Among Western nations, American courts remain uniquely permissive to the routine law enforcement practice of offering witnesses incentives to testify for the State in criminal trials. Despite laws and ethical rules roundly prohibiting the practice and recurrent skepticism of incentivized testimony in the English common law tradition, American judges have excused the practice based on pragmatism, developing legal fictions to exempt prosecutors from the general prohibition. However, basic common sense, backed by recent empirical scholarship, should alarm participants in the criminal legal system to a severely heightened risk of perjury wherever the prospect of reward compels testimony. Whether law enforcement offers these incentives in the form of cash payments, material rewards, reduced sentencing for co-defendants and so-called “jailhouse informants,” or merely relocation, they influence witnesses through unfair inducements. Paradoxically, these inducements are prohibited to the defense and categorically prohibited as bribery in all other legal contexts. Prosecutors and judges often point to existing safeguards in the legal system, including cross-examination and an illusory disclosure requirement, as sufficient to combat the risk of perjury, appealing to the difficulty of securing convictions in complex cases. However, as DNA testing continues to reveal wrongful convictions based on perjured testimony, such optimism must be viewed as misguided. Prosecutors and judges fail to recognize that the system rewards police and prosecutors who shirk their disclosure duties. These failures to disclose are nearly impossible for defendants and their attorneys to uncover once a defendant is convicted. Complicating matters exponentially, the racist and classist history of law enforcement in this country is largely responsible for the underlying reticence of many witnesses to testify in the absence of incentives. Communities of color and immigrant communities, current and historical subjects of abusive police and prosecutorial misconduct, do not trust police and prosecutors to protect their interests. So-called “white-collar” criminals intuit that the system was generally constructed to safeguard capitalist wealth-building—not undermine it. Thus, the State’s difficulty in prosecuting many accused individuals is a problem of its own making. In many areas, criminal law recognizes the extreme burden the State must carry to override the accused’s interest in freedom. In fact, the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments were drafted largely to illuminate this heavy burden. For much of American history, the Supreme Court couched this burden in the language of “fundamental fairness.” Over time, however, the Court began balancing the interests of the State with those of criminal defendants as it moved away from using fundamental fairness as the primary tool for extending protections to the accused. This shift was incorrect from both a logical and historical perspective. Fundamental fairness concerns only the rights of the individual accused—not the interests of the State. Thus, this Comment argues that the Court must revive and correct its fundamental fairness jurisprudence, estopping the State from offering incentives to witnesses in criminal trials. This remedy remains the only one among many proposed to effectively combat the risk of perjury inherent to incentivized testimony while simultaneously restoring fairness concerns to their proper target: the accused. After all, the primary duty of the American prosecutor is to seek justice—not convictions.

在西方国家中，美国法院对提供证人奖励以在刑事审判中为国家作证的例行执法做法保持独特的宽容。尽管法律和道德规则全面禁止英国普通法传统中激励作证的做法和反复出现的怀疑，但美国法官基于实用主义为这种做法开脱，制定了法律拟制以使检察官免于普遍禁止。然而，在最近的实证研究的支持下，基本常识应该提醒刑事法律系统的参与者，只要奖励的前景迫使作证，伪证的风险就会大大增加。执法部门是否以现金支付、物质奖励、为了减少同案被告和所谓的“监狱线人”的刑罚，或仅仅是搬迁，他们通过不公平的引诱影响证人。矛盾的是，这些引诱对于辩护是被禁止的，并且在所有其他法律背景下被明确禁止为贿赂。检察官和法官经常指出法律体系中现有的保障措施，包括交叉询问和虚幻的披露要求，足以应对伪证风险，诉诸复杂案件定罪的困难。然而，随着 DNA 测试继续揭示基于伪证证词的错误定罪，这种乐观主义必须被视为误入歧途。检察官和法官没有认识到该系统奖励逃避披露义务的警察和检察官。一旦被告被定罪，被告及其律师几乎不可能发现这些未披露的情况。使事情呈指数级复杂化的​​是，该国执法部门的种族主义和阶级主义历史在很大程度上导致许多证人在没有激励措施的情况下不愿作证。有色人种社区和移民社区、警察滥用职权和检察官不当行为的当前和历史主体，不相信警察和检察官会保护他们的利益。所谓的“白领”罪犯凭直觉认为，该体系通常是为了保护资本主义的财富积累而构建的——而不是破坏它。因此，国家难以起诉许多被告人是其自身造成的问题。在很多领域，刑法承认国家必须承担极端的责任来凌驾于被告人的自由利益之上。事实上，第五和第十四修正案的正当程序条款的起草主要是为了阐明这一沉重的负担。在美国历史的大部分时间里，最高法院都用“基本公平”的语言来表达这一负担。然而，随着时间的推移，法院开始平衡国家利益与刑事被告人的利益，因为它不再将基本公平作为向被告提供保护的主要工具。从逻辑和历史的角度来看，这种转变都是不正确的。基本的公平只涉及被告个人的权利——而不是国家的利益。因此，本评论认为法院必须恢复并纠正其基本的公平判例，禁止国家在刑事审判中向证人提供奖励。这种补救措施仍然是众多建议中唯一的一种，可以有效地应对激励作证所固有的伪证风险，同时将公平问题恢复到适当的目标：被告。毕竟，美国检察官的主要职责是伸张正义，而非定罪。