Opinion ID: 368287
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The professional impropriety

Text: 24 The professional impropriety of assuming a dual role as advocate and witness has long been acknowledged by both the English and the American bars. 9 The ABA Code of Professional Responsibility states as an ethical consideration: 25 The roles of an advocate and of a witness are inconsistent; the function of an advocate is to advance or argue the cause of another, while that of a witness is to state facts objectively. 10 26 The ABA has also codified disciplinary rules designed to prevent this conflict of roles and to minimize its prejudicial potential when prevention is impossible. DR 5-101(B) and DR 5-102 of the ABA Code prevent an attorney from accepting employment as an advocate in litigation when it is obvious that he will also be called as a witness; if the need for his testimony on behalf of his client becomes apparent after the lawyer has undertaken employment in the litigation, he must withdraw from the role of trial advocate; only in enumerated exceptional circumstances do these requirements not apply, such as where the testimony will relate solely to an uncontested matter or a matter of formality to which no substantial opposing evidence is likely to be offered, or where the lawyer's refusal to serve as advocate would work a substantial hardship on the client because of the lawyer's distinctive value in a particular case. 11 27 The ABA Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function 12 make clear that these rules of professional propriety are no less applicable to an attorney for the Government. Section 3.1(f) of the ABA Standards provides: 28 The prosecutor should avoid interviewing a prospective witness except in the presence of a third person unless the prosecutor is prepared to forego impeachment of a witness by the prosecutor's own testimony as to what the witness stated in an interview or to seek leave to withdraw from the case in order to present his impeaching testimony. 29 The commentary on this provision emphasizes the profession's rules against an advocate's justifying: 30 Use of a third person is virtually the only effective means of impeaching a witness. Assuming a court would permit it, a prosecutor is in a difficult situation if he must seek leave to withdraw and substitute other counsel so that he might take the stand to relate what he claimed the adverse witness had said to him. 31 The Code of Professional Responsibility takes a firm position that a lawyer should avoid testifying in court, when he is the advocate. ABA Code DR 5-102. 13 32 The courts have shared the legal profession's disapproval of the double role of advocate-witness. 14 In particular, the federal courts have almost universally frowned upon the practice of a Government prosecutor testifying at the trial of the case he is prosecuting, whether for 15 or against 16 the defendant, and have stated that the practice should be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances or for compelling reasons. 17 Where the prosecutor's appearance as witness is unavoidable, the courts have stated that, in general, the prosecutor should withdraw from participation in the trial. 18 33 The reasons that have been cited for this judicial and professional reprehension of the testifying prosecutor include the following. First, there is the risk that the prosecutor will not be a fully objective witness: 34 It is obvious that the opportunity for tailoring a witness's testimony to the needs of the Government's case is maximized if recourse is permitted to the testimony of an experienced trial attorney who is interested in the successful presentation of that case. Especially in criminal litigation, where so much is at stake for the defendant, must the Bench and Bar demand adherence to a principle that is designed to ensure objectivity in the presentation of evidence. 19 35 Second, it is feared that the prestige of a Government attorney's office will artificially enhance his credibility. Although jurors of varying degrees of sophistication will, of course, have different conceptions of the awe due to a public officer, it is widely hypothesized that (a) jury naturally gives to the evidence of the prosecuting attorney far greater weight than to that of the ordinary witness. 20 A third consideration is that the prosecutor's testifying might create . . . confusion on the part of the jury as to whether he (is) speaking in his capacity of prosecutor or witness. 21 Such confusion, besides disrupting the normal workings of the judicial mechanism, may result in the fact-finder according testimonial credit to the prosecutor's closing arguments. 22 36 While the above-cited reasons for the advocate-witness rule all reflect a policy of avoiding the slightest risk of prejudice to defendants, the most frequently cited justification for the rule reflects a broader concern for public confidence in the process of justice. The chief fear which underlies the ethical rule, it is commonly acknowledged, is not that the testifying prosecutor actually will overreach a hapless defendant, but that he will Appear to a skeptical public to have done so. 23 The legal profession's disapprobation of the advocate-witness is thus closely related to the injunction in Canon 9 of the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility that (a) lawyer should avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. 24 Particularly where the lawyer in question represents the prosecuting arm of the Government, the ethical rule serves to implement the maxim that justice must satisfy the appearance of justice. 25 This function of preserving public trust may be especially necessary in proceedings of the grand jury, which more than a few critics have characterized as a mere tool of prosecutors. 26 Even an unarticulated sense among grand jurors or their friends that something was fishy about a proceeding where the prosecutor testified will feed cynics' claims. 37 The foregoing considerations and others 27 demonstrate that the general disapprobation of an advocate's testimony is more than an outdated shibboleth disguised as a rule of professional ethics. Furthermore, the justifications cited for the rule are as pertinent to grand jury proceedings as they are to trials before petit juries, where the rule is most often visible. That the rule applies to prosecutors in grand jury proceedings, as well as in criminal trials, is implicit in § 3.5(b) of the ABA Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function, which provides: 38 The prosecutor should not make statements or arguments in an effort to influence grand jury action in a manner which would be impermissible at trial before a petit jury. 39 The Commentary to § 3.5 amplifies this directive: 40 A prosecutor should not, however, take advantage of his role as the ex parte representative of the state before the grand jury to unduly or unfairly influence it in voting upon charges brought before it. In general, he should be guided by the standards governing and defining the proper presentation of the state's case in an adversary trial before a petit jury. (Emphasis added.) 41 The standards for presenting the state's case to a petit jury 28 clearly preclude the prosecutor's testifying, except in the limited circumstances referred to in DR 5-101(B) of the ABA Code (see note 11 above).