The Supreme Court has the opportunity to take a stand against prosecutorial misconduct this Friday when the justices will decide whether or not to hear Wolfe v. Clarke. Wolfe v. Clarke involves a murder conviction that was overturned due to gross prosecutorial misconduct. After a series of appeals wherein the prosecutors have continued to engage in misconduct, the case now reaches the SCOTUS where justices must decide whether a federal court has the jurisdiction to bar prosecutors from retrying a defendant in a case where the prosecutors have engaged in repeated and egregious misconduct.
Supreme Court Building by Chang’r / (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Justin Michael Wolfe was convicted of killing Daniel Petrole in Northern Virginia in 2001 and sentenced to death row after the shooter, Owen Barber, was given a plea deal to testify that he was hired by Wolfe to kill Petrole. State officials not only persuaded Barber to testify to this, but also hid records of this agreement from the defense, as well as other evidence that would have undermined Barber’s credibility. Nine years later, when Barber recanted his testimony, said that Wolfe had no role in the murder and admitted to lying on the stand, a district judge overturned Wolfe’s conviction.
Since then the case has been trapped in a series of appeals, in which the state of Virginia has repeatedly attempted to retry Wolfe, who is still in prison, and try Barber for his “perjury.” Now the Supreme Court has the chance to hear the case and decide how far prosecutors can go before their misconduct prevents them from retrying a suspect. Prosecutorial accountability is an increasingly pressing issue as 43 percent of wrongful convictions are the result of official misconduct, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Read more here
Read the case brief here