ARLINGTON, VA—Today, the Institute for Justice (IJ) filed a petition for certiorari with the United State Supreme Court on behalf of Erma Wilson, who had her life turned upside down after a conviction in which her prosecutor also worked for the judge presiding over her case. It is one of the most brazen and obvious examples of prosecutorial abuse in modern American history, yet Ralph Petty, the prosecutor, and the others who oversaw this miscarriage of justice have never been held accountable for their actions in a court of law.
The petition raises important constitutional questions concerning civil rights and the constitutional right to a fair and neutral criminal trial.
Criminal proceedings have three main actors: the defense on one side, the prosecution on the other, and the judge in the middle to ensure fair and impartial justice. At least, that is how every criminal proceeding is supposed to work.
But for Erma, that equation was shortened to just two – with Petty working against her as both the prosecutor and on behalf of the judge. For 20 years, now-retired (and disbarred, for his actions giving rise to this case) Ralph Petty spent his days as a prosecutor for Midland County and his nights as a law clerk for the judges he practiced before. This dual role, where Petty served as the judges’ right-hand advisor, eviscerated the line between prosecutor and judge and gave Petty the ability to surreptitiously shape judicial thinking, draft rulings in his favor, gain access to confidential defense materials, and earn over $250,000 in the process.
This perverse conflict of interest was a blatant violation of the constitutional rights of the more than 300 criminal defendants whose cases were tainted by Petty acting as a prosecutor and de facto judge in the same case. All the while, the county, the District Attorney’s Office and the judges knew the prosecution was being unfairly advantaged and said nothing. Instead, Petty enjoyed a 20-year-long, financially prosperous career helping the DA earn ill-gotten wins at the expense of criminal defendants’ rights to fair trials and fair appeals.
The charges Erma Wilson faced were relatively minor—she never served any time in jail—but the conviction derailed her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse. So even after Erma served the judgement against her, the sentence would create a permanent punishment resulting from an unconstitutionally stacked proceeding.
In 2022, Erma teamed up with IJ to file a federal lawsuit to hold the county and the prosecutor accountable for violating her constitutional rights. She sued under a federal statute known as “Section 1983,” which Congress passed following the Civil War to ensure that victims of constitutional wrongs committed by state agents could sue in federal court.
In the most recent ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that despite the violation of her federal constitutional rights, she cannot sue in federal court. The decision was divided: Six of the court’s 18 judges “emphatically” disagreed with the outcome.
The ruling effectively means Congress’s remedial law is unavailable to plaintiffs like Erma, unless they first persuade state officials to invalidate the underlying conviction—a tall order that precludes many Americans from holding government officials accountable.
“When state officials violate the federal constitution, federal courts are supposed to step in to remedy and prevent abuses just like this,” explained IJ Attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili. “In Erma’s case that responsibility has been shirked, but we hope and expect the Supreme Court to take the dissenters up on their request to set this case aright.”
The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit organization that has worked to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans for 30 years. The lawsuit is part of IJ’s Project on Immunity and Accountability, which is devoted to the simple idea that government officials are not above the rules. If citizens must follow the law, then government must follow the Constitution.
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To arrange interviews on this subject, journalists may contact Phillip Suderman, IJ’s Communications Project Manager, at [email protected] or (850) 376-4110. More information on the case is available at: https://ij.org/case/midland-prosecutor/