Now here’s an interesting one. TLL recently learned that Santa Clara County Assistand District Attorney Benjamin Field has been suspended for 4 years for abusing his power as a D.A. Among the legal violations Mr. Field is alleged to have committed are:

• Abuse of prosecutorial power
• Concealment of evidence
• Violating CONSTITUTIONAL rights
• Withholding EXCULPATORY evidence
• Misleading a Judge
• Disobeying court orders

Santa Clara County has one of the higher prosecution rates in the nation. It isn’t too surprising that something like this happened. What is surprising however, is that it took this long for action to be taken (mainly because it took this long to build the case). However, those in the know have been aware for years that the Santa Clara DA’s Office has always taken a hard-line policy, and crossing the legal line was inevitable.

The timing of this story couldn’t be more perfect. With a major prison population crisis on California’s hands, one wonders where other abuses of power have led to unconstitutional and wrongful convictions. Several convictions have already been overturned through the Northern California Innocence Project, run by Santa Clara University School of Law. We hear stories of wrongful conviction all the time. It would be interesting to see how many of the convictions that have come out of the Santa Clara D.A.’s office have ever been overturned. (Don’t get me wrong, the majority of criminals out there have done something to land them in the pen, and they deserve to be incarcerated for a justifiable amount of time).

This story really is a shame because prosecutors should be, and are, held up to extremely high standards. We expect there will be shady lawyering somewhere in the legal community, but the D.A.’s office? They have the power to send us away for a long time in ugly orange jumpsuits. The public should expect nothing less than by-the-book ethical and legal behavior from these government employees. However, it has become evident that they are just as willing to bend the rules as anyone. It’s just that the result of their rule-breaking tends to result in innocent people being sent away to a dank, dark corner of the hell-hole they call prison. Mr. Field’s misconduct has landed him in hot water, damaged his future career, and most likely pissed off many of his fellow D.A.’s. The good news is that, hopefully, there will be greater scrutiny of the cases that these D.A.’s handle, and perhaps a push by defense attorneys to overturn more wrongful convictions.

Some consider the 4 year suspension too harsh, as the prosecutors requested only 3 years. The one year difference makes little difference in my opinion. Either way, Mr. Field will have an eternally tarnished career. Kind of like how the people he may have wrongly sent away to prison will have an eternally tarnished life.

“This is what you get, when you mess with us.” - Karma Police by Radiohead

-TLL