The NACDL Law Enforcement Misconduct Committee is chaired by Marvin Miller of Alexandria, VA; Hugo Rodriguez of Miami, FL and Robert Hooker of Tucson, AZ. The Committee serves to assist our communities and the legal system by shedding light on misconduct and abuse on the part of authorities. The American people have an abiding faith in the fairness of our nation's criminal justice system. Exposure of prosecutorial abuse helps to cleanse the system, impart balance and restore fundamental fairness for citizens accused of crime.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. We seek your assistance in helping us ensure justice and due process for those accused of crime by promoting the proper and fair administration of criminal justice. If you were involved in or have knowledge of a documented case of law enforcement or prosecutorial abuse, share it with us by sending us the court decision, appellate decision, or other documentation. We will share verifiable cases with others so that these are no longer hidden from the public but brought out into the light of day and exposed. Simply click on the button below to submit your story to NACDL.

Sept/Oct Issue '99 -- Challenging Racial Profiles: Jim Crow on the Interstate By William Buckman & John Lamberth
Racial profiling is a national phenomenon. After nine years of litigation, one challenge recently prevailed -- State v. Soto. The authors participated in the suit over the New Jersey State Police practice of stopping cars because one or more of the occupants fit a racial profile. They relate critical lessons learned and provide suggestions for those challenging similar practices elsewhere. more

Sept/Oct Issue '99 -- Controlled Substances
By Peter Schoenburg & Stephen McCue
Practical Problems in Confronting Racial Profiling on Our Highways. more

October 1999 -- Justice Dept. Cover-Up for FBI Exposed
Washington, DC, October 6, 1999 -- A federal judge has found instances where the DOJ engaged in "misconduct and bad faith" in an attempt to cover-up improprieties committed by the FBI. The cover-up consisted of repeated misrepresentations of key information in a FOIA suit brought by the NACDL, aimed at disclosing to the public new information about abuses at the FBI Lab. --more--

September 1999 -- Bounty Hunter Accountability Act
Washington, DC, September 28, 1999 -- NACDL joins Congressman Asa Hutchinson in support of legislation introduced today to safeguard the fundamental Constitutional rights of citizens against bounty hunter abuses. --more--

September 1999 -- First Waco, Now Boston?
Washington, DC, September 23, 1999 -- NACDL today called on President Clinton to take corrective measures against the FBI in light of stinging revelations in a Boston judicial proceeding last week that once again point to an agency that is violating the constitution and abusing its own internal guidelines. In a letter to Clinton, NACDL President William Moffitt cites a major federal racketeering case which revealed that the FBI disregarded the standards and procedures governing its relationship with two top echelon informants in Boston. --more--

August 1999 -- Reno Must Not Trust the FBI
Washington, DC, August 31, 1999 -- NACDL questioned Attorney General Janet Reno's willingness to involve the FBI in the investigation of the April 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, in the face of recent revelations that the FBI lied about the use of flammable tear-gas canisters. In a letter to Reno, NACDL President William Moffitt pointed out that the FBI has exhibited a pattern of distortion and egregious professional misconduct in several matters--not just Waco. --more--

August Issue '99 -- Starr Teachers By Harvey A. Silverglate & Andrew Good
The authors discuss the tactics of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and their own experiences with prosecutorial abuse. -- more --

June 1999 -- Loitering Law Struck Down
Washington, DC, June 11, 1999 -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday on Chicago's "Gang Congregation Ordinance," which prohibits "criminal street gang members" from "loitering" with one another or with other persons in any public place with "no apparent purpose." Chicago v. Morales, No. 97-1121. The ordinance violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. --more--

**Update** -- Thornburgh Rule is Nixed!
It's official. The Ethical Standards for Federal Prosecutors Act took effect April 19, 1999 (28 USC 530B (P.L. No. 105-277, Sec. 801)). This is a substantial victory against DOJ's incessant efforts to delay and repeal the Act. Several long-time congresspersons have commented that they have never seen such a massive lobbying effort as that deployed by the Justice Department. -- more --

April Issue '99 -- Legislative Update By Leslie Hagin
Save the Ethical Standards for Federal Prosecutors Act! -- more --

March '99 Champion -- Twisted Justice: Prosecution Function in America Out of Control By Jack King
A dirty secret, known to defense lawyers for years, is finally coming to light: Prosecutors who trample defendants' rights, and the Constitution, because -- to them -- winning is the only thing. Thanks to recent newspaper and television exposes, the American publiuc is more alert to this ever-growing problem. -- more --


March '99 Champion -- Legislation By Leslie J. Hagin
Justice Department Attacks New Statute Holding Prosecutors to Ethics Rules. -- more --


February 1999 -- Winning at Any Cost: Prosecutorial Excess Distorting America's Justice System
Washington, DC, February 9, 1999 -- A slew of recent investigative reports in major newspapers across America document that excess by prosecutors, both federal and local, are on the rise and often in flagrant violation of the very laws prosecutors are sworn to defend. --more--

Legislative Action Alert -- Act Now! (January 15, 1999) -- Justice Department Attacking New Statute Confirming That Federal Prosecutors Are Subject to State Supreme Court and Local Federal Court Rules of Attorney Ethics
Your help is urgently needed to ensure that Department of Justice attorneys are not exempted from state supreme court and local federal court ethics rules that have historically governed all attorneys. -- more --

Prosecutorial Misconduct: "Winning at All Costs" -- Sunday, November 22 begins a 10-day investigative series on prosecutorial misconduct, featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Bill Moushey is an award-winning writer with the Post-Gazette, who has been working over the last few years on an in-depth series on prosecutorial misconduct. The series focuses on grand jury abuses, informant abuses, discovery abuses, and the infamous DOJ "Office of Professional Responsibility." Among those interviewed will be Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), discussing his efforts, along with Rep. Joe McDade (R-PA), to secure the "Citizens' Protection Act," just passed, which outlaws the Thornburgh Memo/Reno Regulation. The 10-day series, "Win at All Costs," is available on the paper's website, www.post-gazette.com/win/default.asp.

Act Now! Order reprints of the entire "Win at All Costs" series for $14.54 (including tax & shipping), and send them to anyone you think needs to know about the problems of prosecutorial excess -- especially your 2 Senators and 1 U.S. Representative. For information on getting reprints: www.post-gazette.com/pgstore/win.asp

October 1998 -- Congress Passes Measure Re-Establishing That Federal Prosecutors Are Bound by Rules of Ethics
Washington, DC, October 21, 1998 -- Today's passage by Congress of the "Citizen's Protection Act," as Section 801 of the omnibus spending bill, stops in its tracks backdoor attempts by DOJ to hold its lawyers above the laws of ethical conduct which apply to all lawyers. -- more --

July 1998 -- Former DOJ Officials Advise Curbing Prosecutorial Excess
Washington, DC, July 9, 1998 -- In the cover article of the July issue of The Champion, NACDL's award-winning monthly magazine, Arnold Burns and Warren Dennis, with co-author Amybeth Garcia-Bokor, highlight recent "sea changes" in the attitudes and professional conduct of federal prosecutors and regulatory lawyers, which they perceive as presenting a "bona fide danger to the quality of justice and the fundamental nature of due process and fair play" in America today. -- more --

July '98 Champion -- Curbing Prosecutorial Excess: A Job for the Courts & Congress By Arnold I. Burns, Warren L. Dennis & Amybeth Garcia-Bokor
Three attorneys identified with strong, effective and responsible law enforcement say some current prosecutorial practices endanger the fundamental nature of due process and fair play. The authors think the courts and Congress should help right a system that they believe has gone astray. -- more --


Contact With Represented Persons -- DOJ Attempts the Back Door
The claim by the Department of Justice that federal prosecutors are exempt from state ethics rules forbidding contact with represented persons has been repeatedly rejected by the courts. Undeterred, DOJ is taking its case to the Conference of Chief Justices, made up of the top jurists of each jurisdiction. The latest proposal, would exempt all prosecutors, not just the feds, from the prohibition against contacting represented persons who have not been formally charged, and would permit post-charge contact in an expansive variety of circumstances. -- more --

"Testilying" To Get the Job Done
New York City's "finest" had a "litany of manufactured tales" for nearly any occasion, according to the findings in 1994 of the blue-ribbon Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption as it completed a two-year investigation of New York police misconduct. The Commission noted was that once officers lie about the basis for an illegal arrest or illegal search -- such as falsifying an arrest report, complaint report, search warrant application, or evidence voucher -- they tend to stick to their story. They commit perjury in front of grand juries and at trials as casually as they'd tell a fairy tale to their toddler. -- more --

Reluctant Discipline
When it was discovered that senior Justice Department prosecutor William Lynch had withheld evidence from defendants which completely undercut the credibility of the government's star witness, defense counsel Gerson Horn of Beverly Hills, CA, outlined numerous statements that the witness had made under oath at his own trial which were diametrically opposed to his sworn testimony. -- more --

Sex, Lies & Videotapes
Numerous, major drug conspiracy convictions were vacated in federal courts in Chicago in 1993 after it was found that prosecutors concealed from defense counsel "implicit and illicit" deals with witnesses who turned against their co-defendants in a series of trials collectively known as the "El Rukn cases." The government's informants had been given access to heroin, cocaine and marijuana by the prosecutors. They were also permitted to have sex with their girlfriends in the U.S. Attorney's office in the Kluczynski Federal Building, to indulge themselves with a pornographic video library and VCR, and to regularly make unsupervised long distance calls at taxpayer expense. -- more --

Prosecutor Deliberately Misinforms Jury
When an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1994 lied to the judge, jury and defense counsel about the existence of a secret agreement with an informant, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California dismissed a major drug indictment in U.S. v. Kojayan. -- more --

Federal Prosecutors Seek To Be Exempt From The Same Ethical Constraints That Apply To Other Prosecutors
The federal prosecutors are trying to opt out of the same ethical constraints that apply to other prosecutors and all other lawyers. They want to be in their own system where they are the sole arbiter and judge of whether they have done anything wrong. They are fearful of any outside body looking over their shoulder and having any control over them in matters of unethical conduct. This idea of letting the foxes guard the hen house has even raised the hackles of the Conference of Chief Justices of the Supreme Courts of the States. The idea has been condemned by every Chief Justice of every Supreme Court of every state in the Union in a unanimous resolution, opposing Attorney General Reno when she took Former Attorney General Thornburgh's policy to the extreme, and enacted Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 77. -- more --

Federal Prosecutor Thwarted In Effort To Ruin Careers Of Honest Cops
A federal prosecutor in the District of Arizona was dissatisfied with the testimony of Border Patrol agents for the INS in a federal prosecution. The prosecution tried to terminate the career of officers whose testimony did not fit the prosecutor's idea of the case. The United States Attorney sent a letter to these officers' Chief to the effect that the officers had made inaccurate or untruthful statements and had failed to cooperate with the prosecution. On account of this alleged misconduct, the prosecutors said they were no longer going to stand behind their cases in court. -- more --

Refuge From Federal Injustice Available In State Courts
In the fifties and sixties, when our society was undergoing a battle for justice and fairness brought about by the movement for racial equality, the one place where citizens could go for refuge from governmental excess and injustice was the federal courthouse. Now, as federal courts have bent more and more in the direction of the executive branch and have given less and less scrutiny to the exercise of police and prosecutorial power, the place for refuge has increasingly become the state courts. The Supreme Court of West Virginia, for one example, has recognized that the Supreme Court good faith exception for baseless search warrants breeds corrupt police practices and disrespect for the law. They will not follow Leon. The State Constitution of West Virginia provides greater protections than does the Constitution of the United States. Other state supreme courts have rendered similar opinions in other cases. -- more --