Twenty Arizona Prosecutors Who Committed Error Go Undisciplined

Salon.com reports on the prosecutorial oversight tour and its stop in Phoenix, Arizona, last night. The Innocence Project, and a coalition of other groups sponsoring the tour, announced that a Veritas Initiative study of cases from 2004 to 2008 revealed 20 instances of possible misconduct, yet none of the prosecutors in those cases were disciplined.

“Prosecutors have tremendous power over our lives,” said Larry Hammond, one of the moderators of the event and founder of the Arizona Justice Project.

Similar studies in Texas and New York have produced similar findings. None of the prosecutors in 91 cases of suspected misconduct were disciplined in Texas or in 151 cases from New York. The prosecutorial oversight tour has revealed that prosecutors are very rarely held accountable for their misconduct. Other stops along the tour include Pennsylvania, California and Louisiana.