USA Today posts its next set of articles in its series on federal prosecutorial misconduct

As noted here a few months ago, USA Today published this potent and disturbing pieceabout federal prosecutorial misconduct earlier this fall.  Now I see from this webpage that USA Today has now published this additional set of article on this important topic:

• Federal prosecutors keep jobs even after cases collapse
• States can discipline prosecutors, rarely do

Here is one of many notable excerpts from the first of these articles:

The Justice Department consistently conceals its own investigations of misconduct from the public.  Officials say privacy laws prevent them from revealing any details of their investigations.  That secrecy, however, makes it almost impossible to assess the full extent and impact of misconduct by prosecutors or the effectiveness of the department's attempts to deter it....

The Justice Department refuses to discuss its misconduct investigations, though Congress has repeatedly urged more transparency.  In 1978, for example, Congress asked the department to make the results of its investigations public.  That happened for roughly seven years under Attorney General Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's appointee, when [the Office of Professional Responsibility] released summaries of its investigations that included prosecutors' names.

But — with the exception of a few investigations of high-ranking officials — OPR has not revealed the names of prosecutors it found committed misconduct in almost a decade. Justice officials told USA TODAY that a federal law known as the Privacy Act, enacted in 1974, bars them from releasing any details, even when the problems have been widely publicized.  Instead, it produces anonymous annual reports without any identifying details, even genders, of the prosecutors involved.

"OPR is a black hole.  Stuff goes in, nothing comes out," said Jim Lavine, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.  "The public, the defense attorneys and the judiciary have lost respect for the government's ability to police themselves."