident shred of public contrition for their improper conduct.
If the Supreme Court lets Virginia get away with this, your fair trial rights will never be the same.
All of this makes me think one of two things will likely happen to Wolfe v. Clarke. Either at least four justices will agree that the prosecutorial misconduct that occurred here is so egregious that it merits review, in which case we’ll get an oral argument later this year and a ruling sometime after that. Or the Court will turn its back on this case and we will get a pointed dissent from the denial of certiorari from Justice Sotomayor in which she laments the Court's continuing abdication of its role as guardian of Sixth Amendment rights.
more: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/another-chance-for-the-justices-to-say-no-to-prosecutorial-misconduct/283731/