Prosecutorial Misconduct

Justice is blind. The very essence of this statement explains it all. True justice doesn’t see wealth, color, or gender. Equality is found in her scales so that her verdict may be fare and balanced. Our Justice System today, as we know it, has moved farther than its predecessor at the start of this nation. Long are we from witch-hunts and people being burned at the stake. Just a few hundred years ago people were summarily executed with little burden of proof and sometimes no trial whatsoever. Over the next five centuries, we evolved in our humanity and the treatment of others. Our founding fathers and those after them continuously worked hard to ensure justice for all by creating documents and laws that would guide us to our known system today.
In other words, DAs and ADAs are allowed to take a case to trial, plea it out, and even drop the charges. Accountability in this ethical endeavor is not only essential to the purity of the justice system, it’s vital. If left unchecked, a prosecutor could potentially bend the rules to conform to their own wants and needs in a case. This bending and breaking of the rules is called Prosecutorial Misconduct. Prosecutorial Misconduct is defined as, "An illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropriate
Specifically bribery, extortion, and suppression of evidence; these violations go against the oaths of office that each attorney took when he or she was sworn in to uphold the constitution and its laws. The American Bar Association acts as the regulatory ethics board to monitor and handle complaints against the integrity of an attorney. According to the “Innocence Project” most attorneys responsible for misconduct often go un punished unless the direct evidence exist to prove intent. One such case involved a young man by the name of Timothy. Timothy Brian Cole died in 1999, serving a 25-year sentence for a rape of a Texas Tech University student. The interesting part of this case was he wrote several letters declaring his innocence claiming he didn’t commit the rape. Cole was convicted based on a black and white photo line up where he was identified. Cole was quickly convicted in court with minimal evidence or testimony. Cole maintained his innocence the entire time claiming he was at home studying and no where near the scene of the crime. 10 years later, after the statute of limitations had expired another Texas inmate wrote two letters to the Lubbock Police Department admitting to the rape that Cole was convicted of. These letters went unread. Timothy Cole died in 1999 while in prison. Nearly 20 years after the offense, DNA evidence that was collected from the crime scene was analyzed