On Monday, “Teflon” Kim Gardner worked out a deal with the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel to keep her law license. All the hubbub, it appears, was because Gardner’s office “failed to maintain a comprehensive approach to collecting, producing and logging documents.” And, she “admit[ted] that she should have been more vigilant in ensuring the prosecution’s discovery obligations.”
The very next day, three young men who were prosecuted by Gardner’s office for murdering two other young men were acquitted. The trial judge in that case barred the prosecution from using jail calls and some other messages as evidence because the information had not been properly disclosed to defense lawyers. And, because investigators had also failed to examine the phones of three people, including the two victims, and a “potentially exculpatory” Facebook message, all of which could have helped the defense, the judge allowed defense attorneys to make the normally prohibited “adverse inference” argument: the state didn’t do this because they thought it would hurt their case.
