In criminal prosecutions, they'll often use a witness who themselves is under criminal indictment, with the understanding that if they give favorable testimony for the prosecution the prosecutor will use their influence to give them a much more lenient sentence (by making them appear less bad in front of the judge, and by lessening the charges). But this creates an inherent problem, because now the witness is under incentive to lie. And prosecutors use this all the time, knowing that the witness may likely be lying or exaggerating. In fact there have been numerous cases where it appears prosecutors have targeted innocent people just to try to coerce a testimony out of them for a different case, to prosecute someone else. I actually talked to one such individual. He was a Hispanic man, over 60 years old, brought across the border by his parents when he was only 4 years old. He couldn't speak any English and, at that time, was not allowed to speak any Spanish at school. When he was caught speaking Spanish his teacher washed his mouth with soap as punishment. Eventually he did go on to establish legal residency in his 30s. That's just a little background about him. One day he received a court summons to testify. He lived in New Mexico and the court summons was in California. He had never even been to California before. He told them that he didn't have the money to travel to California, in fact he didn't even have his own car. In reply he was told that they would arrange a plane ticket for him and someone to drive him. Two IRS agents picked him up in a rental car where he lived and drove him to the airport. Each one sat on either side of him during the plane flight, and once in Los Angeles he was put up in a low end hotel. It was a tax evasion case. Some small tax preparation business, the type that you'd find in a strip mall catering to lower end clientele, apparently was helping people evade paying taxes by how the tax form was being filled out. The company claimed to their customers what they were doing was legal and that they had figured out a special loophole, but the government disagreed. The man was called in to testify against another man who was one of the owners of this company. He said he had never even met him before, or even talked to him. The only thing linking them was an exchange of two or three emails, where they discussed how to avoid paying tax through the supposed loophole. He had never paid for any business services from this company. (He was what you might call a radical Libertarian and ideologically opposed to taxes, that being the reason he was interested in that discussion, but he had not cheated on his tax form or tried to make use of this loophole) It wasn't enough for the prosecutor. Soon afterwards this Hispanic man was arrested and charged with things he didn't fully understand, relating to tax evasion and the case against the tax preparation business. Obviously he couldn't afford bail. He says they never presented evidence to him that he did anything wrong, or evidence that would back up the charges. After being held in a California jail for nearly two months he received a huge stack of paper from the prosecutor's department that was claimed to consist of the supposed evidence against him. It was mostly just an endless table of numbers in a financial records table, with no explanation about how any of it supposedly constituted evidence he had committed a crime. The pile of papers were over two inches thick, and there was no way to make any sense out of what it meant (prosecutors often do this on purpose). If he had wanted to go to trial he would have been in jail for 9 months, while all the preparations were being made and the public defender was getting ready. Instead he was offered a plea deal from the prosecution: plead guilty and be sentenced to 14 months. He was very angry, and would have stubbornly held out because of his principles, but in the end he said he took the plea deal, because he had a grandchild at home who needed someone to look after him, and he couldn't risk being in prison for several years. This was a vulnerable man who wasn't really important and no one would care if he was in prison. The circumstances of the case point pointed towards the strong possibility of this being punishment because he didn't give the testimony the prosecutor wanted, after all that money had been spent to fly him there. He was pressured on two different occasions to provide incriminating testimony against the other man in the email he had never met or had any financial dealings with. It's not that difficult to make witnesses and incriminating testimony appear out of thin air when a prosecutor wants to prosecute. Individuals who are a low down scum can be picked out and made to sing along with the prosecutor's tune. They'll do anything to save their own hide. It's never explicitly said but the prosecutor will often make it clear to them what will happen if they don't provide the testimony the prosecutor wants. In other cases, it may just be something they're expected to assume. A false witness is hardly worrying about being punished for perjury when the prosecutor on the case is the very person putting them up to it. Lawyers are very careful, they'll avoid blatantly committing perjury themselves or saying anything illegal, but rather are very subtle and with their words. An unethical prosecutor doesn't need to actually say "Say what I want or you'll be prosecuted" to get that message across. Why would a prosecutor do this? Oftentimes because they believe an organization is guilty but they don't have quite enough evidence to definitively prove it, so they'll go to any length to get a conviction.
I agree. As soon as I knew a witness had been offered a deal in exchange for testimony I would figure that testimony is worthless. Poor people will plea to almost anything as they will do more time in jail if they don't, even if found not guilty a year or two later.
The sad part is that the average American jury sees the prosecutor as an avenging angel, not as a corrupt bureaucrat. The corruption of the jury process has been a very large factor in the many failures of the US criminal justice system.
An analogy could be made to old times when they used to use torture to extract confessions. Sure the prisoner could be made to talk, and made to implicate accomplices, but you wouldn't necessarily know that what they said was the truth. Many of the prisoners would make up any story to try to end the torture. The same thing is true with witnesses who are under indictment. When you put pressure on them give testimony, it's very possible they'll just make things up if they don't have anything true to reveal. A prosecutor might think the individual knows something. But the prosecutor might not care that much whether the testimony the witness gives is really true or not, as long as it helps them win the case. Not all prosecutors are bad. But they put so many people away to prison that they become numb and emotionally detached to the process and the lives that are affected. It becomes just like a game to them, a game they play to win. It's all just words, after all, and they're not personally the one who has to drag the defendant off to prison and guard them there. It's like a soldier in a war, if they shoot enough enemy soldiers eventually they become numb to the killing and it becomes second nature for them to kill without giving it a second thought. And prosecutors are rarely held responsible for their misconduct. It's almost sort of like an exclusive club where they all look out for each other. If you were a prosecutor would you want to make enemies with someone that could get you put in jail? There was a case in Texas a while back where the governor threatened to cut funding to the state's justice department if they did not dismiss one of their district attorneys. The department responded back by getting the governor indicted, and he had to have a criminal picture and fingerprints taken. The ordeal ended up costing him over $2 million in personal attorney costs.
This appears to be one example, out of a case of many from a bad prosecutor: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ons-legal-past-democrats-trump-administration Looks like there was a lot of corruption in Alabama in the 80s.
This article isn't specifically about using criminal witnesses, but it does show the types of coercive pressure prosecutors can use to try to make people testify, even when it may be an abuse of their power. New Orleans prosecutors, under former District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, used unethical tactics, including the issuance of fake subpoenas and the jailing of crime victims who wouldn't cooperate with investigators. Cannizzaro's successor, Jason Williams, agreed to the appointment of a special monitor to ensure his office complies with terms of a settlement. These terms include detailed policies written to ensure prosecutors don't use "coercive or unlawful means to secure cooperation from crime victims or witnesses." The agreement also states that the prosecutor's office will not seek "material witness" warrants ordering a crime victim to provide information "unless exceptional circumstances apply." Cannizzaro had ended his staff's use of phony subpoenas soon after the practice was exposed by an online news outlet. He defended the jailing of witnesses, including victims, as a rarely used but sometimes necessary practice. Renata Singleton said she was jailed after she declined to pursue charges against a man who shattered her cellphone during a fight. She told a representative of Cannizzaro's office she considered the situation resolved and did not want to risk having to take time off from work to pursue the case. She was also among at least three people who said they had received fraudulent subpoenas insisting they speak with prosecutors. An anti-crime group called "Silence is Violence" claimed its leader was threatened with prosecution for complaining about practices in the district attorney's office. Settlement ends lawsuit over fake subpoenas, jailed victims, Kevin McGill, Associated Press, October 5, 2021 The misconduct was exposed in a 2017 lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo said that some of the claims in the lawsuit "shock the conscience." Also notice how this lawsuit took 3 years to wind its way through the court.
Correct. That is how my cousin's husband became a paralegal. However, understand that the purpose of a trial court is to try the facts of a case. Juries weigh the credibility of witnesses, even more so when there is conflicting witness testimony and/or witness testimony conflicts with documentary, physical, and/or forensic evidence. Should juries be made aware that a plea has been struck with a witness? Absolutely. Should juries be made aware of any witnesses' prior criminal history? Sometimes it comes out, sometimes it doesn't, but I believe jurors should be aware. In the case of my cousin's husband, both the prosecutor and the police threatened and intimidated all of his witnesses to keep them from testifying, except the family of the family-owned diner where my cousin and her husband and his biker-gang buddies and their wives and girlfriends were the time of the murder. The prosecutor alone threatened the family diner owners into shutting them down. The prosecutor also intimidated witnesses for the prosecution, and then successfully used spousal privilege to prevent my cousin from testifying. My great-aunt did testify, because my cousin called her collect from the diner that was east of Arcadia and several counties away from Tampa (Hillsborough County) where the murder occurred and just a few minutes before the time of the murder not to mention my cousin called collect from Daytona Beach earlier in the day where they were from some big biker rally. You need to get rid of qualified immunity for both police and prosecutors, but that will only happen if your State legislature enacts a law to over-ride qualified immunity. You have to understand the purpose of qualified immunity was initially created through a court decision and its intent was to protect prosecutors, and ostensibly the public-at-large, from frivolous lawsuits. If you wanna know how frivolous, go read some of them. "I didn't get cheese on my bologna sammich." "We don't have cable TV." "My bed is too soft/hard." No kidding. Later, qualified immunity was extended to police. Eventually, qualified immunity morphed into total and complete protection for prosecutors and police against any lawsuit, whether the lawsuit had merit or not. You might say, wait a minute, the 1st Amendment guarantees the right to redress grievances. I would say, hire a lawyer and sue your school district for failing to educate you properly. The Constitution does not apply to the States. It only applies to the federal government. The 1st Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law....." The 1st Amendment does not say, "The States shall make no law..." nor does it say, "The several States shall make no law...." It is clear from the Constitution that Congress means only the US Senate and US House of Representatives, and that when the Constitution refers to the States, it says either "the several States" or "States." But, wait, didn't the 14th Amendment bind the States to the Constitution? Well, yes and no. The 14 Amendment bound the States only to the 5th Amendment, and even then only to one singular clause in the 5th Amendment, namely, "...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Note that the 4th Amendment and the remaining clauses in the 5th Amendment did not apply to the States. That's why you had Brown v. Mississippi, Terry v Ohio, Mapp v Ohio, and, course, Miranda v Arizona. Those Supreme Court decisions bound the States to the 4th Amendment and to the "....and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense" Clause of the 6th Amendment. Later Supreme Court cases bound the States to the "speedy trial" clause of the 6th Amendment. No State is bound by this clause in the 5th Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.... There are States that do not have grand juries. The Supreme Court has said grand juries are necessary to comply with the Due Process Clause. About a century ago, lawyers successfully argued that "my client has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but my client can have none of those unless my client also has the right to Free Speech." And so the States became bound to the Free Speech Clause, and also the Free Press Clause, but not the Religion, Assembly or Redress of Grievance Clauses. That's why your State legislature needs to enact a law, or amend its constitution to get rid of the qualified immunity nonsense, because the States are not bound to the Redress of Grievances Clause.
I completely agree that qualified immunity has been a bad policy for all these years. It has harmed the relationship between the citizens and the police. Recall that Section 10 of Article I does very much specifically apply to the states, noting in several places that "No State shall...."
Good catch. I should have qualified that by saying the Bill of Rights. The body of the Constitution does apply to the States, because its purpose is to set up federalism, or dual sovereignty. That's why you have federal courts and State courts. You used to have a federal army and State armies, but not any more. The Declaration creates 13 separate States, each sovereign in their own right, but an intelligent enemy would attack them piecemeal and they'd fall like dominoes. They knew a unitary-State wouldn't work since there was nothing homogeneous about the Americas. A unitary-State only works when you have a homogeneous population, or nation. If you try to crow-bar multiple cultures or nations into a unitary-State, all you get is sorrow, strife, conflict and ultimately the State fails. There is nowhere on this Earth where that has not been true in the last 7,000 years. People don't realize that Spain is 9 different ethnic groups and one of them, the Catalans, recently rebelled. That's what always happens. Without fail. And, it ain't over in Spain yet. Even the indigenous tribes here were smart enough to know that. Liberals try to crow-bar them into "Native Americans" but they were and are today 537 separate nations. There were 3 or 4 federations and twice as many confederations when Europeans began migrating here. Where were the unitary-States? The tribes all went to war over that. So, the Framers opted for a confederacy, but it was too weak. The US paid $Millions in today's dollars to the Barbary Coast States and to France as bribes to keep them from raiding US merchant, cargo and naval vessels, but even that didn't work. And you paid those bribes/tributes for 24 years. "...to the shores of Tripoli..." in the Marine Corps hymn? The Marines went to Tripoli to let the Barbary Coast States know they weren't done paying bribes/tributes. In the Quasi-War with France, which ended in 1805, the US sunk or captured 96 French warships, plus recovered nearly 2 dozen US merchant, cargo and navy ships the French navy had pirated. At least 9 of those warships were 76 guns or more, including 2 with 92 or 94 guns. Yeah, those were like cruisers and battleships. When the confederation failed, they chose a federation because it was most likely to lead to peace and stability. The States are sovereign unto themselves, and they have all the inherent rights of a sovereign power, but they agreed to give up some -- but not all -- of those powers to speak as one voice. So, they gave up the right to wage war, engage in diplomacy, enter into treaties, coin money, grant letters of credit etc etc etc under the federation.
