Prosecutorial misconduct and coercive plea bargaining, General Flynn case clear example, US Justice Dept. proven misconduct, Judge Sullivan biased and/or incompetent?
“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. “…Attorney General Barr
“Instead of doing so, the government has continued to defy its
constitutional, ethical and legal obligations to this Court and to the defense, and to hide evidence that it knows exonerates Mr. Flynn. As is the essence of the problem here, instead of protecting its citizens, the “government” is protecting its own criminal conduct and operatives.”…Attorney Sidney Powell October 23, 2019
“The criticism in the opinion will likely deepen the unease of Flynn in having the sentencing under Judge Sullivan. However, the court said that it will proceed with precisely such a hearing on January 28, 2020.”… Jonathan Turley
We have the most widespread documented case of US Justice Department corruption and prosecutorial misconduct in US history.
General Michael Flynn is a victim.
We have a judge, Emmet Sullivan, who has just ruled in the corrupt prosecution’s favor. Ignoring the documented misconduct that has been revealed and persecuting Flynn’s highly competent attorney, Sidney Powell.
Prosecutorial misconduct leading to coerced plea deals is apparently common.
From The Cato Institute August 8, 2019.
“Prisons Are Packed Because Prosecutors Are Coercing Plea Deals. And, Yes, It’s Totally Legal.”
“According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center, of the roughly 80,000 federal prosecutions initiated in 2018, just two percent went to trial. More than 97 percent of federal criminal convictions are obtained through plea bargains, and the states are not far behind at 94 percent. Why are people so eager to confess their guilt instead of challenging the government to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a unanimous jury?
The answer is simple and stark: They’re being coerced.
Though physical torture remains off limits, American prosecutors are equipped with a fearsome array of tools they can use to extract confessions and discourage people from exercising their right to a jury trial. These tools include charge-stacking (charging more or more serious crimes than the conduct really merits), legislatively-ordered mandatory-minimum sentences, pretrial detention with unaffordable bail, threats to investigate and indict friends or family members, and the so-called trial penalty — what the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers calls the “substantial difference between the sentence offered prior to trial versus the sentence a defendant receives after a trial.”
Of coercive plea bargaining’s many problems, two are particularly concerning.
The first is false convictions. Though it was once believed that a confession in open court — a guilty plea — was proof-positive of a person’s guilt, we now know that simply isn’t true.”
“The other big problem with coercive plea bargaining is that it helps cover up an untold amount of prosecutorial misconduct. Even in the federal system, where prosecutors are held to a relatively higher standard, there has been a surprising amount of misconduct in the handful of cases that end up going to trial.
The most notorious example is the failed 2008 prosecution of then-Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who, after refusing a one-count guilty plea to one felony charge with no jail time, was indicted on seven counts of failing to report gifts on his financial disclosure forms after allegedly paying an insufficient amount for the renovation of his house in Alaska.
After the jury voted to convict but before Stevens was sentenced, the star witness against him recanted part of his testimony in a letterand an FBI whistleblower disclosed a pattern of deliberate, systematic cheating by prosecutors that has since been documented in a 500-page document called the Schuelke Report. The Justice Department then asked the judge to dismiss the indictment. Had Stevens taken the plea, none of the prosecutorial misconduct or exculpatory evidence in his case might ever have been revealed.”
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