| Chapter
10
How Prosecutors Work
By Steve Weinberg
Time Equals Truth
Most of the paths suggested in this chapter are easy enough to explore, as long as reporters and editors can find enough time. The formulation sounds overly simple, perhaps, and overly optimistic, but indeed on many stories Time Equals Truth.
Despite the generally negative, pessimistic statements about coverage of prosecutors set down at the beginning of this chapter, many bright spots have appeared during the past decade. As already alluded to, the revelations of wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction have ameliorated the “white hat, good guy” syndrome about prosecutors that has infected many journalists. Such reality checks have led to superb journalism in some jurisdictions.
The Chicago Tribune deserves unbounded credit. In January 1999, the newspaper published a five-part series of articles that found, in the reporters’ own words, “nearly 400 cases where prosecutors obtained homicide convictions by committing the most unforgivable kinds of deception. They hid evidence that could have set defendants free. They allowed witnesses to lie. All in defiance of the law. Prosecutors swear to seek the truth, but instead many pursue convictions at any cost.”
The series, reported and written by Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong, documented 381 cases, going back to 1963, in which courts reversed murder convictions because prosecutors presented evidence they knew to be false, or concealed evidence suggesting innocence, or both.
Then, in November 1999, the Chicago Tribune published another in-depth series by Armstrong and reporter Steve Mills. The duo examined murder cases in which Illinois prosecutors, mostly in Cook County (Chicago), had charged a defendant with a capital crime and asked for the death penalty. The journalists identified 326 reversals attributed in whole or in part to the conduct of prosecutors.
In both series, the reporters and editors named names. Unlike most journalists, the Chicago Tribune team held incompetent and venal prosecutors accountable. Journalists throughout the nation studied the findings in amazement. The inspiration to cover prosecutors well had arrived. Could it be translated into something concrete and lasting within American journalism?
In spirit, the Chicago Tribune team owed a debt to Edwin M. Borchard, a Yale University law professor who, surprisingly, rarely taught criminal law courses. In 1932, he wrote the book “Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice.” Naturally, Borchard expressed anger that the system had failed so frequently. Yet he treated prosecutors charitably in passage after passage. He noted prosecutors were “obliged to take the evidence as presented…including the uncontrollable perjury of vengeful witnesses, and lay it before the jury without realization of its worthlessness. Except in the few cases where evidence is consciously suppressed or manufactured, bad faith is not necessarily attributable to the police or prosecution; it is the environment in which they live, with an undiscriminating public clamor for them to stamp out crime and make short shrift of suspects.”
Contemporary journalists writing about the criminal justice system can certainly adopt Borchard’s charitable attitude toward prosecutors. Whatever the tone of the story as published, it is vital for journalists to remember that the district attorney or the U. S. attorney serves as the linchpin of the criminal justice system. Behind closed doors, the prosecutors can decide to ignore a crime or move against the defendant zealously. If the crime is charged, personal freedom for the defendant is at stake every time. Ripple effects in all of society emanate no matter what the resolution of the proceeding.
All that is reason enough for journalists to cover prosecutors vigilantly every day.
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