Maybe the press asked the wrong question when the subject was Anthony Graves’ murder conviction due to the misconduct of belatedly disbarred prosecutor Charles Sebesta.  What was the right question?

In October 2010, former Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler appeared at a courthouse press conference in Brenham and declared another prosecutor’s misconduct in a 1992 capital murder case “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Compared to what?

A visiting judge has accused former Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler of withholding evidence in the murder case against David Mark Temple, who was convicted of killing his wife in 2007, and has recommended that Temple be granted a new trial.

Temple was a former football star turned high school coach, convicted of murdering his pregnant wife while having an affair.  Defended by Dick DeGuerin, Siegler was not inclined to risk losing. It was

…a high-profile case pitting two outsized egos — Siegler and defense attorney Dick DeGuerin — against each other.

“Both were famous and neither could stand losing to each other,” Gist wrote in his 19-page recommendation, issued Wednesday.

Just Gist may be using the word “famous” more in a local sense, as Lisa Falkenberg at the Houston Chron explains:

The case was a turning point for Siegler. The tenacious prosecutor who had lost a bid for DA and long had been criticized by defense attorneys for her win-at-all-costs style became better known as a tenacious pursuer of justice, wherever it may lead. She parlayed her new image into minor celebrity and a popular TNT show, “Cold Justice,” in which she and a co-star travel the country to solve cold cases.

But with a new season scheduled to start later this month, one of Siegler’s own cold cases has come back to haunt her. New revelations threaten to stain the heroic image Siegler sells on TV.

The story is common, banal.  Exculpatory evidence, our old pal Brady, withheld from the defense, and then testimony denying knowledge of it that failed to pass scrutiny.

Gist cited Siegler’s “constant resistance” to share evidence helpful to the defense, known as Brady information, as required by law. She called only a small number of investigators to testify because she didn’t want DeGuerin to have access to all of their reports. She waited until the middle of trial to share other exculpatory evidence, making it impossible for DeGuerin to investigate it.

Gist suggested that, at times, Siegler lied in court: She told the trial judge there wasn’t favorable defense information when there was, and, during the habeus hearing, she claimed she hadn’t listened to recordings that contained favorable defense facts when she had.

And then there was the shotgun that could have been the murder weapon, and the report on the shotgun that nobody knows anything about.  Smart people can get so stupid sometimes.

But crazy “mistakes” can happen. Prosecutors lying under oath, on the other hand, not so much. As Mark Bennett rhetorically asked on the twitters after the news broke,

There’s a word for that. What is it? Maybe some former prosecutors can help me out.

But Siegler wasn’t without an explanation for her conduct. There’s always a good excuse.

Siegler testified in the habeas hearing that potential exculpatory evidence didn’t need to be disclosed if prosecutors “did not believe it was true,” according to the findings.

This is something of a defining problem with Brady. If we assume, as we must, that the prosecution believes that the defendant committed the crime, since they wouldn’t prosecute him otherwise, then evidence that tends to support innocence isn’t likely to be believed to be true.  Or, to be more blunt, exculpatory evidence might let a guilty man go free, and should a prosecutor who sincerely believes the defendant guilty enable such an outcome?

The answer is clear and certain.  Yes. First, because that’s the law, and second, because prosecutors aren’t magical beings whose beliefs are more important than the truth.  The trite expression is that the prosecutor’s function is to do justice, not convict.  Just to remind those of you who adore parity more than logic, the defense’s job is to defend, not to do justice. The functions are different, even if you don’t think they should be.

But some prosecutors believe in their own beliefs a little too much, sometimes guided by their zeal to win, their ego, their desire to be . . . on TV.  So did Kelly Siegler tempt fate when she proclaimed Sebesta’s misconduct to be the worst she’d ever seen?

I’m not sure if Siegler’s sins rise to the level of Sebesta’s. He knowingly sent an innocent man to death row. Siegler probably believes in Temple’s guilt, but she let bias blind her.

Who knows if David Temple is innocent or guilty. A man who cheats on his pregnant wife isn’t a sympathetic defendant.

But I know this: good prosecutors don’t have to cheat to win.

While Falkenberg’s comparison makes sense, it’s unclear why one needs to fall back on a hierarchy of prosecutorial sins.  Even while muttering praise for the virtue of the Constitution, of fairness, of that grand word, Justice, we still harbor a fondness for those who are certainly innocent over those who might be guilty but were denied a right or two, or a hundred, along the way.

And even if David Temple wasn’t guilty of murder, the guy cheated on his pregnant wife. What kind of man does that?

And for good prosecutors, winning is making sure justice is done. Siegler failed miserably.

Not being as much of a fan of “justice,” I would settle for adherence to the law requiring the disclosure of Brady and not committing perjury.  And Siegler still failed miserably.

Update:  Murray Newman, who knows stuff inside the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, provides a great deal of backstory to the Temple investigation and this decision.  While it seems to muddy the waters, and perhaps bring some greater depth to why the prosecution didn’t believe the exculpatory evidence, it doesn’t appear to alter the ultimate points, that Brady was withheld. Siegler lied about it.