Then, after 25 years in jail, you prove that prosecutors withheld evidence of your innocence, suppressed evidence of someone else's guilt and then knowingly produced perjured testimony at your trial.

Terry Harrington and Curtis McGee lived that nightmare. They were convicted in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1978 of the shotgun murder of John Schweer, a retired policeman who was working as a security guard.

The prosecution's star witness was Kevin Hughes, 16. After police arrested Hughes in a stolen car, he claimed to have information about the Schweer case. His story started to come unraveled right from the start. The first two suspects Hughes identified had alibis, including one who was in jail at the time.

Hughes later fingered Harrington and McGhee. But his account to police had the wrong site for the shooting and claimed that they had used a handgun.

Hughes failed a lie-detector test, according to records that weren't unearthed until 25 year later.

He wasn't the only one.

Charles Gates, who was seen carrying a shotgun near the scene of the crime, was questioned and also failed a lie detector. But he was released. McGhee and Harrington were never offered lie-detector tests.

They finally were released in October 2003, after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled they had not received a fair trial. The governor later granted them clemency.

But Iowa law doesn't provide compensation for people wrongly convicted, even when evidence clearly shows that they were framed by prosecutors and police.

So, Harrington and McGhee filed a civil suit against prosecutors Dave Richter and Joseph Hrvol.

That's when the law really came down on them.

The U.S. Justice Department, attorneys general in 28 states and the District of Columbia and every organization representing prosecutors in America joined forces to crush Harrington and McGhee's case.

I spent hours reading transcripts of the argument these legal bigwigs made Wednesday before the Supreme Court. I've never seen a more egregious example of lawyers running rough-shod over the rights of common citizens to protect their own.

Nobody wants to see every criminal case lead to a lawsuit against the prosecutors. They should have some protection against frivolous lawsuits.

But they argued that prosecutors had "absolute immunity" even if the evidence shows that they actually framed an innocent suspect. Not even the police get absolute immunity in cases like this.

If a policeman or a prosecutor working with police in the investigation of a crime knowingly or maliciously elicits perjured testimony or suppresses exculpatory evidence, he can be sued.

But the same prosecutor who helped put the bogus case together can't be sued, the states attorneys argued, if he is the prosecuting attorney at the trial.

"There is no free-standing right not to be framed," argued Neal Kataya, of the Justice Department. But, "there is just a right not to convict with made-up evidence," Justice Stephen Breyer suggested.

Attorneys representing the Iowa prosecutors cited previous Supreme Court rulings that upheld the principle of absolute immunity for prosecutors trying a case. They conceded that prosecutors have only limited immunity when pretrial misconduct is alleged.

But they argued that, in this case, even if prosectors helped fabricate the false case, they are entitled to retroactive immunity because they also took the case to trial.

Huh?

In other words, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked, "the more deeply you're involved in the wrong, the more likely you are to be immune!

"That's a strange proposition."

Not too strange for the Justice Department and almost every state and federal prosecutor in America. These are public officials who swore to uphold justice.

Instead they petition the highest court in the land to uphold each other - even if that means supporting a grave injustice.

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns:

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