Constitutional Scholar Jonathan Turley Damms Greg Damm

Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School where he holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law.

This is what was found on JONATHAN TURLEY Res ipsa loquitur (“The thing itself speaks”) web site concerning Prosecutor Greg Damm.

Dammed if You Don’t: Ninth Circuit Dismisses Criminal Case Due to Flagrant Prosecutorial Abuse
Published 1, May 12, 2008 Courts , Criminal law , Justice , Lawyering

Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Greg Damm is the focus of a blistering condemnation by the trial and appellate courts of his alleged prosecutorial misconduct in a Las Vegas case. The case against five individuals, attorneys Daniel Chapman and Sean Flanagan, involved alleged securities trading violations. Damm is accused for failing to turn over 650 pages of critical evidence after telling the court that all evidence had been produced for the defense.

The Ninth Circuit found blatant prosecutorial misconduct by the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s Office. In a decision written by Judge Kim Wardlaw, the panel held “This is prosecutorial misconduct in its highest form; conduct in flagrant disregard of the United States Constitution; and conduct which should be deterred by the strongest sanction available.”

For the rest of the article on Greg Damm CLICK HERE

For more on Greg Damm’s damnation by the 9th Circuit CLICK HERE where is beings:

9th Circuit Blasts U.S. Prosecutor for Withholding Documents

Pamela A. MacLean, The National Law Journal, May 12, 2008

Roundly denouncing a Las Vegas federal prosecutor for withholding 650 pages of evidence potentially helpful to two lawyers charged in a stock fraud case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld dismissal of all 64 charges and refused to allow a retrial.

“This is prosecutorial misconduct in its highest form; conduct in flagrant disregard of the United States Constitution; and conduct which should be deterred by the strongest sanction available,” wrote Judge Kim Wardlaw

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One of the Comments to the Turley article is VERY telling:

mespo727272 1, May 12, 2008 at 2:45 pm
rafflaw:

Here’s the pertinent excerpt from the opinion supporting your position. The last line is the killer.

“[F]or over two weeks of trial, the prosecutor consistently claimed that he had disclosed the required material to the defendants . . . . And I accepted that, I accepted [the AUSA’s] statement as an officer of the Court and overruled the objection on several occasions. . . . Only after I excoriated the Assistant U.S. Attorney in the strongest terms did he then offer an apology to the Court, not a heartfelt apology, but simply a response to me. And finally I said, be quiet and listen to me because he was just saying, yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and not really meaning it.”

The prosecutor has a “sworn duty . . . to assure that the defendant has a fair and impartial trial,” and his “interest in a particular case is not necessarily to win, but to do justice.” N. Mariana Islands v. Bowie, 236 F.3d 1083, 1089 (9th Cir.
4960 UNITED STATES v. CHAPMAN 2001).

In this case, the district court was clearly troubled by the government’s conduct and its failure to own up to its actions. We are similarly troubled, both by the AUSA’s actions at trial and by the government’s lack of contrition on appeal. The government attorneys who appeared in the original AUSA’s stead on the critical day of the hearing on the motion to dismiss the indictment told the trial court that they “took this matter extremely seriously” and conceded that the government made a “very serious mistake in terms of [its] discovery obligations.” Before us, however, these same attorneys have attempted to minimize the extent of the prosecutorial misconduct, completely disregarding the AUSA’s repeated misrepresentations to the court and the failure to obtain and prepare many of the critical documents until after the trial was underway. Instead, they claim for the first time on appeal that none of the 650 pages were required disclosures under Brady/Giglio. When the district court first indicated that it was inclined to dismiss the indictment, it noted that it was “concerned [that] any lesser sanction [would be] like endorsing [the AUSA’s conduct].”

The government’s tactics on appeal only reinforce our conclusion that it still has failed to grasp the severity of the prosecutorial misconduct involved here, as well as the importance of its constitutionally imposed discovery obligations.