
Prosecutor posts as accused killer's fake girlfriend on Facebook - rubikscube
http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/prosecutor-posts-as-accused-killers-girlfriend-on-facebook-gets-fired/
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swamp40
What we're seeing here is the crux of the problem with allowing police (and
prosecutors) to lie to a person in order to obtain a confession.

It's unethical.

And once you teach this bastardized ethics to police (and prosecutors), they
now think LYING is a perfectly acceptable means to an end.

And then you see crap like this.

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voidlogic
When I was in HS and I learned that police could lie I was floored. Obviously
it is unethical, but I think it causes ethics rot: I think the scariest thing
about telling police that it is OK to lie is that it sets up the standard that
normal rules social of social conduct don't apply to them, and what are laws
but very formal rules social of social conduct...

In this case I am impressed with the Cleveland County Prosecutor for letting
this guy go.

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bayesianhorse
Really hard to judge without knowing the rest of the case. Lying to suspects
isn't unethical. Intruding into a suspect's personal life by potentially
destroying relationships is a much tougher proposition.

Imagine the situation where the man is actually innocent, and his
girlfriend(s) go berserk on him because of the ruse.

~~~
DanBC
It's pretty disturbing to read things like this:

 _" Unless I could break this guy’s alibi a murderer might be walking on the
street. There was such a small window of opportunity, I had to act fast."_

The guy has obviously decided that this man is a murderer, and needs to be
convicted, and thus it's okay to take "extreme" measures to break an alibi.

Sometimes this results in guilty people being convicted, but it also results
in wrongful convictions.

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amirmc
_"... assistant county prosecutor Kevin Filiatraut discovered the Facebook
transcripts in the file and questioned Brockler about them."_

And if he hadn't put the transcripts in the file, no-one may ever have known.

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brunorsini
Although the outcome here seems good the opposite could have very easily been
the case. There's a reason why "due process" is treated as a sacred principle
in democratic countries. From Wikipedia:

When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the
law, this constitutes a due-process violation, which offends against the rule
of law.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process_of_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process_of_law))

~~~
smsm42
For police to lie to a suspect - or anybody else - is not against the law and
AFAIK does not violate "due process". Giving false testimony however - which
two girlfriends were about to do - is a crime, called perjury. So the
prosecutor actually prevented two crimes from being committed.

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amirmc
_" So the prosecutor actually prevented two crimes from being committed."_

Do we _really_ know that? It caused the women to "go crazy", perhaps crazy
enough to want to hurt the boyfriend, which they could do by withdrawing their
alibi.

We simply can't know from the info in the article.

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justin66
The guy who wrote that blog item apparently doesn't know what county Cleveland
is in. I suggest reading the cleveland.com material. I wonder why people link
to the blog instead of the actual story, it's not behind a paywall.

[http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/06/cuyahoga_co...](http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/06/cuyahoga_county_prosecutor_fir.html)

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tdrd
Don't see the problem here. He did not intimidate, falsify evidence, or
otherwise violate due process.

His job is (was) to uphold the law, not his boss' moral code.

~~~
inetsee
It sounds to me as if what he did could be considered witness intimidation.
Lawyers are considered to be officers of the court, and are held to a higher
ethical standard than police officers, who are allowed to use deception to
gather evidence.

This prosecutor is probably lucky that the only thing that happened to him was
that he got fired. He could just as easily have been referred to the Bar
Association for sanctions, including disbarment.

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SeanDav
I don't see a lot of difference between this and any police or government
sting operation.

