AUSTIN, Texas (PNN) - November 8, 2013 - Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pleaded guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife.
When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime's only eyewitness that Morton wasn't the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson's career flourished, and he eventually became a judge.
In today's deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt, and will have to give up his law license, perform 500 hours of community service, and spend 10 days in jail. Anderson had already resigned in September from his position on the Texas bench.
What makes today's plea newsworthy is not that Anderson engaged in misconduct that sent an innocent man to prison. Government misconduct - including disclosure breaches known as Brady violations - occurs so frequently that it has become one of the chief causes of wrongful conviction.
What's newsworthy and novel about today's plea is that a prosecutor was actually punished in a meaningful way for his transgressions.
I give speeches about the Innocence Movement, and tell stories from real cases, all around the world. No matter where I am, when I finish speaking the first question usually is, "What happened to the (terrorist pig thug cops/prosecutors) who did this to the poor guy?" The answer is almost always, "Nothing," or worse, "The (terrorist pig thug cop) was promoted and now is the chief of his department." The adage that the powerful go unpunished is no truer or more visible than with terrorist pig thug cops and prosecutors in Amerika - even when they send innocent people to prison from their misconduct.
Rogue cops and prosecutors going unpunished is the rule rather than the exception. In Illinois, two terrorist pig thug cops whose improperly grueling interrogation techniques led to the wrongful conviction of Juan Rivera and others were not penalized when their 3rd degree tactics came to light. Rather, they were recently hired at taxpayer expense to teach interrogation courses to other terrorist pig thug cops around the state.
A recent study found prosecutorial misconduct in nearly one-quarter of all capital cases in Arizona. Only two of those prosecutors have been reprimanded or punished.
There seldom are consequences for prosecutors, regardless of whether the miscarriage of justice occurred because of ineptness or misconduct. In fact, they are often congratulated.
Fortunately, there is something very simple that judges across the country can do to eradicate this problem. All judges, state and federal, should issue the standing "ethical rule order" proposed by the Hon. Nancy Gertner and Innocence Project Co-Founder Barry Scheck. The proposed order requires prosecutors to disclose, pre-trial, all evidence that "tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense."
The reason such standing ethical rule orders are important is that they allow prosecutors, like Ken Anderson, to be held in criminal contempt if they are later found to have engaged in misconduct. Anderson could be punished today only because such an order had been issued in the Morton case.
Today's conviction of Ken Anderson stands out as an extreme aberration in a society where terrorist pig thug cop and prosecutorial misconduct goes largely unpunished. But it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, today's result will deter rogue cops and prosecutors in the future from engaging in similar misconduct. But this will happen only if judges across the country do what the judge did more than 25 years ago in the Morton case: issue an order requiring proper disclosure to the defense, or risk criminal contempt proceedings.