Do prosecutors have the right to frame you for a crime?
My gut reaction was, “no, of course not.” This is the United States of America. That doesn’t happen here.
Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple.
A case brought before the Supreme Court Wednesday, Pottawattamie County v McGee, will test the theory being argued by prosecutors that, “there is no freestanding right not to be framed.” The case stems from case of Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee who spent a quarter of a century in prison before the Iowa Supreme Court overturned their conviction because the star witness was a “liar and perjurer.”
The details of this case are worth reading in of themselves and can be found at Outside the Beltway, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and wikio.
For this blog, I want to focus on a statement in the brief filed by Iowa prosecutors that states, “”THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional ‘Right Not To Be Framed.’”
“This is a very interesting situation involving immunity,” according to attorney/reader Bill. “I think most people’s gut reaction is that if you frame someone, you should be held responsible, even if, ESPECIALLY IF, you, yourself, are a prosecutor. I agree. But as a society, we have to be VERY careful so that other prosecutors, in whom we place an amazing amount of responsibility in getting the true bad guys off the streets, don’t start running scared. I think that if you are going to allow these prosecutors to be tried and possibly convicted, which we should, we need to impose a VERY HIGH burden of proof for the conviction, and we need to be real sure that this stays in the judicial realm and out of the political realm.”
The Supreme Court says that prosecutors have immunity to lawsuits for their actions during a trial, for just the reasons Bill cites; prosecutors need to be able to do their jobs without fear of suits that would otherwise follow cases in which defendants were found not guilty.
What stands out here is that Harrington and McGhee argue that prosecutors on their case worked alongside police in building the case, before the indictments were issued. The Supreme Court has granted immunity only after an indictment. According to Harrington and McGhee’s attorney, prosecutors have the same limited immunity as police, and thus can be sued if they violate a person’s constitutional rights.
I agree with Bill’s opinion that prosecutors should be liable for falsifying evidence. The challenge will be protecting prosecutors from revenge suits.
Americans should know what is in our Constitution and we should also understand the complexity of our legal structure. This is a great case to watch to understand just how far we go in this nation to protect an individual’s rights. That Harrington and McGhee were prosecuted should remind us of how far we have come and how far back we could slide if we are not vigilante.
