A disappointing update to a troubling Batson case we’ve previously covered, Broadnax v. Davis. In a recent opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit did exactly what we feared it might, ruling
For the last 25 years, we’ve been living in the era of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). It’s been a period of unprecedented and excessive deference to
We write with good news. In a case we’ve covered for many years, sometimes pessimistically, the Arizona Supreme Court has taken strong action against prosecutorial misconduct. Recently, the court affirmed
Why did the paper of record downplay a judicial finding of a clearly racist jury selection process in Orleans, while including the “perspective” of discredited former District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro?
Even when the consequences of prosecutorial misconduct are extreme, the misconduct itself usually goes undiscovered and unpunished. It’s not only a problem of prosecutors playing gatekeeper to the very information
If Brandon Bernard’s scheduled federal execution is carried out on December 10, 2020, the egregious prosecutorial misconduct that secured his death sentence will never be reviewed in a court of
It’s hard to believe, but when the Open File started in 2012, the idea that prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in the criminal justice system was controversial. Today, it’s not. At all. Back then,
One of the hallmarks of American elections is the nearly exclusive media and public focus on national and “up-ballot” outcomes – even though locally-elected “down-ballot” officials, like District Attorneys, profoundly
At first read, the recent prosecutor accountability headlines announcing the two-year-law suspension of former Assistant District Attorney Glenn Kurtzrock for withholding key exculpatory evidence during a murder trial sound like
It’s hard to believe that a prosecutor with a track record of misconduct as long and as egregious as John Johnson’s, the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Glynn County, Georgia, is
