Doing Justice? I Think NOT!
Many of you may be aware of the unfortunate ruling recently by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals regarding death row inmate Charles Dean Hood. Attorneys for Mr. Hood appealed his conviction when it was discovered that the district judge who presided over his trial had engaged in a clandestine sexual affair with the district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Hood. Although there were rumors circulating about the secrete affair at the time of Mr. Hood’s trial, his defense attorney had no actual proof of the affair until after the trial when a former assistant district attorney executed a signed affidavit acknowledging the affair.
The Court of Criminal Appeals overruled Mr. Hood’s appeal of his conviction, which focused on the clearly compromised impartiality of the sitting judge. The basis for overturning the appeal was that Mr. Hood did not raise the issue of the affair in a timely fashion. The defense argued that they could not have raised the issue because at the time the appeal began they had no actual proof of the affair. Today, the editorial staff of the Dallas Morning News opined about the decision in an editorial entitled, “Justice Disgraced.”
The high court’s ruling is clearly a disgrace for no other reason that it cast a larger shadow on the Texas Criminal Justice System already suffering the strains of wrongful convictions and rampant prosecutorial misconduct ( i.e., Dallas fake drug scandal, DNA exoneration(s), etc.). For more information on the problems with the Texas Justice System see the Innocent Project.
What struck me most about the recent Hood case was the reaction from the Collin County District Attorney’s office where the prosecutor in charge of the appeal called the ruling a, “significant procedural victory.” That statement is appalling on its face as criminal justice should be about “justice” and not “procedural” wrangling such as in civil law. However, this attitude of “procedure” over “justice” is fast becoming a major problems spreading trough the Collin County District Attorney’s Office. My partner, Hunter Biederman, recently wrote about a similar issue we experience with prosecutors from Collin County. To read Hunter’s article click this link.
Prosecutors have an affirmative duty to not seek conviction but to do justice. This mandate is found in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 2.01 which reads, in part, “It shall be the primary duty of all prosecuting attorneys…not to convict, but to see that justice is done.” Don’t misunderstand the tone of this article. As a former prosecutor from Collin County I know that the majority of the prosecutors there are talented, ethical and conscious attorneys. However, as with any office, there are a few instances where individual prosecutors have lost there sense of purpose and have employed tactics that run counter to doing “justice.” Although, I will not name names (YET!) below please find a few situations that I have experienced with my clients where prosecutors have employed tactics that were counter to the interest of justice.
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