I appeared on ABC News (Australia) to discuss the shocking dismissal of involuntary manslaughter charges in New Mexico today on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found “the State’s withholding of the evidence was willful and deliberate.” She further held, “Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice.”
Special Prosecutor Kari Morrisey, who took the stand in an attempt to defend her conduct, is the person who was responsible for the misconduct. In a move that I have never seen in 30 years as a lawyer in criminal cases, her co-prosecutor (Erlinda Johnson) quit today in protest, rather than stand up for the misconduct of Special Prosecutor Morrisey.
Some things that I hope people will remember:
Halyna Hutchins was killed and her family suffers;
Prosecutors and law enforcement officers have an obligation to seek justice, not merely convictions;
High profile dismissals like this one are the exception, not the rule; and
This dismissal for prosecutorial misconduct in failing to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence also undercuts the prior conviction of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who is currently sitting in prison.
The prosecutors in the Alec Baldwin case have denied justice to the family of Ms. Hutchins and everyone involved. Alec Baldwin will never face a jury on the very important (and now never-to-be-answered) question of whether he was criminally responsible for the death of Ms. Hutchins. I think that it is highly possible that the conviction of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will be vacated by Judge Sommer or reversed on appeal.
In Berger v. United States, the Supreme Court laid out the special duties of prosecution and law enforcement — duties that Special Prosecutor Morrissey and the members of the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department utterly failed to discharge:
The [prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
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