Two New York State legislators have proposed the creation of a state commission on prosecutorial misconduct to review and investigate complaints of prosecutorial misconduct and to discipline prosecutors who have been found to have acted improperly.  See here.

The proposed commission would, it is said, be the first in the nation of its kind.  It will be modeled upon New York's Commission on Judicial Conduct,  which investigates allegations of misconduct by judges and, if misconduct is found, may discipline a judge by public admonition, censure or removal from the bench.

Virtually every state (but not the federal government) has a commission on judicial conduct  and these commissions,  it is generally agreed, have had a positive effect in limiting judicial misconduct, removing unfit judges who had committed serious misconduct and increasing public confidence in and awareness of the workings of the court system.  (I note that I am a past chair of New York's Commission.)  There is, I believe, no good reason that there should not be an analogous agency to review instances of alleged prosecutorial misconduct, sanction offending prosecutors, and remove the most serious offenders from their positions.  Indeed, there are stronger reasons for a commission concerning prosecutorial misconduct than for one concerning judicial misconduct.  Much of the most serious prosecutorial misconduct, such as concealing exculpatory material and suborning perjury, occurs in the investigative and preparatory stages of a case and is hidden from the view of judges, defense attorneys, and the public and thus not detectable and reviewable by a court.  Almost all judicial misconduct, on the other hand, occurs on the bench in public view, is recorded and observed by lawyers and the public, and is readily reviewable by appellate courts.

With rare exception, see here, prosecutorial misconduct has gone unpunished by prosecutorial offices, bar disciplinary committees and judicial authorities.  Although grievance committees have authority over the improprieties of prosecutors as much as other lawyers, they have historically shown little interest in sanctioning prosecutorial misconduct.  See, e.g., Gershman, Reflections on Brady v. Maryland, 47 S. Tex. L. Rev. 685 (2006); Yaroshefsky, Wrongful Convictions:  It is Time to Take Prosecution Discipline Seriously, 8 D.C. L. Rev. 275 (2004).  Similarly, judges, even when they reverse a conviction due to egregious prosecutorial misconduct, almost always conceal the prosecutor's identity and rarely refer the prosecutor for professional discipline.  And, prosecutorial offices themselves often defend on appeal and thus ratify even serious misconduct of line prosecutors, and fail to sanction even those prosecutors whose serious misconduct they concede.  See, Rudin, The Supreme Court Assumes Errant Prosecutors Will Be Disciplined By Their Offices or the Bar:  Three Case Studies That Prove That Assumption Wrong, 80 Fordham L. Rev. 537 (2011).

Further, potentially criminal misconduct by judges may be investigated and prosecuted by the District Attorney, an agency wholly independent from the judiciary.  However, except in the extremely rare instances where a special prosecutor is appointed, potentially criminal misconduct by prosecutors generally may only be investigated or prosecuted by the very same prosecutorial office that committed that misconduct, which in almost all instances will be hesitant to prosecute one of its own and embarrass the office.

Additionally, there is a stark imbalance in the adversarial criminal justice system where one adversary — the prosecutor — may criminally charge the other adversary — the defense attorney — when he  tampered with evidence or suborned perjury, but where the defense attorney who believes the prosecutor committed such criminal acts may only make a shout in the wilderness by a futile complaint to an overprotective disciplinary agency with no criminal prosecution power.  A commission on prosecutorial conduct will not wholly right this imbalance, but will tilt it in the right direction.

(goldman)