U.S. Supreme Court: Prosecutors Must Not Withhold Evidence from the Defense
Delma Banks, Jr. Decision Pivotal in Fairness Discussion of Capital Punishment
Prosecutorial Misconduct Key issue in Tennessee cases
Nashville – The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday declared that Delma Banks
Jr. was denied a right to a fair trial when prosecutors withheld exculpatory
evidence from the defense. The ruling raises further questions
about Texas' death row system and means Banks, who has been on Texas death
row for more than two decades, finally could receive a full and fair hearing.
Banks was convicted and sentenced to death in connection with the murder
of Richard Whitehead of Texarkana after prosecutors withheld critical exculpatory
evidence from the defense and after his lawyer
failed to mount a vigorous defense.
Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman was sentenced to death for the stabbing murder of Patrick Daniels in 1986. His lawyers, Bill Redick and Brad MacLean, have pushed for years to get the entire case reheard because they believe that the original trial was riddled with misconduct by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney. The two attorneys believe evidence that might have swayed the jury was omitted.
An appeal from Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman currently rests at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals where his lawyers have argued that the federal district court should be allowed to address the merits of Abu-Ali's prosecutorial misconduct claims.
Abu-Ali’s case is so troubling that six former state or federal prosecutors in Tennessee, including James Neal, former assistant to the U.S. attorney general and Watergate prosecutor, filed a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court stating that the prosecution ''fell far short of the standards of our state court system and, indeed, below what we understand the federal constitutional minimum standards to be'' and that such conduct ''was a gross deviation from the standards of the legal profession.''
“The prosecutor’s briefs on behalf of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman elicits uncanny parallels to many aspects of the Banks case,” said Randy Tatel, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing. "So tainted was Bank's trial that former FBI Director and U.S. District Judge William Sessions, a pro-death penalty Republican, said it has broad implications for the nation's criminal justice system because it directly 'implicates the integrity of the death penalty in this country.'"
Abu-Ali was, according to John Terzano, president of the Justice Project, “prosecuted by an individual — Assistant D. A. John Zimmerman — whose repeated sanctions and censures by the courts in other cases clearly demonstrate a pattern of unprofessional conduct for withholding exculpatory evidence, for misleading the court and defense counsel and for knowingly violating court rulings relating to inadmissibility of evidence.”
The position held by Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers - that procedural justice is more important than substantive justice - was rebuked by the words of Justice Ruth Ginsburg who wrote for the majority: "When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold it is ordinarily incumbent upon the state to set the record straight…A rule declaring 'prosecutor may hide, defendant must seek,' is not tenable in a system constitutionally bound to accord defendants due process."
