By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author. Posted August 11, 2026.
What prosecutorial misconduct means
A prosecutor’s job is not to win. The Supreme Court said it plainly in Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935): the prosecutor “may strike hard blows, [but] he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.” Prosecutorial misconduct is what courts call it when the State crosses that line — and because the State controls the evidence, the police files, and the witnesses, misconduct is uniquely hard to detect and can take decades to surface.
The forms it takes
- Withholding exculpatory evidence. Under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the prosecution must turn over evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt or punishment. Good faith is no defense — the duty applies whether the suppression was deliberate or not.
- Concealing deals and benefits given to witnesses. Under Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972), the disclosure duty covers evidence bearing on a witness’s credibility — including promises of leniency to the people testifying for the State.
- Letting false testimony stand. Under Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959), a conviction obtained with testimony the State knows is false must fall if the testimony could reasonably have affected the verdict — and the State may not stay silent “when false evidence appears,” even if it did not solicit the lie.
- Evidence in police hands counts too. Under Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995) — itself a Louisiana case — the prosecutor is responsible for favorable evidence known to the police, whether or not it ever reached the prosecutor’s desk.
Two more principles matter in informant cases. The Fifth Circuit has held that no formal deal is required: “the crux of a Fourteenth Amendment violation is deception. A promise is unnecessary.” Tassin v. Cain, 517 F.3d 770, 780 (5th Cir. 2008); see also LaCaze v. Warden, 645 F.3d 728, 736 (5th Cir. 2011). An informant’s expectation of benefit, managed but never promised, can violate due process just the same.
An allegation is not a finding
Precision matters on this subject, so this site draws the line explicitly: a prosecutorial-misconduct claim is an allegation until a court adjudicates it. What follows is what the filings in State v. Hunter allege, with the records they rest on — and the disposition of every claim, stated plainly.
What the filings in the Tony Hunter case allege
Tony Hunter was convicted of a 2001 triple homicide in Monroe, Louisiana on the testimony of three jailhouse informants — testimony the Louisiana Second Circuit called “the only evidence that directly linked Tony Hunter with the crime.” State v. Hunter, 907 So. 2d 200, 204 (La. App. 2 Cir. 2005). His post-conviction filings frame five disclosure claims under Brady, Giglio and Napue, each documented page by page on the withheld evidence page:
- A second statement about the murder weapon, pointing away from Mr. Hunter, that the defense says it never received;
- Clarence Kennedy’s plea — a 25-year sentence with 20 years suspended for first-degree robbery, a suspension La. R.S. 14:64.1 forbids, entered in the weeks after the State received forensic results excluding Mr. Hunter — while Kennedy told the jury he received no benefit;
- Vaccara Comanche’s undisclosed exposure and treatment — including a habitual-offender bill, carrying potential life exposure, dismissed thirty-nine days after Mr. Hunter’s indictment, and a felony record presented to the jury as smaller than the sentencing court itself had described it on the record;
- The Gene Screen forensic report — dated January 30, 2002, excluding Mr. Hunter from the scene, the victims, and the weapon — and what the State did and did not produce about it;
- An alibi statement the defense never received, taken by an officer later convicted of unrelated crimes.
The other half — how courts have ruled
No court has found prosecutorial misconduct in this case. The Second Circuit affirmed the conviction, noting the jury heard the informants’ prior convictions and their potential for favorable treatment. Post-conviction applications were denied in 2007, 2009, 2013 and 2023; the application filed in March 2026 was denied in April 2026; a supervisory writ application filed July 9, 2026 is pending in the Second Circuit. The complete history is on the appeals page.
What the record does contain — the clerk’s minutes, the sentencing transcripts, the statutes, the affidavits — is laid out for you to read: start with the disclosure claims, then the informants, then the timeline. We report the record and the rulings; you weigh them.