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Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

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Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#101

Post by wfo »

elipsey wrote: post #94
pc86 wrote: post #65

> The notice came from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office. His prosecutors are using these fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to them — a tactic that defense lawyers and legal experts said is unethical, if not illegal. The fact that the DA's office, which does not issue subpoenas , can mail to witnesses a document which says "SUBPOENA" is bold lettering and threatens arrest, is not on its face obvio…

> If a defense attorney did something similar, Williams said, “I guarantee you this DA would try to prosecute that defense attorney.” Who watches the watchers? We know now that we need to look for something like a notary stamp and judge signature on a subpeona, but we will never be as sophisticated in this domain as the DA's office, so they can probably easily trick us in other ways. The lesson I am inclined to take…

The DA office can always just lie in person, mislead people (who cares if there's an official stamp; how many regular people know literally anything about the law?). At the end of the day if a prosecutor says "obey or you will be jailed" people will obey. If they did it to me and I couldn't afford a lawyer you bet I'd obey too. The only remedy is to seriously punish prosecutors who commit fraud like these ones are. Prosecutorial misconduct needs to be taken much more seriously and be much easier to convict on, since it's a national epidemic. Either that or the bar association needs to start taking their responsibilities seriously and ban people who do this from ever practicing law again.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#102

Post by turc1656 »

Violating the Code of Criminal Procedure should carry disbarment, at minimum. Include the very reasonable cases that could be made for fraud and/or forgery (depending on the wording of the law(s) in that state) and things get even more serious.

What's not mentioned is the possibility of a violation of section 242 under title 18 of the Federal code (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242). For practical purposes, that's a hell of a stretch, I admit. But it really shouldn't be. My reasoning is that the government here is forcing people to do something that it doesn't have the authority to force them to do, that may very well be a violation of this law. They are restricting your freedoms without the authority under law to do that. The question becomes whether or not the restriction of freedom(s) from these fake subpoenas counts as a violation of the "rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States". And I don't know the answer with certainty. A constitutional lawyer would have to weigh in on that. I imagine it would, though, because these people are effectively being forced to show up somewhere when they had no intention of doing so with people they never wanted to meet and forcing them to speak by answering questions they did not want to answer. That sounds like a first amendment violation to me.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#103

Post by coldtea »

tcj_phx wrote: post #3

Prosecutors have a tough job. Prosecuting people who've hurt other people is the easy part of their job. Prosecuting people who haven't hurt anyone but themselves (self-medication w/ the street pharmacy), or who've become dependent on alcohol just to feel 'normal' [1]... Maybe prosecutors have to have a cruel streak to stick with the job after the novelty wears off. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085230 S…

>Prosecutors have a tough job. Prosecuting people who've hurt other people is the easy part of their job. Prosecuting people who haven't hurt anyone but themselves (self-medication w/ the street pharmacy), or who've become dependent on alcohol just to feel 'normal' [1]... Maybe prosecutors have to have a cruel streak to stick with the job after the novelty wears off.

And yet, they manage to not be such bastards in other parts of the Western World (EU, Nordic countries, etc).

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#104

Post by turc1656 »

pc86 wrote: post #65

> The notice came from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office. His prosecutors are using these fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to them — a tactic that defense lawyers and legal experts said is unethical, if not illegal. The fact that the DA's office, which does not issue subpoenas , can mail to witnesses a document which says "SUBPOENA" is bold lettering and threatens arrest, is not on its face obvio…

I didn't even think of witness tampering. Good one. I don't know enough about that law to know if it applies, but it definitely might. Add that to the list of violations for these dirtbags.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#105

Post by eric_the_read »

matt4077 wrote: post #4
pizza wrote: post #2

Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree applicable?

I don't know the answer to your question, but let me just point out how awesome the "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" doctrine is. There are very few countries where that idea is as much a force as it is in the US–it's theoretically possible, but courts often shy away from applying it. I think it's a testament to the integrity of the US court system that they routinely let people off the hook, even when it is proven that…

In theory. In practice, it's pretty much nonexistent. There's a long tweetstorm about it here: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/821017618106744833 but the short version is that there are so many exceptions to the exclusionary rule (a.k.a. "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine") that it might as well not exist for all the good it's likely to do you.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#106

Post by turc1656 »

Spoom wrote: post #74

Ah, I get it. The prosecutor's office wasn't getting real subpoenas from a judge (which would have been easy enough to get in most cases) because it would have required that the defense also have access to the testimony as well as the ability to cross-examine. This way, the prosecution gets an ace in the hole to use at trial or plea bargaining. That has to be pretty illegal, right?

Yes. Particularly with the way they did it. If they instead went through police detectives, I believe detectives aren't required to turn over every single thing they have during discovery. So they could legally keep the notes of a conversation they had with a witness to be their own, or simply not make notes on it in the first place so they have nothing to hand over. I believe that would be totally legal.

What they did here violates the judicial process as you mentioned in a very horrible way.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#107

Post by talmand »

mcherm wrote: post #92
wccrawford wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the fact that it should be illegal, it's stupid . It's going to teach people that they might not have to comply with subpoenas because of all the fake ones. At the very least, people will be more inclined to wait until they have a lawyer before speaking with the police, which is the opposite of what they want. But it's also likely to cause people to ignore real subpoenas, which will not only hurt them but also…

I disagree. It won't really harm the prosecutors and police. They'll still be able to bring the full force of the law against anyone who violates an actual subpoena. In fact, it allows them to successfully prosecute a few more people (those who didn't respond to a subpoena). And stories about THAT will just terrify people and make them more likely to comply with requests from police and prosecutors (because they don'…

There are negatives in creating a situation where people that normally would talk to you without you jumping through hoops stop talking to you willingly and require you to jump through hoops.

Especially when the eventual new prosecutor wonders why they have to arrest everyone that is under subpoena to get them to respond.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#108

Post by Declanomous »

mcherm wrote: post #92
wccrawford wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the fact that it should be illegal, it's stupid . It's going to teach people that they might not have to comply with subpoenas because of all the fake ones. At the very least, people will be more inclined to wait until they have a lawyer before speaking with the police, which is the opposite of what they want. But it's also likely to cause people to ignore real subpoenas, which will not only hurt them but also…

I disagree. It won't really harm the prosecutors and police. They'll still be able to bring the full force of the law against anyone who violates an actual subpoena. In fact, it allows them to successfully prosecute a few more people (those who didn't respond to a subpoena). And stories about THAT will just terrify people and make them more likely to comply with requests from police and prosecutors (because they don'…

I'm inclined to side with you on this one. I took a linguistics class called Language and the Law. The takeaway was that the legal system is quite generous when interpreting language from the side of The Law, and very strict when interpreting the language of those on the other side.

I imagine you might be able to avoid the consequences of ignoring a subpoena if your lawyer was very good, and hired the right experts to testify on your behalf, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. And legal fees can easily be as much or more than a mortgage. (IANAL)

A substantial portion of the reading for the class was from Language in the Legal Process[1]. I'd highly recommend the book if you are at all interested in legal language from a linguistics standpoint.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Language-Legal-Process-J-Cotterill/...

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#109

Post by balabaster »

mcherm wrote: post #92
wccrawford wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the fact that it should be illegal, it's stupid . It's going to teach people that they might not have to comply with subpoenas because of all the fake ones. At the very least, people will be more inclined to wait until they have a lawyer before speaking with the police, which is the opposite of what they want. But it's also likely to cause people to ignore real subpoenas, which will not only hurt them but also…

I disagree. It won't really harm the prosecutors and police. They'll still be able to bring the full force of the law against anyone who violates an actual subpoena. In fact, it allows them to successfully prosecute a few more people (those who didn't respond to a subpoena). And stories about THAT will just terrify people and make them more likely to comply with requests from police and prosecutors (because they don'…

If I couldn't be sure if the document was authentic, you can be sure I'd want proof of authenticity from the court before I complied. Throw the book at me if you like, I will present my case to the court. If it was proven that the department were issuing fraudulent subpoenas, shouldn't we treat all their subpoenas as questionable until proven otherwise? It seems like a perfectly reasonable response. Of course, IANAL and TINLA applies.

Re: Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk

#110

Post by balabaster »

jobu wrote: post #89
pc86 wrote: post #65

> The notice came from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office. His prosecutors are using these fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to them — a tactic that defense lawyers and legal experts said is unethical, if not illegal. The fact that the DA's office, which does not issue subpoenas , can mail to witnesses a document which says "SUBPOENA" is bold lettering and threatens arrest, is not on its face obvio…

IANAL, but this really sounds like document fraud and possibly mail fraud. If it is, then this DA could get up to 20 years per document.

You do have a point there. Mail fraud has been a federal offence since 1872.

However document fraud appears to be a little less black and white. Obviously I have no legal training and my interpretation is probably way off, but reading U.S. Code statute 1324c regarding document fraud, it appears to insinuate in subsection b that somehow law enforcement agencies are exempt.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324c

Perhaps you can interpret this more effectively than I can.

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