The Department of Injustice

Writing about the structural role of the DOJ for CounterPunch

Good morning,

I hope everyone is doing well. I have a new article today (May 14th) at CounterPunch, discussing some of the ways that the DOJ violates Americans’ most fundamental rights every day. Below is an excerpt, but I hope you’ll give it a read:

One of the most frequent and persistent themes of the literature of prosecutorial misconduct is the illegal and unethical withholding of exculpatory evidence. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1963 case Brady v. Maryland, the government must share evidence tending to show the innocence of the accused. In Brady, the government intentionally withheld an extrajudicial statement given by a companion of the defendant, in which the companion admitted to the killing at issue in the case. The defendant was sentenced to death.

The Court held “that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” But today, Brady violations are practically ubiquitous in the system and almost always go unpunished. Many of these violations have cost innocent people decades of their lives, and some defendants have paid the ultimate price, executed for crimes they did not commit, while prosecutors knowingly withheld evidence and committed frauds on the court.

Thank you, as always, for your time.

Dave