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Playing the Blame Game to Excuse Wrongful Conviction

Claude McCollum was convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Lansing, Michigan. After about three years behind bars, prosecutors (to their credit) admitted that "new evidence" cast doubt on McCollum's guilt, and facilitated his release from prison.

Now "new evidence" establishes that the prosecution probably, and the police certainly, had reason before McCollum's trial to question his guilt. As the result of McCollum's lawsuit, police and prosecutors are pointing fingers at each other while claiming their own conduct was blameless.

A police detective told prosecutors more than two months before trial that surveillance tapes showed Claude McCollum could not have killed Carolyn Kronenberg, newly filed court documents claim. That claim by Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. James Young contradicts statements by prosecutors that they didn't learn of the evidence until McCollum's 2006 trial.

Young says he told Ingham County Assistant Prosecutor Eric Matwiejczyk in November 2005 that he thought McCollum was innocent, based on video recordings showing McCollum to be elsewhere when the murder was committed. According to Young, Matwiejczyk "responded that an LCC mathematics professor had discredited how the detective calculated times that McCollum was seen on a surveillance video in a different building than where the murder happened." The unidentified math professor has yet to surface, and Matwiejczyk's claim that he gave Young's report to the defense right before Young testified is contradicted by defense lawyers, who presumably would have used it to shred the prosecution's case had they known of it.

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    Sigh (none / 0) (#1)
    by sumac on Fri Feb 22, 2008 at 03:25:00 PM EST
    This is a tragic case, one that seems to mirror a growing number of similar cases of prosecutorial duplicity.

    I admit to knowing very little about the law. Can this prosecutor be prosecuted for suppressing this evidence?

    Arithmetic (none / 0) (#2)
    by rilkefan on Fri Feb 22, 2008 at 03:53:16 PM EST
    Since when does it take a math prof to tell time?  Ok, so there's a cyclic group of order 24 involved...

    Prosecutorial Immunity (none / 0) (#3)
    by Sheila Berry on Fri Feb 22, 2008 at 06:49:02 PM EST
    A prosecutor cannot be sued (civil lawsuit) for actions taken in the role of advocate.  As an example, a prosecutor who hides exculpatory evidence or instructs witnesses to lie under oath is immune from a lawsuit by anyone injured by such conduct.  However, when the prosecutor acts as investigator, that immunity no longer applies.  Another example:  A prosecutor conspires with police to fabricate evidence against a defendant can be sued by that defendant.

    Prosecutors can be criminally prosecuted for criminal acts (certainly to include misconduct in office) committed in the course of prosecuting a defendant.  "Can be" is the critical term.  In practical terms, they are not.  They are rewarded with job security, re-election and judicial appointments.

    they can't be sued civilly, (none / 0) (#4)
    by cpinva on Sat Feb 23, 2008 at 11:52:05 AM EST
    unless they pull a "nifong"; committing acts so egregious, that even the courts are forced to recognize that there are limits even for the traditional immunity from such suits normally enjoyed by prosecutor. that mr. nifong had such a big mouth in public certainly didn't help him.

    i doubt this applies in the instant case.

    Parent

    Hardly a unique case (none / 0) (#5)
    by Olde Pharte on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 02:49:58 PM EST
    Try browsing 'Truth In Justice' and 'The Innocence Project'... you'll see dozens of these cases overturned by DNA testing years after the Wrongfully Convicted ie innocent has been cast aside to languish in jail.
    This is perhaps the greatest boon (aside from making False Allegation and Malicious Prosecution a household word) resultant from the Nifong debacle: holding prosecutors accountable for their manipulation of a prosecution.
    Olde Pharte

    Obama is really morphing into the sleaziest of (none / 0) (#6)
    by DemBillC on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 02:56:58 PM EST
    polititions right before our ees. Me and and all
    the disenfranchised FLA and MICH. will surely vote for McCain if BO wins the nomination if he does not immediatly,today,ask for a revote in both states. Not tomorrow,today.