Lawyer Reveals Secret, Toppling Death Sentence

[acmavm]

Daryl R. Atkins, third from left, in 2005. His case led to a decision barring execution of the mentally retarded. Thursday, his sentence was commuted to life based on prosecutorial misconduct.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/us/19death.html?th&emc=th

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 19, 2008

<snip>

For 10 years, Leslie P. Smith, a Virginia lawyer, reluctantly kept a secret because the authorities on legal ethics told him he had no choice, even though his information could save the life of a man on death row, one whose case had led to a landmark Supreme Court decision.

Mr. Smith believed that prosecutors had committed brazen misconduct by coaching a witness and hiding it from the defense, but the Virginia State Bar said he was bound by legal ethics rules not to bring up the matter. He shared his qualms and pangs of conscience with only one man, Timothy G. Clancy, who had worked on the case with him.

Clancy and I, when we were alone together, would reminisce about this and more or less renew our vows of silence,” Mr. Smith told a judge last month. “We felt that there was nothing that could be done.”

But the situation changed last year, when Mr. Smith took one more run at the state bar’s ethics counsel. “I was upset by the conduct of the prosecutor,” Mr. Smith wrote in an anguished letter, “and the situation has bothered me ever since.”

<snip>

For 15 minutes, Mr. Smith said, prosecutors coaxed and coached Mr. Jones to produce testimony against Mr. Atkins that did match the evidence. They flipped over a table and pretended it was a truck. “We used a chair, or something like that, to simulate the open door,” Mr. Smith testified, “because only one of the doors on the truck would open.”

When the tape was turned back on, Mr. Jones’s story bolstered the case against Mr. Atkins as the triggerman. The Atkins defense did not learn of the coaching session for a decade, when Mr. Smith was freed from his ethical obligation not to prejudice his own client’s case. Mr. Jones was sentenced to life in prison, and his case is concluded.

-MORE-

And we're supposed to trust the American justice system for what reason?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. It is not a Justice system.

It is a revenge system, a profit-generation system, a news-generation system, a system for political advancement of the prosecutorial class, a system of scapegoating and a system to enforce a socio-economic order, not to mention Bread & Circuses.

"Justice" has nothing to do with it. It's merely the cover story.

[acmavm]

2. Very true. I once had a lawyer (for a civil matter) who told me fair and right

and the legal system have nothing to do with each other.