Can a corrupt sherriff cause all cases from a department to be dismissed?
<p>A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcrEbcFxBGk" rel="nofollow noreferrer">video</a> detailing the incident</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Victor Hill, the former sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, was charged with seven counts of willfully depriving detainees at the Clayton County Jail of their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable force by law enforcement officers. Specifically, the grand jury who indicted him alleged that Hill caused the seven victims to be strapped into restraint chairs at the jail without any legitimate nonpunitive governmental purpose and for a period exceeding that justified by any legitimate nonpunitive governmental purpose. The grand jury further alleged that these offenses caused physical pain and resulted in bodily injury to the victims.</p>
<p>The trial is already over. On October 26, 2022, a jury convicted Hill
on six of the seven counts. As to each of those six guilty counts, the
jury further found that the offense caused physical pain and resulted
in bodily injury to 6 different victims.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It's safe to assume that if leadership at a department is corrupt. Rank &amp; File officers were likely corrupt as well. Can a corrupt sheriff cause all cases from his department to be dismissed while he was in charge?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Can a corrupt sheriff cause all cases from his department to be
dismissed while he was in charge?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There have been cases of mass dismissals when the corruption by the law enforcement officer involves a pattern and practice of falsification of evidence provided to courts in those cases. One of the most notable such cases was <a href="https://www.aclum.org/en/news/report-shows-more-24k-wrongful-convictions-dismissed-drug-lab-scandal" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>More than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases tainted by former state
chemist Sonja Farak have been dismissed in a court case brought by the
ACLU of Massachusetts, the Committee of Public Counsel Services
(CPCS), and law firm Fick &amp; Marx LLP. The new numbers appear in a
report issued by a court-designated “Special Master.” . . .</p>
<p>For nearly nine years, former state chemist Sonja Farak used drugs
that she stole from or manufactured in the Amherst Lab, causing
thousands of people to be wrongfully convicted of drug crimes based on
unreliable evidence. Since her arrest in 2013, Farak’s lab misconduct
has been compounded by prosecutorial misconduct, including by former
prosecutors with the Attorney General’s Office who – according to a
judge’s findings – intentionally deceived a court and defense lawyers
about the massive scope of Farak’s misconduct. In 2017, the ACLU of
Massachusetts and CPCS, together with Fick &amp; Marx LLP, called for
dismissal of every case tainted by Farak and subsequent years of
prosecutorial misconduct. In April 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court
ordered that thousands of convictions be dismissed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But, misconduct in how detainees are treated in jail does not go to the guilt or innocence of those defendants and therefore would not usually lead to mass dismissals.</p>
<p>A prosecutor could decide on a non-legal basis that a defendant has suffered enough from mistreatment in jail and dismiss the charges, and sometimes this is done on an isolated basis. But, mistreatment of detainees would rarely if ever be a basis for a mass dismissal of charges and would be in the sole discretion of the prosecutor as an exercise of discretion not compelled or suggested by any legal requirement.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It's safe to assume that if leadership at a department is corrupt.
Rank &amp; File officers were likely corrupt as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, that would be an assumption of guilt for those &quot;rank &amp; file&quot; deputies of the office.  Each one may be investigated to see if they had knowledge of and participated in any illegal activities.  It's possible, perhaps even likely, that there are honest deputies working in a department under a corrupt Sheriff.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can a corrupt sheriff cause all cases from his department to be
dismissed while he was in charge?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, a Sheriff, corrupt or otherwise, does not decide whether cases are dismissed or not.  A prosecutor may choose to drop charged or a judge may dismiss the charges based on something illegal by the Sheriff or the department's deputies.  But that would be a matter for someone other than the Sheriff to decide.</p>

<p>No.</p>
<p>The fact that a defendant was assaulted or otherwise mistreated in jail has no bearing on his culpability for the crimes that he's been accused of. A prosecutor would remain free to continue pursuing charges against any of the sheriff's victims, and evidence regarding their mistreatment in jail would likely be inadmissible at trial.</p>
<p>A prosecutor may, however, elect to drop the charges against one or more of these defendants, perhaps thinking that they have been adequately punished already or even just that doing so would be politically advantageous.</p>

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