Being a prosecutor or police officers does not automatically mean that person is credible nor reliable. Judges, jurors, and everyone else must remember that. Criminal defendants’ lives and liberty too often unjustly are crushed by an unwritten presumption that too many people give to police and prosecutors.

We hear many times about lying police and incompetent/unreliable or even lying police crime lab employees. Being drawn from the population of humans, we will inevitably also find prosecutors who do not tell the truth or who hide evidence that they are required to disclose.

Presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, former high-ranking Brooklyn prosecutor Tara Lenich was fired and this week arrested over her alleged months-long illegal wiretapping activity that included alleged forging of judges’ signatures on wiretapping orders, allegedly relating to her love interest.

If indeed Ms. Lenich committed the charged crime, this is but another example that every human is at risk of a multitude of weaknesses and failings, including lying and breaking the law.

However, it is one thing to lie or break the law and quite another thing for law enforcement and prosecutors to break the rules in pursuing possible lawbreaking and in invading our privacy through obtaining search warrants and eavesdropping orders unlawfully.

Ms. Lenich was a deputy chief Brooklyn district attorney. If Ms. Lenich committed the charged criminal activity, what does that mean about the integrity and reliability of the convictions she previously obtained?