Report Tracks U.S. Prosecutor Misconduct

Twenty Justice Department lawyers left their jobs while under investigation for charges of professional misconduct during the first year of the Clinton Administration, according to a department report.

At the same time, allegations of misconduct by department lawyers and assistant U.S. attorneys rose 78% over the last year of the George Bush Administration, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility report shows.

The OPR report, which is based on 1993 data, tracks a surge of allegations of misconduct that began in fiscal 1992 and faced Attt. Gen. Janet Reno during her first months in office. The previously undisclosed data--which cover the period Oct. 1, 1992, to Sept. 30, 1993--are consistent with other indicators that the problem of prosecutorial misconduct among the department’s 7,000 lawyers required high-level attention. There was a slight decline in the number of substantiated allegations.

“That certainly is a telling figure,” said OPR Counsel Michael E. Shaheen Jr. of the 20 resignations or retirements, a figure that was previously matched by 22 similar departures between 1985 through 1991. “Sometimes people have an exaggerated view of what they may have done wrong. Sometimes a person, believing that it is going to cost them a job, will opt to resign in order to keep the record clear. Their conduct may not have deserved that extreme sanction.”

Under former Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, U.S. attorneys sometimes failed to report complaints against their subordinates to OPR for investigation. OPR delayed investigations of prosecutorial misconduct if they arose from a pending case. The practice apparently continued in fiscal 1993, allowing for the growth of a large backlog of unresolved misconduct allegations.

Beginning in the late 1980s, however, a series of major prosecutions in Florida, California, Illinois and other states were derailed after federal judges sharply criticized the professional conduct of the prosecutors.

Senior departmental officials and rank-and-file prosecutors have argued that the increase in complaints came from defense attorneys.

But the OPR report found that only 10% of the complaints in 1993 came from defense laywers. Most came from officials inside the Justice Department (49%) and individuals (24%).