I've been following the prosecution of George Zimmerman for the homicide of Trayvon Martin and have more than once cited to Alan Dershowitz's articles in the popular press on a topic that continues to interest me: whether a prosecutor filing a probable cause affidavit can deliberately omit facts that are inconvenient to, or contradictory to, the prosecutor's theory of the case. It's a question that goes to the heart of the lawyer's duty to be partisan.
(You sometimes hear it said that part of the standard conception of American legal ethics is a duty to be fully partisan for the client. In reality, the degree to which the lawyer can present just the client's version of the issue varies quite a bit under the rules, depending on context. On top of that, lawyers often have considerable discretion about the degree of partisanship they employ, because they so often control the tactics. I don't practive criminal law, so I don't know what the rule would be in this case.)
Dershowitz has now authored an article that more than one reader has sent to me. In it, he claims that the prosecutor, Angela Corey, called Harvard Law School and went on a 40 minute rant, including threatening to sue Harvard, in response to Dershowitz's articles. Assuming that Dershowitz's article is accurate (query: is he allowed to be strongly partisan in his op-eds or should he be present all the facts that a neutral reader would need to reach a reasoned decision?), isn't that something that Corey shouldn't have done? It must be hard to be the prosecutor in a high-stakes case, but I would have advised her to take the high road and suffer the slings and arrows -- if only to avoid a Streisand Effect.