Ron Littlepage: Angela Corey's hissy fits, threats unprofessional (Zimmerman, FL)

An unsolicited memo to State Attorney Angela Corey: You are a public official, and people have the right to express an opinion about how you are doing your job.

When those opinions are negative, throwing a hissy fit and making threats do not reflect well. With Corey, there's a pattern of that.

Last December when I wrote a column critical of how she handled the Cristian Fernandez case, she fired off a two-page, single-spaced letter on official state attorney letterhead hinting at lawsuits for libel.

In the letter, she called me out for my "lack of knowledge and objectivity about the workings of the criminal justice system." Ouch. I think she called me stupid.

I seem to remember that during a stint in law school, I made an A in criminal law, but did I threaten a libel suit? No. As a columnist, I'm in the public arena, and folks have a right to express an opinion about me.

D'Alemberte is a former president of the American Bar Association, a former president of Florida State University and a law professor — not too shabby in the legal credentials department.

When Corey was appointed to head up the investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, D'Alemberte had this to say:

"I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case. There is nothing in Angela Corey's background that suits her for the task, and she cannot command the respect of people who care about justice."

Earlier, D'Alemberte had criticized Corey in the Fernandez case. The reaction then: A public records request from her office to FSU seeking all emails, text messages and phone messages involving D'Alemberte related to Fernandez.

We all knew what was up when she refused to take this to a grand jury first.

And what the hell is with optional grand juries anyway?? The entire purpose of the grand jury system is to get buy-in from the public non-legal-professional community on the possible guilt of the party being indicted. It's a check on a government power subject to misuse. How the HELL can that be optional for the very people it's supposed to supervise?? This very case shows why it's bad to be able to skip that step. Just like jury nullification, it's there for a reason, yet they sit there and lie without consequence to tell you it isn't.

But it seems clear as a bell to me that we need to get rid of the present "adversarial(TM)" system of justice,

The problem is not that we have an adversarial system of justice, but rather that the prosecutors have lost sight of the fact that their job is to prosecute people who actually commit crimes, and not merely those whom they can--by hook or by crook--convict a jury to convict.

The proper state of affairs would be for prosecutors to be slightly biased in favor of conviction, but for jurors to perceive them as being massively biased. A major danger with an inquisitional system is that it may reduce the extent to which jurors recognize the prosecutor's bias, without eliminating the actual bias that exists. Having prosecutors properly recognize that not everyone who comes before them actually committed a crime, and their job is only to convict the ones that did, would be much better than pretending that prosecutors are impartial.

BTW, in certain cases such as those involving government personnel as defendants, I would like to see a means by which private individuals could hire private prosecutors as an adjunct to the state-sponsored ones. To avoid double jeopardy, the public and private prosecutors would participate in the same trial, with the private prosecutors being allowed to ask any questions or call witnesses that the public prosecutors "missed". Too often, even when a cop's conduct is so egregious that he finds himself on trial, he'll get a lap-dog prosecutor who effectively throws the case (e.g. IIRC Kathryn Johnston's murderers were freed on appeal because the prosecutor "forgot" to prove that the crime was committed within the court's jurisdiction). Alternatively, at least for certain types of government personnel, it should be possible for a later prosecutor to re-charge them if they could first convince a jury that the original prosecution was a sham, the defendant was never really in jeopardy (but would have been with an honest prosecutor), and thus the double-jeopardy rule is inapplicable.

And what the hell is with optional grand juries anyway??

Having the grand-jury stage be optional might make the justice system more efficiently if (1) the stage was only skipped in cases where a prosecutor could be certain that an indictment would be forthcoming if it were sought, and (2) prosecutors were held personally accountable (including being fired and/or sued) in cases where it can be shown retrospectively that a grand-jury indictment would not have been a slam-dunk. In other words, prosecutors would be entitled to skip the grand jury step only in those cases that were sufficiently strong that they would not mind being held personally accountable if their judgment wasn't correct.

The fundamental problem today is not lack of procedural safeguards, but rather a lack of accountability for government personnel who act in bad faith. Adding procedural safeguards won't help if those in charge of applying them don't act in good faith. And if government personnel do act in good faith, most of the problems the safeguards are supposed to prevent won't occur anyway.

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