Sunday, January 20, 2008

Ethics Case

In what PrawfsBlawgger Paul Horwitz calls "Tomorrow's Legal Ethics Exam, Today," the New York Times reports on a lawyer who revealed a secret about a Virginia death penalty case that resulted in a death sentence being overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. The lawyer was previously prohibited from revealing the information, as it would have been potentially harmful to his own client, who was a co-defendant in the case.

It's really a fascinating story. And it shows some of the absurdity of a legal system which uses the threat of death to get testimony out of defendants, then acts as if that testimony is in any way reliable.

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