Can State's Attorney Prosecutors Be Held Liable For Wrongful Convictions?
According to an article published today on reason.com - "its still an open question." They explain:
In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Pottawattamie v. McGhee in order to resolve it. The facts of the case aren't in dispute. In 1978, a retired Iowa police captain was killed by a shotgun blast while working as a private security guard. Prosecutors Joseph Hrvol and David Richter then worked with local police to manufacture evidence against the two chief suspects, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, Jr. The two men were convicted of the murder in separate trials, and each was sentenced to life without parole. The Iowa Supreme Court set aside both convictions in 2003, citing exculpatory evidence pointing to another suspect that was withheld from defense counsel in both trials. Both men were eventually released from prison. Seeking damages for losing 25 years of their lives, they brought a civil rights suit against the police, prosecutors, and county that convicted them.
[Currently prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity, but , t]he Court has put one small dent in the absolute immunity shield enjoyed by prosecutors. In the 1993 case Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, it ruled that prosecutors who act as investigators in a case are subject to the more limited qualified immunity afforded to police officers with respect to the actions they take as investigators. Qualified immunity is still a high hurdle; it doesn't exactly open prosecutors up to a barrage of lawsuits. A claimant must show that a state actor violated his "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights," as those rights are understood by a "reasonable person" (as distinguished from a legal professional). Under Buckley, prosecutors who violate the clear constitutional rights of a defendant while serving an investigatory role can be sued, but once they assume the role of a prosecutor, they're immune.So should prosecutors be able to skirt wrongful conviction lawsuits based on immunity? Should the police be left to hold the bag alone? Prosecutors will tell you they rely on information given to them by the officers when they prosecute their cases - and that they have no role in investigating the case. But is that really the case? Prosecutors clearly want to get convictions and take full control of a case after it is approved for felony charges (if not earlier). They actually spend more time with the case then do the officers. We are not advocating suing anyone - we are just highlighting that is not fair to simply accuse the police in wrongful conviction lawsuits. They take their guidance from the state's attorneys. The only difference between them and the police - absolute immunity. State's attorneys have it and police do not.
