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Department of Justice Creates Office Targeting Prosecutorial Misconduct

By Steve Hall

"Justice Dept. office to punish prosecutors' misconduct," is the USA Today report by Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy. The Justice Department created a new internal watchdog office on Tuesday to make sure federal prosecutors face swifter and more consistent punishment if investigators find that they committed misconduct. The change follows a USA TODAY investigation that identified 201 criminal cases in which federal courts had found that Justice Department prosecutors had broken laws or ethics rules ? violations that put innocent people in jail and set guilty people free. Although each of the cases was so serious that judges overturned convictions or rebuked the prosecutors for misconduct, USA TODAY found that the department often took years to investigate what went wrong, and that prosecutors faced little risk of being fired...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 19, 2011 (boomark / email).