Absolute immunity protects prosecutors even when they commit serious misconduct on the job.
Consider the following hypothetical: You are jailed for two years as you await trial for murder. You are facing the death penalty. You have cancer, which had been in remission until you were incarcerated without proper treatment and monitoring. And, it turns out, you were charged based on a false witness statement, a fact that the local prosecutor allegedly encouraged the destruction of evidence to obscure.
Now imagine suing that prosecutor and being told you have no recourse because such government employees are entitled to absolute immunity.
That is, unfortunately, not a hypothetical. It describes the case surrounding Nickie Miller, a Kentucky man who was implicated in a bizarre murder plot by a woman to whom the government had offered a deal to avoid prison time. That witness, Natasha Martin, almost immediately sought to recant. Law enforcement wouldn’t accept that. She testified before a grand jury, and then she tried to recant again, writing in jailhouse letters that her statement came in response to “coercive interrogation techniques, threats, and undisclosed promises of consideration.”
How’s withholding evidence and/or having it destroyed on purpose “within the scop of prosecutorial duties”? There’s going to be a tipping point and we’re going to reenact the French Revolution against such people.
Unfortunately, a bar association won’t do anything either until a court acts on it and finds against the prosecutor and their actions. Maybe there is one out that it would look at this and do something against the attorney.
Again, the foxes are guarding the hen house and this is protecting their own. Until the legal system is willing, ready, and able to protect people and not just those who practice within the legal system, this is going to sadly continue. Those who wear robes and sit on benches in this legal system need to have some spine to do the right thing.