State and local prosecutors stretched, bent or broke rules so badly in more than 2,000 cases since 1970 that appellate judges dismissed criminal charges, reversed convictions or reduced sentences, according to the first national study of prosecutorial misconduct.
The study, "Harmful Error," found 223 prosecutors around the nation who had been cited by judges for two or more cases of unfair conduct but only two prosecutors who had been disbarred in the past 33 years for mishandling of criminal cases. There are about 30,000 local prosecutors in 2,341 jurisdictions.
A product of three years of research by The Center for Public Integrity, a private ethics watchdog group, the study also found 28 cases involving 32 defendants in which judges concluded that misconduct by prosecutors contributed to the convictions of innocent people who were later exonerated. Some of these innocent defendants had been convicted of murder, rape or kidnaping; some had been sentenced to death before exoneration spared them.
That's pretty disturbing news. The Associated Press has the full story here.