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Description:
This essay, drawn from Legal Ethics: Law Stories, tells a riveting story about Ramos v. City of New York, a wrongful conviction, the prosecutorial and official misconduct that led to it, and the persistent and creative work of a single lawyer who won his client's release and then successfully sued for the largest settlement New York City had ever paid in this kind of case.
Legal Ethics classes mostly focus on rules, hypothetical fact patterns, and cases, perhaps with a smattering of tales from the headlines. Rarely do they get into the details of actual cases as seen through the eyes of the participants as the case is unfolding. Rarer still is it possible to follow the strategizing of a lawyer as he or she seeks to discover and prove apparent ethical misconduct of an opponent and then to persuade the courts to free the client from the harms suffered. This story is rich with detail, with suspense, with heroes, and with lessons for all law students who may someday wield state power, whether as prosecutors or otherwise.
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