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Debra Milke spent 23 years on death row. In 2014 her conviction was reversed after the court found that @marcoattorney knew that the PPD detective who played a large role in Ms. Milke’s case had a long and storied history of misconduct and lying under oath.
In 2013, the 9th Circuit found that @marcoattorney knew the detective was a liar, yet it failed to disclose that information to Ms. Milke’s lawyers. In reality it was far worse. The truth is that MCAO actively worked at preventing Ms. Milke from gaining access to evidence to the
detective’s history. You know, the evidence that MCAO had and failed to disclose. For those who do not know, the State, in this case @marcoattorney, had a duty to disclose this evidence to Ms. Milke. The defense is not required to ask for it.
The State has an affirmative duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense. Even if there was some reason to believe MCAO didn’t know about the detective’s misconduct, an inadvertent failure to disclose is also a Brady violation.
The State is also required to produce documents that show an officer’s false and misleading statements in court and before grand juries. That did not happen in the Milke case.
An officer’s credibility is typically crucial to the state’s case. “It’s hard to imagine anything more relevant to the jury’s—or the judge’s—determination whether to believe an officers than evidence the officer lied under oath and trampled the constitutional rights of suspects
in discharging his official duties. “ And yet here we are again some 8 years later. In Ms. Milke’s case the 9th circuit directed the district court to order the state to provide Milke’s counsel with the detective’s personnel records covering all of his years of service,
including records pertaining to any disciplinary or Internal Affairs investigations and records pertaining to performance evaluations. The Court was concerned enough with MCAO’s conduct that it did not trust the agency to do its duty.
And the Court went one step further, it required that after MCAO turned over the records, it needed to make a statement under oath avowing it had disclosed everything it had which related to the detective’s character/truthfulness.
Here it is 8 years post Milke and MCAO is engaging in the same practices it employed in Ms. Milke’s case. In the case of the political protestors, MCAO permitted members of the Phoenix Police Department to present false evidence to the grand jury and to judges and
commissioners. @DaveBiscobing15’s series shows that PPD fabricated charges, lied in police reports and before the grand jury. MCAO must not countenance nor abet PPD’s misconduct. If it does, it will be complicit once again. Just like it was in Ms. Milke’s case.
MCAO must drop the charges.
