A Rotten Apple: Examining New York's Dark Figure of Prosecutorial Misconduct and the Erasure of Wrongdoing

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Prosecutors, as the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, have considerable opportunity to violate the norms and ethics of their role and the civil rights of defendants about whom they make life-changing decisions. Yet the extent to which prosecutorial misconduct occurs and whether it is recognized by higher courts is largely unknown. This study attempts to get at this dark figure of wrongdoing by examining the filtering of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct from defendants’ original appeals upon conviction through appellate courts’ determinations of harm. Using nearly 200 appellate judicial rulings issued in 2021 in the state of New York, we examine the nature of cases that are filtered out of consideration for remedial action based on prosecutorial misconduct from the original appeal to assess whether appellate courts concede that it occurred and if this wrongdoing is perceived as harmless. In doing so, we begin to disentangle how selection biases may factor into judicial decision-making around the problem of prosecutorial misconduct.

Authors

• Elizabeth Griffiths, Rutgers University

• Heather L. Scheuerman, James Madison University

• Merin Sanil, Rutgers University