A July ruling in New York marked a victory for the public and transparency. Federal judge Victor Marrero held that the public has a First Amendment right to know what authorities have done with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
The court issued its July 22 decision in the case CRC v. Cushman, finding that the Second Department and Grievance Committees can no longer conceal from public view the decisions they have made, or will make, regarding 21 ethics complaints filed against current and former Queens prosecutors.
In total, from 2021 to 2023, law professors and attorneys filed 50 ethics complaints alleging prosecutorial misconduct by New York prosecutors and published them online at AccountabilityNY.org.
The ethics complaints include very serious misconduct allegations, such as providing secret benefits to a witness, allowing a witness to lie to the jury, concealing evidence of innocence, unlawfully discriminating against Black jurors, and misleading the jury about the evidence in the case.
Everyday Injustice spoke with Peter Santina, the Managing Attorney of the Prosecutorial Accountability Project at Civil Rights Corps who talked about the problem of prosecutorial misconduct and the difficulty of exposing it to the public.
