Prosecutors protect themselves first

From Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

It's a big enough challenge when everybody plays things straight. But what about when you've got a prosecutor willing to lie? Then things are worse. And given that prosecutors often face no consequences for misconduct, it's not surprising that some are willing to lie about it.

That's what happened in the California case of The People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios. In the course of negotiating a plea bargain with the defendant, a Kern County prosecutor committed what the California appeals court called "outrageous government misconduct."
What prosecuting attorney Robert Murray did was produce a translated transcript of the defendant's interrogation to which he had added a fraudulent confession. The defense attorney got a copy of the audio tape of the interrogation, but it "ended abruptly." Eventually, Murray admitted to falsifying the transcript, presumably in the hopes of either coercing a plea deal, or ensuring a victory at trial.

When the trial judge found out, charges against the defendant were dismissed. Incredibly, the State of California, via Attorney General Kamala Harris, decided to appeal the case. The state's key argument: That putting a fake confession in the transcript wasn't "outrageous" because it didn't involve physical brutality, like chaining someone to a radiator and beating him with a hose.

Well, no. It just involved an officer of the court knowingly producing a fraudulent document in order to secure an illicit advantage. If Harris really thinks that knowingly producing a fraudulent document to secure an illicit advantage isn't "outrageous," then perhaps she slept through her legal ethics courses.

Harris's actions on this case alone should disqualify her from becoming the next Senator from California.

Meanwhile, Murray suffered no actual punishment for his wrongdoing. As a report in the New York Observer notes: "For reasons beyond comprehension, he still works for the District Attorney Lisa Green in Kern County, Calif." Murray does face the possibility of discipline from the California bar, but even disbarment would be a light punishment for knowingly producing a false document in a criminal proceeding.
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Worse yet, prosecutors are also immune from civil suit, under a Supreme Court-created doctrine called "absolute immunity" that is one of the greatest, though least discussed, examples of judicial activism in history. So prosecutors won't punish prosecutors, and victims of prosecutors' wrongdoing can't even sue them for damages. 
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In truth, I'm not terribly optimistic that we'll see any of these changes. Prosecutors are politically powerful, and neither judges nor legislators are interested in crossing swords with them in a big way. But until prosecutors are held accountable in the same way that the rest of us are, there will be no assurance that they're not breaking the law themselves. And that's no way to run a "justice" system.

What happened to Mike Nifong in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax Case, is exceedingly rare.  One doesn't have look very far to find out about another case of prosecutorial abuse, John Chisolm in Wisconsin, Mike Feuer in Los Angeles, and Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore.