The U.S. Supreme Court began a new term this morning. The Court declined to hear a case involving serious questions about prosecutorial conduct. Justice Sotomayor issued a statement reaffirming that prosecutors should be more interested in achieving justice than winning cases.
The case in question was Kaur v. Maryland. Raminder Kaur raised a question of ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal. The trial court ordered her attorneys to turn over everything in their files, including privileged conversations between Ms. Kaur and the attorneys.
As a result, prosecutors were able to read almost everything that Ms. Kaur had said to her attorneys in confidence as well as defense investigation reports and the defense attorneys' trial strategy plans.
When the court ordered a new trial, it allowed the same prosecutors to try the case a second time – even after they had read all of Ms. Kaur's privileged communications with her attorneys and learned about the defense trial strategies.
In her statement on the case, Justice Sotomayor noted many of the subtle ways that prosecutors' knowledge of confidential information and defense strategy could have impacted the re-trial.
One of the prosecutors actually told the court that she had "scoured" the defense file and made notes of all the negative things she learned from the confidential papers. As a result of this statement, Ms. Kaur chose not to testify in her own defense at the re-trial.
Justice Sotomayor then noted that prosecutors have a responsibility to act in the interest of justice rather than winning the case. She added that prosecutors "wield an immense amount of power" that comes with an "exceptional responsibility" to ensure that justice is served.
Justice Sotomayor: "Prosecutors fall short" of ensuring justice and "do a grave disservice to the people in whose name they litigate" when they "enjoy unfair trial advantages at defendants’ expense."
Sotomayor concludes: "The prosecutors should have recused themselves from participating in Kaur’s second trial as a matter of professional conscience. Their failure to do so casts a troubling and unnecessary shadow over Kaur’s conviction and sentence to life imprisonment."
It seems like a pretty common-sense conclusion to think that it's unfair to allow a prosecutor to try a case after admittedly "scouring" through privileged and confidential communications between a defendant and her defense attorneys.
Once again, Justice Sotomayor shows us that she "gets it" and seriously considers the impact of the Court's decisions on the lives of real people. Abstract legal concepts are not divorced from lived reality. It's sad that none of the other justices joined Sotomayor's statement.
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