A New Question of Immunity for the Fifth Circuit Who Protect Lawyers at All Costs; Can a District Attorney Create Fake Documents Too or is that Only Sanctioned for Foreclosure Lawyers to Throw People Out of their Homes?

Feb 3, 2020: Update from the Fifth Circuit where Oral Argument was conducted

Per ACLU: It was a shocking abuse of power. Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro used fake subpoenas to coerce and intimidate victims – and even throw them in jail when they refused to comply with falsified documents.

The consequences of Cannizzaro’s abuses of power were devastating. A rape victim waited for 12 days before she was brought to court from jail. A victim of child sex trafficking was imprisoned for 89 days before she went before a judge.

For nearly three years we’ve been battling to hold Cannizzaro accountable, and today we’re at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

DA Cannizzaro is claiming his misconduct was part of his job – but that’s a lie. Prosecutors can’t pretend to have the power that courts do.

That’s why, in partnership with Civil Rights Corps, we’re continuing the fight to restore justice and hold Cannizzaro accountable.

It’s notable that 36 former prosecutors, attorneys general, and justice officials have joined us to agree that Cannizzaro’s use of fraudulent subpoenas was a gross miscarriage of justice that does not deserve immunity.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed last year, these current and former officials wrote that Cannizzaro’s conduct is not entitled to absolute immunity and that the use of fraudulent subpoenas “impedes the work of prosecutors and law enforcement officials by undermining confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system and deterring victims and witnesses from coming forward to provide evidence.”

Cannizzaro’s actions eroded trust in the justice system, revictimized people who had already endured a crime, and caused immense pain and suffering – especially in Black communities which were disproportionately targeted with these abusive tactics.

We’re not giving him a free pass.

ORAL ARGUMENT BEFORE JUDGES SOUTHWICK, HAYNES AND ELROD

SOUTHWICK, LESLIE H.

HAYNES, CATHARINA

ELROD, JENNIFER W.

James Gill: New Orleans DA doesn’t confess when shoe is on the other foot

In a telephone interview, McCord said that she had to make many difficult decisions in decades as a prosecutor, but that bogus subpoenas were well outside the bounds of what deserves a legal shield.

“I think the breadth and scope of the signatories (of the brief) shows a widely held view of ethical prosecutors current and former — that you don’t need to cheat. You should abide by the legal processes in place,” she said. “This brings a bad name to ethical prosecutors.”

Krasner, a former criminal defense attorney, became a progressive superstar upon his election as Philadelphia district attorney as a Democrat in 2017. Since then he has created a special unit to review the validity of old convictions, stopped pursuing marijuana convictions and abandoned the pursuit of cash bail for low-level cases.

Mukasey, a conservative Republican, cut a different figure as U.S. attorney general from 2007 to 2009. He opposed reducing crack cocaine sentences and defended the Bush administration’s positions in the “war on terror.”

New Orleans district attorney unearths 249 ‘DA subpoenas’ issued over three years

Declined to comment Monday. But his legal team can point to a competing friend-of-the-court brief filed in May by the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.

While that brief does not directly defend the use of bogus subpoenas or material witness warrants, it does say that courts must uphold the general concept of absolute immunity for prosecutors.

“Any ruling that alters or diminishes the scope of absolute immunity compromises the ability of district attorneys and assistant district attorneys to fulfill their responsibilities to serve the public interest and presents a substantial risk of adversely affecting the proper functioning of the criminal justice system,” the group said.

Credit; NOLA

Quick-thinking prosecutors in movies or TV dramas might pace the courtroom while tying defendants in knots under cross-examination. Only when the state has won the battle of wits can society’s enemies be safely sent up the river, and honest burghers sleep soundly.

Real life for assistant district attorneys tends to be significantly less glamorous, for opportunities to demonstrate forensic brilliance are limited. Get collared on a charge of any gravity, and your case will likely never get to court. The art of the plea deal is paramount these days.

“We’ve got you dead to rights,” the assistant DA will assure the hapless suspect. “Play ball and make it easier on yourself. Resistance will only make it worse for you in the long run.” More likely than not, a mea culpa will follow.

While prosecutors are quick to recognize the wisdom of a confession when they are running the show, they are less inclined to prescribe a similar course when the boot is on the other foot and they are the ones accused of sleazy and corrupt antics.

So, it was when New Orleans DA Leon Cannizzaro’s office was sued for ginning up what were styled “subpoenas” to bully possible crime victims or witnesses into submission. Judges were even persuaded to lock suspects and material witnesses up on the strength of fake court orders.

The use of bogus documents to alter the course of justice is clearly a bigger threat to the civilized order than many a crime that occupies the attention of Cannizzaro’s enforcers. And this was no aberration, because they had been playing this trick for many years. Malice does not come much more forethought than this.

Because prosecutors are paid to hold the rest of us accountable for our transgressions, it is reasonable to expect a higher ethical standard from them. But there must be plenty of prison inmates who wouldn’t stoop to the level of prosecutors who are prepared to lie and counterfeit so that recalcitrant but law-abiding witnesses can be thrown in jail.

Prosecutors in New Orleans have been dishing out what purported to be subpoenas for years, although any first-year law student could have told you that, lacking a judge’s signature, they were null and void.

It must, therefore, have been common knowledge in the criminal justice system that prosecutors were persuading judges to lock up witnesses and suspects for refusing to comply with orders that had no legal force.

This does not boost confidence in the judiciary, which was evidently content to let prosecutors usurp its authority.

That all changed when an online news service, the Lens, exposed the dirty tricks on which New Orleans prosecutors have long relied. The evidence was all there in black and white on the bogus subpoenas, and the prudent course for Cannizzaro’s prosecutors would clearly have been to ‘fess up.

Nobody knows better than they do when the jig is up, and here they were without a leg to stand on.

They refused to take responsibility for their gross abuse of office, however, and claimed that they were untouchable under state law. Because the various deceptions and counterfeits to which they resorted were all part of a criminal investigation, they could not be sued. So they argued, but they were wrong.

Prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity for actions “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, but only for purposes of “protecting the proper functioning” of their office.

Federal judge Jane Triche Milazzo threw out the prosecutors’ claims of absolute immunity, noting that it never was intended to bless “systematic fraud,” and that “where a prosecutor has side-stepped the judicial process, he has forfeited the protections the law afford those who work within the process.”

Now that Milazzo has refused to dismiss the lawsuit, perhaps prosecutors ought to do what they always advise defendants to do — take their medicine and start behaving in the way we are entitled to expect from officers of an American court. Instead an appeal has been filed. Surely a waste of time.

Civil Complaint

Request for Records

Credit; ACLU