Prosecutorial Misconduct: Winning at All Costs

Prosecutor’s duty is to seek justice, present the judge and jury with facts and sound legal arguments that result in the conviction of the guilty defendant and not conviction of the innocent as we have seen in many cases in the past. They have a duty also to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense attorney (Burke, 2010. P. 2135). Prosecutors consist of the group of criminal justice professionals with no accountability for their professional action or deliberate inaction. They willfully manipulate facts and evidences in order to secure a conviction at all cost. They are driven, not by the desire to ensure justice, rather, they are fixated on winning by all means possible, to enhance their professional record of successes, measured by the number of cases they prosecuted that resulted in conviction. Schoenfeld (2005) thinks prosecutors’ “score-keeping mentality” or conviction psychology that compels them to win at all costs, is the reason for prosecutorial misconduct (Schoenfeld, 2005. P. 252). Morey, (2012) states, "prosecutorial misconduct stems from a 'win at all cost ' mentality underlying the desire to further a

This notion is however, as some would put it, a ‘romantic view’ of the criminal law (Yang, 2013. P. 31). Protection of the innocent from a fate that should be reserved for the guilty is at the center of the indictment. Our procedures fail to achieve the most basic task of a just system. Organizations like the Innocence Project claim that well over 20,000 Americans could be in jail for crimes they did not commit (Wilkinson, 2014. P. 1101). There is a problem with absolute immunity for prosecutors; the incentives it creates. We have a system that not only fails to sanction bad behavior, but also often rewards