Across America, some prosecutors are jailing innocent victims and witnesses to secure their testimony in court using “material witness” statutes. The legal provisions were intended to make sure that criminals were held accountable even if witnesses were reluctant, but their use has expanded since 9/11. Crime victims—especially poor victims—are being put in jail in order to get swift victories in court, sometimes, puzzlingly, in minor cases. The ACLU is suing Orleans Parish over the practice.
From the New Yorker:
Read Full Article »Despite the public attention given to prosecutorial misconduct in recent years, this form of alleged abuse has gone mostly unnoticed. Last spring, a watchdog group called Court Watch nola released a report documenting attempts by the office of the Orleans Parish D.A., Leon Cannizzaro, Jr., to coerce testimony from crime survivors. The lawsuit filed today, on behalf of Singleton and other plaintiffs, questions the justifications that prosecutors have used to put victims and innocent witnesses in jail. According to the complaint, prosecutors sought more than a hundred and fifty material-witness warrants over the past five years in Orleans Parish; approximately ninety per cent of the victims and witnesses, in cases where the A.C.L.U. could determine race, were people of color. Poverty, homelessness, precarious immigration status, and mental-health issues were all invoked by the D.A.'s office as reasons to jail crime victims, who included survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child sex trafficking.
