![handle is hein.journals/clro104 and id is 1 raw text is:
THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE, CLIENT
CONFESSIONS AND WRONGFUL
CONVICTIONS: IMMUNITY AS A STATUTORY
SOLUTION
Richard E. Myers II T
Attorneys face a serious personal dilemma when a client
confesses that he or she committed the crime for which
someone else has been wrongfully convicted. If they do
nothing, a wrongful conviction stands. If they come forward,
their client faces the prospect of a new criminal conviction.
Professional ethics require them to maintain allprivileges and
may lead them to counsel their client to remain silent,
notwithstanding manifest injustice. This Essay proposes a
statutory solution: states should create a procedure for in
camera, ex parte review of the confession by the judge in the
court of conviction or appropriate appellate body. In cases
where the confession is sufficiently credible, the court would
authorize immunity for the confessing client and forward the
confession to the convicted individual's counsel to be used in
motions for appropriate relief.
INTRODUCTION
Many people are familiar with Alton Logan's case, even if
they don't know him by name. Logan is the Chicago man who
was wrongfully convicted of having killed a McDonald's
security guard in 1982, and then spent twenty-six years in
prison while the real killer's lawyers kept an affidavit from their
client confessing to the crime sealed in a box, at times under
one lawyer's bed.' Those attorneys, Chicago public defenders
Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz, admitted to having their
t Henry Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North
Carolina School of Law. I would like to thank my Research Assistants, Rachel
High Jennings and Henry Zaytoun, for their hard work on improving this Essay.
Christine Mumma of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence contributed
valuable insights, as did the participants in the Witt Professionalism Round Table
and the members of the North Carolina Bar's subcommittee on Rule 3.8, who
read and commented on a draft as part of that state's consideration of mandatory
reporting rules for lawyers in innocence cases.
1 26- Year Secret Kept Innocent Man in Prison, CBSNEwS.COM (Mar. 6, 2008),
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560 162-3914719.html
[http://perma.cc/A9KR-TFFE].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/clro104&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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