Opinion ID: 450586
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Federal Prosecutor's Duty in the Federal Criminal Justice System

Text: 16 Conceptually related to the purposes for which the supervisory doctrine was created is the federal prosecutor's obligation to serve the cause of justice in our criminal justice system. Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 55 S.Ct. 629, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935), is the critical case establishing the prosecutor's duty to ensure that justice be done as a higher priority than obtaining a conviction. The defendant in Berger claimed that the prosecutor's conduct at trial overstepped the bounds of propriety and fairness and entitled him to a new trial. The Supreme Court agreed, and in the often quoted passage explained the nature of the prosecutor's duty and the values the duty is designed to effect: 17 The United States Attorney is a representative not of an ordinary party to the controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor--indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one. 18 Id. at 88, 55 S.Ct. at 633 (emphasis added). 19 This Court has echoed repeatedly the mandate of Berger. We have said that the cherished title United States Attorney is not a hunting license which exempts its holder from the ethical constraints of advocacy. See United States v. Beckett, 706 F.2d 519, 521 n. 5 (5th Cir.1983); United States v. Bursten, 453 F.2d 605, 610 (5th Cir.1971), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 843, 93 S.Ct. 44, 34 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972). Rather, possessing the title is a privilege, and this privilege requires federal prosecutors to adhere to the highest standards of fairness and justice. As we said in United States v. Corona, 551 F.2d 1386 (5th Cir.1977), [w]e would be remiss if ... we did not recall the 'heavy responsibility [of prosecutors] ... to conduct criminal trials with an acute sense of fairness and justice.'  Id. at 1391 (quoting United States v. Dawson, 486 F.2d 1326, 1330 (5th Cir.1974)). 20