In the aftermath of the unfathomably sad suicide of Aaron Swartz, I was asked to do an op-ed for the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. I was given leave to be frank, and so I was frank. The piece after the jump...
Lord Conrad Black and James “Whitey” Bulger are vastly different men. But both federal prosecutions raise similar fundamental questions about the propriety of certain prosecutorial tactics that interfere with a defendant’s constitutional right to mount an adequate defense. In my most recent “Injustice Department” column for Forbes.com, I explain how these tactics virtually assure convictions, regardless of guilt or the niceties of “due process of law.” Yet these unconstitutional techniques are the rule, not the exception, when the Department of Justice really wants to win a case without the defendant putting up much of a fight.
The column after the jump...
Tufts undergraduates Aeden Pillai and Mike Yeung recently interviewed me on the topic of prosecutorial misconduct in the case of Bernard Baran for their course on contemporary issues in the criminal justice system. You can read the piece on Mr. Pillai's blog, with an excerpt after the jump.
{#foreach $T.Years as year} <div class="year"> <div class="year_header"> <span>{$T.year.Year}</span> </div> <div class="year_months"> {#foreach $T.year.Months as month} <div class="month"> <a href="{$T.month.Url}" year="{$T.year.Year}" month="{$T.month.MonthN}">{$T.month.MonthName}</a> </div> {#/for} </div> </div> {#/for}