Sup. Ct. Sotomayor to Montgomery County Prosecutor: “Prosecutors fall short of this task, and therefore do a grave disservice to the people in whose name they litigate, when they permit themselves to enjoy unfair trial advantages at defendants’ expense. Here, regardless of the reason for their acquisition of Kaur’s privileged information … the prosecutors should have recused themselves from participating in Kaur’s second trial as a matter of professional conscience.”

...Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a written statement, said she agreed with the high court’s decision not to hear Raminder Kaur’s appeal. However, that did not absolve the Montgomery County prosecutors of having gone forward with Kaur’s second prosecution after having seen the privileged documents when Kaur waged a successful ineffective assistance of counsel challenge to her first conviction, Sotamayor added.

“Prosecutors wield an immense amount of power, and they do so in the name of the state itself,” Sotomayor wrote.

“That unique privilege comes with the exceptional responsibility to ensure that the criminal justice system indeed serves the ends of justice,” Sotomayor added. “Prosecutors fall short of this task, and therefore do a grave disservice to the people in whose name they litigate, when they permit themselves to enjoy unfair trial advantages at defendants’ expense. Here, regardless of the reason for their acquisition of Kaur’s privileged information … the prosecutors should have recused themselves from participating in Kaur’s second trial as a matter of professional conscience.”

The prosecutors’ failure to recuse “casts a troubling and unnecessary shadow over Kaur’s conviction and sentence to life imprisonment,” Sotomayor wrote...

https://thedailyrecord.com/2020/10/05/supreme-court-denies-germantown-murderers-appeal/