July 18, 2023

137: How the Civil Rights Corps is Uncovering and Challenging Prosecutorial Misconduct w/Peter Santina

56 minutes

Today, Hunter spoke with Civil Rights Corps’ Attorney Peter Santina to discuss their efforts in uncovering and challenging prosecutorial misconduct. From Alleghany County to San Francisco County, Peter and his team are those leading the charge in revealing the negligence, maleficence, and misconduct of prosecutors around the country. This episode, however, does offer a reminder that all of their actions are enabled by judges, politicians, and legal ethics bodies that sit by and do nothing to hold prosecutors accountable for their actions.

Guests:

Peter Santina, Managing Attorney of the Prosecutorial Accountability Project, Civil Rights Corps

Resources:

To do something about this, and raise awareness of this continuing racial discrimination, CRC worked with our AccountabilityNY professor partners to prepare and file 10 complaints against prosecutors alleging court findings of racial or religious discrimination. CRC also publicized the fact that an attorney for the NYPD union had once been a prosecutor who used a handwritten guide of racist and sexist tropes to select juries, leading to three reversals. Journalists at the Gothamist, The City, Queens Daily Eagle, and Davis Vanguard each wrote original stories about the discrimination complaints. CRC attorney Bina Ahmad appeared on WBAI radio and WNYC radio with Dexter Murray, a man personally victimized by this form of discrimination. Mr. Murray's powerful op-ed ran in the NY Daily News.

In San Francisco, nearly 1,000 people are past their last day for speedy trial, over 100 of whom are incarcerated, awaiting an unknown trial date. In a particular pending case, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office asked the California Supreme Court to intervene and restore people’s speedy trial rights. In support of this petition, CRC filed an amicus brief to explain to the justices how the denial of speedy trial rights turns an already-flawed system of plea bargaining into a system of plea begging and unfairly extends the already-oppressive conditions of pretrial detention. CRC await the California Supreme Court’s decision.

The prosecutor’s choice to pursue or dismiss charges is one of their greatest powers and is ripe for abuse. As over 90 percent of criminal cases resolve by plea bargain, recent reports have exposed the troubling lack of transparency and oversight in this plea bargain system (2020 Vera Institute Report) and that innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit (2023 American Bar Association Task Force Report).

In March 2023, the longtime Allegheny County District Attorney, Stephen Zappala, was in a contentious primary battle for reelection against the Chief Public Defender, who was also running for District Attorney. It was reported that after Zappala did not secure the Democratic Committee’s nomination, a supervisor in his office gave line prosecutors instructions that referenced the election. In the following days, two prosecutors were reported to refused to dismiss weak charges, and each prosecutor cited the election—and Zappala’s endorsement loss—in their explanation. CRC worked with two legendary professors, David Rudovsky (Penn Carey School of Law) and Jules Lobel (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), to prepare and file an ethics complaint with the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania against Zappala. We included a 2021 incident where Zappala ordered his prosecutors to not offer any plea bargain to clients of a Black defense attorney who had criticized his office. A journalist at the PGH City Paper wrote about the complaint, interviewing Peter.

Civil Rights Corps

https://civilrightscorps.org/

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