Criminal Injustice With David A. Harris And Guest Beth Schwartzapfel

In this episode of “Criminal Injustice,” with David A. Harris, Harris and guest Beth Schwartzapfel, who is the author of two articles on this set of problems and is a staff writer on the Marshall Project, talk about the Brady v. Maryland rule as well as how this rule is violated daily to the point where it negatively impacts the whole system and why it is long overdue for change on this issue. Back in 1963, the Supreme court decided the case of Brady v. Maryland. In this case, the government withheld crucial evidence from the defense. The supreme court said that if the prosecution has material evidence in its possession that would exonerate or even lessen the punishment the defendant then the prosecution would have disclosed that evidence.

Schwartzapfel explains that although there are some cases where criminal discovery is as open as civil discovery, criminal cases are usually more tightly controlled than civil cases. Schwartzapfel also points out a flaw in these state discovery cases, where she says that there are “what” prosecutors are supposed to turn in evidence and then “when” prosecutors are supposed to turn in evidence. So she cleverly brings up the issue that if a state says that prosecutors have to turnover everything they have for evidence but doesn’t have to turn it in until a day before the trial than the Brady rule at this point would be ultimately useless, considering by this time the defendant may have already settled with a plea because that’s already what 90% of defendants do. Schwartzapfel mentions a bar fight where a bouncer was arrested and the prosecutors charged him with gang assault. The prosecutors told him that they had a video of the bar fight and that it wasn’t looking good for him but he still asked the prosecutors see the video. The prosecutors denied to show him the bar fight video and insisted he take the plea deal. The bouncer continued to claim he is innocent and did not want to take the plea deal. Due to him rejecting plea deals, he was facing felony charges that caused him to lose his job and become homeless. Once his lawyer had received the video, it showed that the bouncer was telling the truth about what had happened, which he claimed he was not doing anything besides attempting to break up the fight and this was apparent in the video. Schwartzapfel went on to add that in most cases like the bouncer’s, it is easier to just take the plea deal at times because so many people are afraid of the mandatory minimum laws plus continuing to fight felonies can cause people to lose things like their job as well as privileges and explains that this is why so many people take