In a recent New York Times article on the upcoming Smith v. Cain oral argument before the Supreme Court, Campbell Robertson and Adam Liptak cite The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson: Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Protect Against Prosecutorial Misconduct for the proposition that "prosecutors who withhold evidence are almost never disciplined." Andrew Rosenthal also referenced the YLJO essay in his New York Times editorial: he quotes Lincoln Caplan, a fellow editor at The Times, in noting that "[a] group of Yale Law School students recently published a report on 'The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson,' which is unsettling but well worth reading." Jarvis DeBerry of NOLA.com has discussed the piece in his article and Deborah Jane Cooper, one of the authors of the YLJO essay, has written further on the topic in an opinion in The National Law Journal. 

In The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson: Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Be Protected After Prosecutorial Misconduct, David Keenan, Deborah Jane Cooper, David Lebowitz, and Tamar Lerer examine prosecutorial accountability in the wake of Connick v. Thompson, a recent Supreme Court case overturning a $14 million jury verdict awarded to a man who spent fourteen years on death row after prosecutors withheld key exculpatory evidence during his trial. The Court based its decision in part on the availability of other measures to check prosecutorial misconduct, including state professional disciplinary procedures. Keenan, Cooper, Lebowitz, and Lerer challenge this presumption by undertaking a detailed analysis of these procedures in all fifty states. They demonstrate that these measures are ineffective tools for accountability and recommend several strategies for strengthening professional conduct rules and grievance procedures to deter and sanction prosecutorial misconduct.

Please click here to read the YLJO Essay in full.