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. 

The girl, Nga Truong, spent three years in jail before her release following a judge's order. After WBUR’s story aired in December, “Anatomy of A Bad Confession” prompted public outrage nationwide, calls for changes in the law and discipline of the police officers involved.

Now, Boeri continues to follow Truong’s story with a special half-hour report and an exclusive television interview with her for WCVB-TV. It airs on Chronicle this Thursday evening at 7:30. I truly believe that this is must-see TV. 

For more, click here.

In December of 2011, a series of arrests for gun possession charges in New York City raised a number of important—if perhaps unexpected—legal issues. A number of individuals with valid conceal/carry gun permits issued outside of the city had attempted to “check” their guns—whether at the Empire State Building lobby, the airport, or in one case the 9/11 memorial—and were arrested under the NYC gun law, which recognizes the validity of no outside permits, and carries with it a mandatory minimum sentence of three and a half years in state prison for possession of a loaded weapon. Many commentators have focused their ire on the specific nature of the New York City gun law itself, or have otherwise used the cases as a launching point for a discussion of the Second Amendment’s requirements.

In the piece we posted today on Forbes.com, Daniel Schwartz and I discuss, instead, the dangerously diminishing importance of “intent” in the criminal law—the so-called mens rea requirement that an individual be aware that he is committing a crime before he can be found guilty. Combined with the existence of mandatory minimum sentences, this creates a toxic soup that invites a seemingly radical remedy: “jury nullification,” or the controversial idea that juries have the power (even if not the clear right) to “nullify” unjust laws by voting for acquittal even when a person is, technically, in violation of the statute. Jury nullification, we argue, is essential in a free society that has gone off the rails in terms of prosecutorial abuse. While my book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (updated paperback June 2011 from Encounter Books) details federal law injustices, Schwartz and I point out in this forbes.com piece that state legal systems are not entirely immune from similarly abusive tactics.