Fair Trials and Liability

I’m going to start with a brief lesson on substantive versus procedural justice. Stealing the example my professor today used when explaining the difference, imagine a teacher creates a test. The test is graded without knowing whose test is whose, all the questions are the same, each grade is worth the same points, all around it is equal. That’s procedural justice, it follows the rules and is equal. However, everyone in the class fails it. Obviously there is something wrong, the teacher’s instruction was inadequate or the questions were unfair. Maybe even everyone in the class is dumb or didn’t put enough effort into it, but either way there probably should have been more done to prevent every single student from failing it. The professor says “too bad, I followed the rules. It’s fair. Deal with it” and the students cannot do anything. Sure, it’s procedural justice. It is not Substantive Justice, however. It is not fair, equal maybe, but not fair.

The teacher in the example said “too bad, deal with it” and that is exactly what the Supreme Court said to a man who served 14 years in prison and was then found innocent. Even though it was obvious that prosecutors hid evidence, evidence that was on track to cost an innocent man his life, it was not enough to find the District Attorney’s office liable. They sentenced him to death, took 14 years of his life away from him, yet they are in no way at fault? The fact they hid evidence such as witness testimony clearly shows there was “deliberate indifference”. When my Professor discussed this case in my class, she seemed to think this was substantive injustice, but not procedural injustice. Maybe I misunderstood her. I don’t see how this wasn’t procedural injustice as well, unless they intentionally ignore evidence every time. She also said that the Supreme Court usually makes decisions based off of procedural justice, not substantive. The last time the courts really paid attention to the latter was during the civil rights era, with cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. This leads me to two questions. Should our Supreme Court focus again on substantive justice as well as procedural, or stick with the current system? Also, if prosecutors intentionally hide evidence from a jury, and the defendant is then found guilty and executed, should the prosecutors be held liable or criminally responsible in any way?