Posted on 04/09/2009 7:12:55 AM PDT by the Real fifi
In recent years service as a successful crusading prosecutor has been a pathway to political success (See Giuliani and Spitzer, for example) and high paying positions in the private sector. At the same time, to me anyway, there was been an increasingly suspicious overreaching by too many prosecutors. The courts, bar associations and the Department of Justice are not exercising sufficient supervision of their work, for us to feel comfortable with the enormous power they wield
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
We need to get rid of the entire “adversarial” system of justice and adopt something like the “inquisitorial” system which France uses. NOBODY should ever have any sort of a money or career incentive to put people in prison or hang people. The job of DA or prosecutor should not exist.
Needs repeating loudly and often.
Allow me to play devil’s advocate for a second. Why can’t we treat prosecutors like we treat defenders? We all know lawyers defend guilty people, right? Often, they even get them off. How is that any less a miscarriage of justice than pursuing the conviction of someone you may or may not know to be innocent?
I know, I know. Libs love to play the “Better to let ten guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison.” But I’ve never agreed. First, the ten guilty people could easily go on to kill one innocent people, and you lose your advantage right there. Second, the point of the criminal justice system is not to set innocent people free, no matter what movies tell us. The point is to punish guilty people. That end is hardly served by convicting innocents, I’ll grant you. It’s also not served by setting the guilty free. Every time guilty parties escape conviction or innocent parties fail to win freedom, Lady justice cries.
Which brings me back to my original point. What is the distinction between malicious prosecutors and sneaky defenders? Oh, right, prosecutors are government officials. We must watch the state more closely than hucksters in the private sector. Eternal vigilence!
“In this case, a change in the political composition of the United States Senate was a direct consequence of the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence”
This isn’t as big a deal as it sounds. We’re talking about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, after all. Scratch that, RINOs and Democrats.
So you wouldn’t object to be convicted for a crime you did not commit?
You never know when some corrupt prosecutor might try to go after you when you are innocent and he knows it.
Why not just de fund the judicial branch. They can have all the power in the world, but without shekles...
“So you wouldn’t object to be convicted for a crime you did not commit?”
I think you’ll find I said that would be a miscarriage of justice. Besides, I’d have a lawyer to defend me, whether I was innocent or not.
“You never know when some corrupt prosecutor might try to go after you when you are innocent and he knows it.”
You see, this is where the defense of defending the guilty breaks down. Somehow, everyone can see clear as day why it’s a bad thing to prosecute the innocent. Then, when it comes to getting guilty people off, the dangers disappear. You can say the prosecutor has the power of the state behind him, and that’s a valid point, as I indicated. Then again, defendants have the benefit of presumption of innocence and various rights favoring them in court proceedings.
The fact remains, BOTH convicting innocents and free the guilty are miscarriages of justice.
Having had some rather unfortunate experiences, I can assure you that criminal defense attorneys are generally more honest than most prosecutors.
“The purpose of the criminal defense attorney to to make sure the prosecutor does his job in proving the case; and then only for the crime the defendant committed and not some more serious crime he didn’t commit.”
Yeah, right, ‘cause that’s what lawyers try to do. Defense lawyers never try to get defendants off altogether. They’re paid all those millions of dollars to make sure people are convicted of the proper, truthful charge. You better believe that if the prosecution offers a better deal than what is deserved by what “crime the defendant committed,” they’ll take it. They’ll take the best deal they can get, regardless of fancy notions like objective justice.
I’m sure what you’ve laid out is what a James Madison would have said, but it bears little resemblance to the way things are. Only prosecutors are held strictly to the standards you’ve described. Defense lawyers are supposed to be zealous. They’re supposed to make it as tough as possible for the prosecution. What bounds them is the practicality of getting off, and their own consciences in certain cases.
“Having had some rather unfortunate experiences, I can assure you that criminal defense attorneys are generally more honest than most prosecutors.”
That may well be true. But only because we don’t define getting guilty people off or getting lesser sentences than deserved as dishonest.
Oh, and we have presumption of innocence, various rights, judges, and appeals. To protect us from prosecutors, for the very reason that we don’t expect them to be honest. I, personally, don’t expect defense lawyers to be honest either. I just wish more people would realize that’s not necessarily a good thing. Not that we can fix it, any more than we can entirely rid ourselves of malicious prosecution.
The introduction of DNA evidence shocked a lot of people by ruling out something like a third of prime suspects in felony cases since the prime suspect in a felony usually goes to prison, most had expected it to be more like one or two percent.
Far too many judges are in the pocket of the prosecutor, especially in state courts. As for appeals, there is a concept of judicial discretion that is given to the trial judge, so that only in the most blatant instances, the decisions of the trial court judge are upheld. There is far too much leeway in many of those cases.
If the prosecutor does his job well, and the defendant is guilty, there will almost always be a conviction. Don’t bring up O.J. Simpson. The prosecution made so many blatant errors in judgment and strategy it isn’t funny. Once they agreed to move the trial to downtown LA, the prosecution had an almost impossible task. If his case had been tried in the jurisdiction the murders occurred, OJ would have been convicted in a NY minute.
Could Libby appeal based upon what comes out about this woman's misplaced zeal ?
Nothing has come to light yet indicating she committed comparable offenses in his case, but apparently all the Alaska pols’ prosecutions will surely be scrutinized.
Wrong..just years before she botched the Brown case costing the US $1.34 to settle the matter.
There’s more here: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/washington_post_post_mortem_on.html
Interesting new report published from The Justice Project highlighting Nifong and Stevens prosecutors:
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/JusticeProjectReport.pdf
Improving Prosecutorial Accountability, A Policy Review
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It was linked from the first para of a brief article:
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