They’re just lawyers who get a paycheck from the government. They’re still lawyers subject to the Code of Professional Responsibility. They’re lawyers, and as lawyers, are subject to the Code of Professional Responsibility. So why is it that the Departmental Disciplinary Committees and their lead counsel have essentially ignored any grievances over their conduct?

Years ago, my buddy and officemate at the time, Dan Arshack, as president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, when it still mattered, created a committee to grieve prosecutors and judges. It was created to overcome one of the biggest obstacles, that these were people we would have to deal with over and over. There is no faster way to make an enemy for life than filing a grievance against someone, and so defense lawyers were reluctant to do so in their own name. Plus, it usually came off as vengeful, sour grapes at times or just petty.

By creating an “official” committee to do the dirty work, to vet the complaints, to pursue it on a more official level, the idea was to pursue the grievances that individuals wouldn’t for self-preservation while maintaining a level of seriousness about the effort that the disciplinary committee would recognize. It was a great idea. It went nowhere. The NYSACDL committee gave it its best shot and the disciplinary committee responded, “nah.” And that was that. Eventually, it faded into oblivion. Who wanted to put in the effort to accomplish nothing?

There is now a new effort, a sign of the times, to make accountability for unethical prosecutors happen.

A new group called Accountability NY has filed professional complaints against Testagrossa, Leventhal, and nineteen other current and former Queens prosecutors who have been criticized by judges for misconduct in the past. Some of the group’s complaints, like those against Testagrossa and Leventhal, seek disbarment. Others recommend suspensions.

“A law license is a privilege,” said Cynthia Godsoe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and member of Accountability NY. “We can’t have prosecutors who commit egregious and often repeated misconduct. It’s too dangerous for clients and it also undermines lawyers as a whole, and the rule of law.”

This new group has a website and states that it’s made up of a “coalition of law professors and public interest groups.” Apparently, Godsoe is one of the prawfs involved, although the group neglects to mention who the other prawfs and public interest groups might be. Perhaps they just haven’t gotten to the point of basic transparency yet, or perhaps they assume it shouldn’t matter to those who would support them. It matters to me, as it’s a reflection on the credibility and gravitas of the group.

There are some “public interest groups” with which I would not choose to be associated. There are some prawfs whose cred and intellectual honesty are suspect. If you’re going to argue ethics, this is a big deal if hypocrisy matters to you. It’s not that their grievances may not be entirely legitimate, but if you’re going to complain about ethics, then your own house needs to be in order first.

Accountability NY’s strategy is new. Defense attorneys in the field have long been reluctant to file bar complaints out of concern that District Attorneys will retaliate against their clients. But the group’s members, all law professors, are not encumbered by such concerns.

Using prawfs as the front people for this venture is a smart move, as they are outside the realm of retaliation. Then again, it’s unclear whether they have the trench experience to appreciate whether their complaints are legitimate. Just because a case is reversed, even on prosecutorial misconduct, doesn’t mean a prosecutor engaged in unethical conduct. Making academic accusations is a quick way to burden disciplinary counsel with baseless grievances and not be taken seriously. I’m not suggesting this is what’s happening, but that using prawfs to front the grievances isn’t as foolproof as some might think.

Rather than focusing on a one-off case, the group is filing a flurry of complaints focusing on a single jurisdiction, in this case Queens, which long had a controversial reputation under the late District Attorney Richard Brown. The geographic focus is intended to persuade the grievance committees that prosecutorial misconduct was an institutional problem, and that reviews of all the flagged prosecutors’ career cases are in order. They plan to file more complaints focusing on other boroughs in the coming months.

“We need to bring some attention to this and get the grievance committee to do what it’s really tasked with doing and what it’s the only institution tasked with doing, which is to bring some consequences to prosecutors who violate ethics rules,” said Godsoe.

Focusing on a “one-off case” is pretty much what grievances are all about, just as a defendant in a criminal case shouldn’t be convicted for the conduct of a group, but only for the conduct that he, individually, committed. Filing a “flurry of complaints” might warm the outraged cockles of passionate hearts, but says nothing about any specific instance of unethical conduct of a prosecutor. What it does suggest is that they’re firing a shotgun at the disciplinary committee without spending too much time aiming. Tactically, this doesn’t seem like a wise way to establish credibility and be taken seriously. And that appears to be the initial reaction by the Office of Court Administration.

In a statement, Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, derided the group’s initiative and asserted that the committees “take their positions extremely seriously.”

The “professors or any other individuals are free to make a complaint, should they have issue with any attorney representation or professional conduct,” he said. “If they feel that additional resources, short of publicity stunts, are needed to monitor the professional conduct of any attorney, they can make their case to the appropriate parties to further create and fund it.”

The need to grieve prosecutors, to hold them to the utterly minimal standards of the Code of Professional Responsibility, is real, serious and a very worthy pursuit. If it’s to succeed, it would seem that their first efforts should be directed toward establishing credibility and gravitas, even if it’s a lot easier and more fun to play to the unduly passionate, if none too bright, activists on social media. I wish this group good luck in this endeavor, and hope it will focus its efforts on accomplishing the important goal of prosecutorial accountability by the departmental disciplinary committees rather than feeding the frenzy of the perpetually outraged.