Again, a man - and his son - lost 25 years of their lives because he failed to disclose evidence he had. The personal destruction he caused is unfathomable - imagine yourself, after having your spouse killed, thrown in jail for a crime you know you didn't commit, pleading guilty because you were convinced this would be the best for you and your child you'll most likely never see again. This is way beyond unethical.
The original post said that Andersen prosecuted someone "knowing his innocence." But was that really Andersen's intent?
Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut and you can conclude that the prosecutor knew the defendant was innocent and still went forward with the prosecution. Those cases merit very severe punishment. But here, the main piece of withheld evidence was a statement by the victim's mother about a statement by the victim's three-year old child. The statement itself was inadmissible hearsay.
It should have been disclosed, but does failure to do so really rise to the level of malicious intent to prosecute someone Andersen "knew" to be innocent?
> Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut and you can conclude that the prosecutor knew the defendant was innocent and still went forward with the prosecution. Those cases merit very severe punishment.
The article claims this is the first time a prosecutor has been incarcerated.
There are lots of really terrible cases where prosecutors assisted in manufacturing evidence to wrongfully convict people, and received no punishment: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_cour.... The system needs to be overhauled to hold those people accountable. But I'm not sure this case is the poster-child for ones where the prosecutors need to do long prison sentences. Brady violations should carry some punishments. But I don't think a strict liability "eye-for-eye regardless of the prosecutor's state of mind" approach like people are advocating here is the way to go.
The premise of the court system is that we don't have some infallible technology to tell us whether someone is guilty so we go through this whole process to try to figure it out. If a prosecutor wrongly does something that can change the outcome of a case, the severity of the act is measured by the years taken from an innocent man.
You can reasonably argue that there is a difference in severity between e.g. withholding evidence and manufacturing evidence, but that difference is only worth so much when they both predictably cause the same outcome. And a term of incarceration of five days... it could be twenty times that long and still be overly lenient.
> Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut
That's irrelevant. The prosecutor chose to withhold the evidence to further his case. Even if he wasn't sure the suspect was innocent, he cannot claim he acted in good faith when he knowingly withholds evidence. As a prosecutor he knows very well he should present all the evidence he has. It is not his job to judge what's relevant and what's not.
10 days for ruining at least two lives?