Iris Eytan didn’t set out to become a criminal defense lawyer. She went to law school to help people as a mental health advocate, then followed her clients from shuttered psychiatric institutions into the jails and prisons where many of them ended up. What started as constitutional work in its most human form eventually became decades of criminal defense, including two cases she calls her bookends: a jail deputy wrongfully accused of murdering his wife, and Barry Morphew, a case that exposed how far some prosecutors will go to protect a conviction.
Those cases pushed Iris to found Protect Ethical Prosecutors, a reform campaign aimed at ending prosecutorial misconduct. In this conversation, we talk through the scale of the problem, why prosecutors are effectively immune from civil suits, and why the legal profession’s self-policing system keeps failing the people it’s supposed to protect.
Key Takeaways
* Nearly 4,000 documented exonerations exist in the US, and more than one in three involved prosecutorial misconduct like hiding evidence of innocence.
* A 1976 Supreme Court case, Imbler v. Pachtman, gave prosecutors absolute immunity from civil lawsuits, even for intentional or reckless misconduct.
* Fewer than 2% of prosecutors tied to wrongful convictions have ever faced employment discipline or bar sanctions, and almost none have faced criminal charges.
* Self-policing fails because judges, defense lawyers, and even fellow prosecutors are reluctant to report misconduct within a system they all depend on.
* Iris founded PEP to push for an independent oversight commission with real enforcement power, not just recommendations.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1