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New Orleans PDOs' Face Prosecution By DA's Office
Topic Started: May 2 2017, 10:45 AM (6 Views)
Webster
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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......this has to come from the "WTF?" category of news, right?

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(The Guardian) As a public defenders’ investigator in New Orleans, Taryn Blume was juggling a minimum of 70 cases on any given day. Many of her clients, among the poorest people in the city, were facing the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Then something happened that shocked even Blume’s most seasoned colleagues: Blume herself faced felony criminal charges for her work on one such case. The charges were initiated by the same prosecutor her office opposed every day in court.

“One Taryn Blume late of the parish of Orleans, between the first day of January in the year of our Lord, two thousand and fourteen, and the first day of April in the year of our lord, two thousand and fourteen in the parish of Orleans, did impersonate a peace officer or assumed, without authority, any uniform or badge by which a peace officer is lawfully distinguished …” the indictment read.

“I had no idea why or what that meant,” Blume, now 26, told the Guardian.

Prosecutors and public defenders are supposed to be adversaries in the courtroom. But prosecutors have a significant upper hand: a largely unchecked power to bring criminal charges against anyone they want. In most parts of the country, prosecutors don’t wield this tool against their own professional opponents. But in New Orleans, it’s become a pattern.

At least six defense attorneys and investigators say they faced threats of criminal charges by the Orleans parish district attorney for doing their jobs, the Guardian has found. Since DA Leon Cannizzaro took office in 2009, the attorneys have been accused of kidnapping, impersonation and witness tampering in the course of defending their clients. Each case has failed to stand up to scrutiny: all charges that have been brought were eventually dropped or overturned.

Legal experts said the practice of charging public defenders is highly unusual and raises ethical concerns.

“I can’t think of any way to justify what the prosecutor’s office has done,” said Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace Law School who studies prosecutorial misconduct. He said prosecutors could be using their charging power to gain a competitive advantage or to intimidate defense attorneys.

“It’s an abuse of power by Cannizzaro’s office,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want a prosecutor’s office to dampen the ability or intimidate the ability of a public defender’s office to do the investigation,” said Carter Stewart, a former federal prosecutor who served as US attorney in southern Ohio. He told the Guardian he had never heard of prosecutors indicting public defenders anywhere else in the country.

The district attorney’s office did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.
-Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/01/prosecuted-law-new-orleans
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