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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Liar's Tale

Slate finds Leon Cannizzaro operating in the grand Orleans DA tradition of suppressing exculpatory evidence and cutting improper deals with witnesses.

That’s Leon Cannizzaro, who became the DA for New Orleans in 2009. Joseph Allen, who’d also testified at Tucker’s trial that he had no expectation of leniency, got a deal, too, on his perjury charge and was released. Because of the deals, Cohen asked for a new trial for Jamaal Tucker. The judge ordered Cannizzaro and the prosecutor who tried Tucker, Eusi Phillips, to appear before him to explain themselves. On the eve of his date in court, Cannizzaro agreed to toss Tucker’s murder conviction. And his office turned over to Cohen a piece of evidence the defense had never seen before: A letter from Greene to Phillips. Greene wrote that he wanted Crime Stopper reward money for testifying against Tucker and that he wanted his time cut. He said, “I know that as far as getting my time cut, you can’t make any promises before the trial, but I am entitled to the reward.”

In a letter to the editor published in the Times Picayune, Cannizzaro denied withholding evidence against Tucker or two other defendants whose lawyers have made that claim. “My office has railroaded no one,” he wrote.


As a prelude to announcing sentences for the police officers convicted in the Danziger shootings and cover-up, Judge Kurt Englehardt delivered a lecture to prosecutors on the inquisitorial practice of coercing witnesses upon which they had built much of their case.

Last week, Engelhardt filed into the record a 61-page order that hewed closely to his speech but included a few new digs, mostly in footnotes.

For example, he took aim at Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, writing that Perez "glibly responded" to some of Engelhardt's criticisms after the sentencing by saying prosecutors can't pick witnesses at a "witness store."

Engelhardt added in the footnote that the cooperating defendants were "purchased, bought and paid for" with more lenient sentences. "Mr. Perez's comment misses the point," Engelhardt concluded.

In the next footnote, he wrote that the media "frequently misquoted" a statement he made "in a materially incorrect way."

Engelhardt wrote that he actually said: "Using liars lying to convict liars is no way to pursue justice." He explained that in some instances, the quotation attributed to him in news accounts failed to include the verb "lying." (The Times-Picayune's account did not include the word "lying.") His statement, he wrote, reflected his concerns about whether government witnesses had an incentive to lie.


Note that while Engelhardt is clearly perturbed with our Inquisitors' actions, this didn't appear to mitigate the heavy sentences he imposed on the lying police officers convicted by their lying associates.

James Gill seems to think this is really all about the bind judges are put in by mandatory minimum sentence law. And he has a point but I think it is a side point. I'm more interested in the fact I've highlighted in Gill's column below.

There was no suggestion that innocent men had gotten a bum rap here, but rather the reverse. Engelhardt complains that the cops who pleaded guilty got off too lightly.

Engelhardt had no choice but to impose draconian sentences on defendants who elected to fight the charges, while higher-ranking officers testified for the government under deals that gave them derisory stretches for equally, or more, heinous offenses.

The law that produces such skewed outcomes, according to Engelhardt, is the same one that coerces guilty pleas.


The Danziger result, however deserved, just happens to fall upon the officers at the bottom of the NOPD totem poll. Meanwhile, DAs like Cannizzaro and DOJ preeners like Jim Letten habitually use their inquisitorial powers to convict liars using liars but the only occasion on which this practice elicits a dressing down from the judge comes about because the "victims" (if you can call them that) happen to be cops. Engelhardt doesn't inform us of a better way to "pursue justice" and I suspect this is because we don't actually experience much of that within the confines of the legal system we've built. We do, however, daily experience the pursuit and consequences of power which is the true determinant of our judicial winners and losers although we do like to pretend otherwise.

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