Yet again?
Somebody needs to take an ethics refresher course....
Somebody needs to take an ethics refresher course….
‘Long about a month ago, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by a federal judge on the topic of prosecutors’ duty to disclose. He said he was the judge in Ted Stevens’ trial which turned out to be a travesty of justice because the prosecutors failed to disclose potentially exculpatory information.He went on to say that he was shocked in that case that he had no authority to effectively punish the offenders, and that there is a particular litany which a judge can - in his view, always should - go through at the start of each trial, which I think he called a “Brady Warning” after a SCOTUS case. It seems odd that the judge would have to tell the prosecutors explicitly in court what their obligations are, but without it the prosecutors can get away with stuff.
The article went on to say that New York State (actually the chief judge there) is making the issuing of a Brady Warning de rigueur in all state courts there. And that the author had high hopes that this precedent would ultimately be followed nationwide.