Some lawyers should just shut up.
Such is the case at the Supreme Court of Seattle overturned the conviction of one Kevin L. Monday Jr. who had been found guilty and was looking at 64 years in prison for murdering Francisco Green in April 2006.
Monday Jr. appealed his conviction of 2007 saying he didn’t get a fair trial. Monday Jr. was apparently right as the Supreme Court saw things his way and for a good reason.
The court voted 8-1 that the King County Deputy Prosecutor had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by questioning during the closing argument of the trial.
It appears that James Konat the prosecutor had actually asked the witnesses what the phrase “black folk don’t talk about black folk” and what did “snitch” to the police meant.
He also did a mock of the way the urban people of the area speak by pronouncing the world police as po-leese and the justices found it to be derogatory.
The Supreme Court also found that some of the witnesses against Monday Jr., weren’t credible enough and in their statement said “A Prosecutor gravely violates a defendant’s rights to an impartial jury when the prosecutor resorts to racist argument and appeals to racial stereotypes or racial bias to achieve convictions.”
This makes one wonder on both sides of the isle as here we have a man who was convicted and that conviction upheld on appeal but later the Supreme Court finds not only improprieties on the part of the prosecution but also on the witnesses who somehow got through the screening. This looks like an innocent man may have been convicted and although race is a factor, what the real factors are, are the incompetent and disingenuous way some courts handle themselves that puts all of us in jeopardy.
