Federal Judiciary

The U.S. Department of Justice is charged with responsibility for investigating and prosecuting institutional wrongdoing.  What happens, though, when the DOJ itself engages in misconduct?

Last week Miami, FL district court judge Alan Gold imposed extraordinary sanctions on federal prosecutors for a series of ethical violations (including secretly taping the defense team of a physician ultimately acquitted in a prescription drug case), ordering the payment of more than $600,000 in fees and expenses.  In a fifty page opinion containing some pretty strong language, Judge Gold ?enter[ed] a public reprimand against? the United States Attorney in that district and his senior staff for supervisory failures, found that the Chief of the office?s Narcotics Section acted with ?gross negligence,? and concluded that two Assistant United States Attorneys and a DEA Special Agent ?acted vexatiously and in bad faith.?  He called the events surrounding the subject prosecution ?profoundly disturbing? and noted that they ?raise troubling issues about the integrity of those who wield enormous power over the people they prosecute.? 

Similarly (as most people know), the week before, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asked a judge in Washington, DC to void the conviction of and dismiss all charges against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who lost his seat last year just days after being convicted on felony counts of ethics violations.  Among other things, the DOJ admitted that it failed to turn notes over to Stevens? attorneys that raised doubts about the charges against him. 

And back in January the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, Mark L. Wolf, threatened to sanction a federal prosecutor for what he characterized as a ?clear and inexcusable? failure to disclose material, exculpatory information.  Judge Wolf also listed numerous cases in which prosecutors allegedly withheld important evidence, writing that the ?egregious failure of the government to disclose plainly material exculpatory evidence in this case extends a dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations of the government?s duties to disclose.?

Just a few bad apples among thousands of dedicated public servants committed to the pursuit of justice?  Perhaps.  But if this had been corporate America, termination of the bad actors (the business equivalent of a referral to DOJ?s Office of Professional Misconduct) and a very public mea culpa would not have been enough.  Rather, DOJ likely would have launched a full-scale criminal investigation that in all probability would have resulted in (among other things) a public admission of wrongdoing, a steep fine, a non-prosecution/deferred prosecution agreement and monitorship, just as it has dozens upon dozens of times in recent years.

So, who, in fact, is minding the minders?  And what happens in cases in which the Government's "mistakes" are not caught?  Kinda makes you shake in your wing tips.