Professor Bruce Green shares his expert opinion on Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala’s alleged statement forbidding plea offers from a specific attorney.
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, a Democrat in Pennsylvania, sparked outrage in the legal community after he reportedly forbade all of the deputy prosecutors in his office from offering plea deals to the clients of a prominent Black attorney who called the prosecutor’s office “systematically racist” in court.…Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham University who runs the school’s Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, told the outlet that Zappala’s response was “wrong on so many levels” and is “potentially sanctionable.”“It’s not equal treatment,” Green added. “It’s undeniably harming the lawyer and their livelihood and deprives the clients of their right to counsel.”