A Primer on Prosecutorial Ethics, Brady v. Maryland, and Beyond

A Primer on Prosecutorial Ethics, Brady v. Maryland, and Beyond

Robert C. Phillips

DDA (Ret.)

April, 2021

“(A prosecutor) . . . is not a neutral, he is an advocate; but an advocate for a client whose business is not merely to prevail in the instant case.  (The prosecutor’s) . . . chief business is not to achieve victory but to establish justice. . . . ‘(T)he Government wins its point when justice is done in its courts.’”[1]

Indeed, the United States Supreme Court pointedly held over eight decades ago that a prosecutor;

“. . . is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”© 2026 Legal Updates, LLC.
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