The Police-Prosecutor Relationship and the No-Contact Rule: Conflicting Incentives after Montejo v. Louisiana and Maryland v. Shatzer

In this paper, I examine the consequences of the divergence of ethical and constitutional rules, with particular attention to the institutional dynamics of criminal investigation and specifically the relationship between police and prosecutors. This relationship is of crucial importance because Montejo and Shatzer create a legal regime in which non-lawyer agents and officers may initiate investigative contact with represented defendants in circumstances in which prosecutors are absolutely forbidden to do so. This situation undermines the ability of prosecutors to effectively supervise the investigation of their cases and puts them in an untenable position when advising agents on the law.