“Citing the ‘grotesque’ misconduct of federal prosecutors, a judge on Tuesday granted a new trial for five former New Orleans Police Department officers convicted in the deadly shootings at the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent cover-up.” [Juliet Linderman, New Orleans Times-Picayune, embedded PDF; earlier here, here, etc.]
More: J. Christian Adams (why no consequences for supervisor in Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division?), Stephen Gillers.
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That New Orleans Times Picayunne link auto-downloading a PDF is… rather annoying, especially when browsing from a phone.
Added a warning.
Along similar lines, the conviction of former House Speaker Tom Delay was reversed:
TEXAS COURT OF APPEALS, THIRD DISTRICT, AT AUSTIN
NO. 03-11-00087-CR
Thomas Dale DeLay, Appellant
v.
The State of Texas, Appellee
The last sentence reads:
“Because we conclude that the evidence was legally insufficient to support DeLay’s convictions, we reverse the judgments of the trial court and render judgments of acquittal.”
Opinion at: http://images.bimedia.net/documents/tom-delay-appeal-doc-12D.pdf
As if anyone ever thought that the prosecution of Delay was anything other than a partisan hatched job.
While I in no way condone the online comments about the case made by members of the US Attorney’s office, there appears to be little or no evidence that the comments had any influence on any of the jurors, or that any of the jurors even knew about them, so that the rights of the defendants to a fair and impartial jury were negatively impacted. Throwing out the convictions therefore, in my opinion, was an overreaction and an abuse of discretion on the part of the judge. The more proper remedy would have been to refer the matter to the state bar for attorney misconduct.