The US Second Circuit has ruled that a prosecutor can be held to a standard above “qualified immunity,” and thus can be sued, for knowingly presenting false information to a Grand Jury.
This quote from the court: “It ought not to be difficult, even for the most single‐minded of prosecutors, to avoid misconduct of the scope and seriousness of that in which the defendants engaged:
Creat[ing] false or fraudulently altered documents in the course of their performance of “investigatory functions,” knowing that such information was false or fraudulent; where “false” is defined as “untrue when made and . . . known to be untrue when made by the person making it or causing it to be made” and “fraudulent” as “falsely made with intent to deceive“.
It does not seem to us to be a danger to effective law enforcement to require prosecutors and their aides to abide by these rules even when pursuing the most complicated of cases with the utmost determination.”
See the story on the “Above the Law” website here.
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