Professor Rotunda Published Article in National Law Journal
May 20, 2012
Professor Rotunda co-authored an article published in The National Law Journal, entitled “Prosecutorial and Judicial Misconduct: High court should hear ‘Rubashkin’ to consider overzealous DOJ and judge who was essentially on prosecution team.” The article talks about how, in the past few years, a series of federal judges have criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecutorial misconduct. Most recently, lawyers for Sholom Rubashkin filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit refused to consider evidence that Rubashkin first discovered after the trial that made the trial “fundamentally unfair.” Rubashkin was the plant manager for Agriprocessors, an Iowa kosher processing plant, and the judge who tried his case, Judge Linda Reade, had participated in planning the raid on Rubashkin’s plant. According to the article, “The judge and the prosecutors should have notified Rubashkin’s lawyers that she had participated in planning the raid so that they could move to recuse her. Failure to do so was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.” Read the full article here.