Official Misconduct

Overview

Prosecutors wield enor­mous pow­er in the death penal­ty sys­tem. That pow­er is sus­cep­ti­ble to abuse, as evi­denced by the numer­ous death penal­ty cas­es that have been reversed as a result of mis­con­duct by pros­e­cu­tors and police. Official mis­con­duct is a lead­ing cause of the wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions asso­ci­at­ed with death-row exonerations.

Prosecutorial mis­con­duct can take many forms. The most well-pub­li­cized type of mis­con­duct involves the with­hold­ing of poten­tial­ly excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, in vio­la­tion of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland. It can also encom­pass the exclu­sion of peo­ple of col­or from juries, in vio­la­tion of Batson v. Kentucky. All-white and near­ly all-white juries have been found to be more con­vic­tion-prone and more like­ly to impose death sentences.

Misconduct can also taint the evi­dence pre­sent­ed in a case, espe­cial­ly when wit­ness­es are coerced or threat­ened into tes­ti­fy­ing, or when pros­e­cu­tors know­ing­ly present false wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny or false or inflam­ma­to­ry argu­ment to the jury. Prosecutors are required to dis­close any ben­e­fits offered to wit­ness­es, includ­ing promis­es of reduced charges or sen­tences or oth­er favor­able treat­ment. They can vio­late the defen­dan­t’s rights and deprive the jury of need­ed infor­ma­tion by with­hold­ing this information. 

At Issue

While a grow­ing num­ber of pros­e­cu­tors’ offices have begun to address mis­con­duct through reform mea­sures and con­vic­tion integri­ty units, mis­con­duct con­tin­ues to affect a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cas­es. Many defen­dants who were con­vict­ed or sen­tenced to death as a result of undis­closed or unre­dressed mis­con­duct have already been exe­cut­ed, and oth­ers face the dif­fi­cult task of con­vinc­ing a court not only that mis­con­duct took place, but that it was harm­ful to their case. By its nature, much pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct — espe­cial­ly Brady vio­la­tions — involves con­ceal­ment, and ongo­ing attempts to keep the mis­con­duct hid­den mean that defen­dants lack the evi­dence to prove that their con­vic­tions were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly obtained through improper means.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC has com­piled resources and stud­ies from aca­d­e­m­ic researchers and orga­ni­za­tions like the Columbia Law School Broken System study, the Habeas Assistance Project, the Fair Punishment Project, and the National Registry of Exonerations. DPIC’s ground­break­ing 2013 report, The 2% Death Penalty, high­lights some of the ways in which overuse of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is linked to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al over­reach and misconduct. 

DPIC has iden­ti­fied more than 600 pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct rever­sals and exon­er­a­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es. This means that more than 6.3% of all death sen­tences imposed since 1972 have been reversed for pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct or result­ed in a mis­con­duct exon­er­a­tion. This group of cas­es pro­vides only a glimpse of the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct that occurs in the death penal­ty con­text. The list does not include cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors com­mit­ted mis­con­duct but courts denied relief on grounds of sup­posed imma­te­ri­al­i­ty or harm­less error. It also does not include mis­con­duct rever­sals of cap­i­tal­ly charged crimes that result­ed in life sentences.

For more infor­ma­tion on the cas­es includ­ed in this dataset, see DPIC’s back­ground doc­u­ment here. See a list of the cas­es here. We wel­come any addi­tions or cor­rec­tions. To cor­rect an error or pro­vide miss­ing infor­ma­tion, please noti­fy us by email and send doc­u­men­ta­tion of the cor­rect infor­ma­tion to prosecutorial-​accountability@​deathpenaltyinfo.​org.