Prosecutorial Misconduct Essay

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Pages: 3

Prosecutorial Misconduct
Prosecutorial Misconduct is an issue in the United States Justice System and there are ways to stop this misconduct from happening. Prosecutor misconduct is conduct which violates court rules or ethical standards of law practice (US Legal, Inc.). It is an attempt to persuade the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropriate punishment. "According to the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, multiple studies over the past 50 years show that courts punished prosecutorial misconduct in less than two percent of cases where it occurred" (The New York Times). That is one example why this is an issue in the justice system. The people that are greatly effected by this problem are the people that are
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In the Morton case, Anderson kept evidence out of the case (Levs). The transcript of the police interview with Eric Morton, Morton's son, who was three years old and witnessed the murder of his mother, stated that his father was not home during the crime (Lindell). Another piece of evidence includes a police report about neighbors seeing a suspicious man with a van parked near the Morton home and some also saw the same man walk into the woods behind the home (Lindell). When prosecutors play around with crucial evidence in the case, it could lead to someone being wrongly convicted. Prosecutors that keep crucial evidence hidden, usually do it to help their side in the case.
Prosecutors often shape their cases by hiding evidence (“Is Prosecutorial Misconduct a Widespread Problem…”). Ken Anderson hid evidence from the Morton case which could have helped Morton fight for his innocence (Levs). Prosecutors who make honest mistakes can avoid them in the future, but those who cause misconduct should be handled properly (Innocence Project). The reasons mentioned above clearly state how horrible prosecutorial misconduct is and how it affects the justice system. Unfortunately, this issue leads to people being falsely accused of crimes they did not commit and it needs to be