the power of the prosecutor

S

SmarterthanYou

rebel
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...osecut_n_2488653.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Prosecutors have enormous power. Even investigations that don't result in any charges can ruin lives, ruin reputations, and drive their targets into bankruptcy. It has become an overtly political position -- in general, but particularly at the federal level. If a prosecutor wants to ruin your life, he or she can. Even if you've done nothing wrong, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it.

There are a number of factors that got us here, and it's worth looking at them in turn.

We have too many laws.

There have been a number of projects that attempted to count the total number of federal criminal laws. They usually give up. The federal criminal code is just too complex, too convoluted, and too weighted down with duplications, overlapping laws, and other complications to come to a definite number. But by most estimates, there are at least 4,000 separate criminal laws at the federal level, with another 10,000 to 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. Just this year 400 new federal laws took effect, as did 29,000 new state laws. The civil libertarian and defense attorney Harvey Silverglate has argued that most Americans now unknowingly now commit about three felonies per day.

But you, citizen, are expected to know and comply with all of these laws.
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of course some of you ignorant fucktards are scared we'd become another Somalia without all these laws....

Worse, while we citizens can go to prison for unwittingly breaking laws of which we weren't aware, prosecutors and law enforcement officers who wrongly arrest, charge, and try citizens based on a misunderstanding of the law generally face no sanction or repercussions. Under the doctrine of qualified immunity, a police officer who illegally arrests someone because he wasn't aware of the law can only be held liable if the law in question was "clearly established" at the time he violated it. Prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity, which basically shields them from liability no matter how egregious their mistakes.
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QI needs serious revamping. it has its place, however, it has been grossly misused in my opinion. it is extremely difficult for a plaintiff to get around QI and often when they do, the redress falls short of what is needed.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...your-time-on-death-row-pal-nothing-we-can-do/

Sorry about your time on death row, pal. Nothing we can do.

There was an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit last week that demonstrates just how far Congress and the courts have shielded prosecutors from any possible consequences for misconduct.

Before we get to the case itself, here’s a quick review of the law:

If you’ve been wrongly convicted through prosecutorial misconduct, there are a few ways you can try to hold the government accountable. The most obvious way would be to sue the prosecutor himself. This is just short of impossible. Anything a prosecutor does in his official capacity is protected by absolute immunity — a mighty, nearly impenetrable shield created by the Supreme Court in the 1970s. Your best hope is if your prosecutor committed the misconduct while acting as an investigator — that is, while performing tasks more associated with policing than with prosecuting. If so, your prosecutor would then be protected “only” by the qualified immunity the courts have given to police. But even that is still a pretty high bar to clear.

You could also try to sue the municipality that employs your prosecutor. It’s called a Monell claim. But this, too, is difficult. You’ll have to show that not only did your prosecutor commit misconduct that violated your constitutional rights but there’s also a system-wide pattern or practice of misconduct in that particular jurisdiction. It isn’t enough merely to show that your prosecutor did this to you. You’ll likely to need to show that other prosecutors in the same office did similar things to other people.

Since judges and prosecutors probably aren’t going to open the files of other cases for you, winning a claim like this is likely to happen only once other people have already shown misconduct from the same office and, presumably, hadn’t yet found enough examples to establish a pattern. If the misconduct is bad and persistent enough, presumably at some point — a point that isn’t really clear but appears to be wholly up to the subjective interpretation of whatever federal judge happen to hear your case — enough people will have shown enough misconduct to establish a pattern. Provided you include them all in your claim. But no matter how many cases come after, those people who filed first, and lost, probably won’t get to have their cases heard again.
 
We have bad prosecutors and very good prosecutors.

I was a prosecutor for three years, low level and at the State level, but I can share some information with you.

One common misconception about prosecutors is that they lead investigations, generally at the Federal Level its the FBI that does so... or some other agency like the SEC or the FDA or the Secret Service. Prosecutors advice these investigators and help them to proceed legally or to get around the law, in some instances.

At the state level the Prosecutors play the same roll in investigations, generally led by the police, or state department of law enforcement. I only knew a very few prosecutors who would go to active crime scenes for example.


One reform we need is to pull prosecutors and police off of drug crime enforcement and move these valuable resources to economic crime.
 
In February, a Texas judge agreed with Michael Morton's legal team that there was probable cause to believe Ken Anderson violated the law, and Anderson is now the subject of a special criminal inquiry. That's extremely rare. Studies have shown prosecutors are hardly ever criminally charged or disciplined for serious error or misconduct. And one thing Ken Anderson doesn't have to worry about is being sued for damages by Michael Morton because the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors have "absolute immunity" from civil lawsuits for their legal work.

Lara Logan: Doctors, lawyers, policemen, there are all kinds of people who do their job with limited immunity or no immunity. It just seems hard to understand why prosecutors have to have a different standard to everybody else.

Eric Nichols: Seeing that justice is done, in many instances, requires very difficult judgments. And to come back behind those prosecutors and second guess them, or sue them would throw a wrench into that system of prosecutors seeking justice.

Lara Logan: I have to say, there's a certain irony in hearing you say it's the job of a prosecutor to seek justice, right? Because in this particular case, that's exactly what Michael Morton did not get.
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Michael Morton: I don't have a lotta things really driving me. But one of the things is, I don't want this to happen to anybody else. Revenge isn't the issue here. Revenge, I know, doesn't work. But accountability works. It's what balances out. It's the equilibrium. It's the social glue in a way. Because if you're not accountable, then you can do anything.
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REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD
 
From the edict:
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Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' saying states it best: "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."
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Journalist Corey Kilgannon wrote for the New York Times 17 October 2008:
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In one of the largest wrongful-conviction payouts in state history, New York City has agreed to pay $3.5 million to a Queens man imprisoned for 12 years after being found guilty of attempted murder. The man, Shih-Wei Su, was convicted by a jury in 1992 after Queens prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from the star witness, according to a ruling in 2003 by the United States Court of Appeals, which overturned Mr. Su's conviction and condemned the Queens district attorney's office. ..."A conviction that is obtained through testimony the prosecutor knows to be false is repugnant to the Constitution," the panel said. "The prosecutor is an officer of the court whose duty is to present a forceful and truthful case to the jury, not to win at any cost."
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Will the subterfuge and deceit never end?

Our "civilized society"...
 
From Associated Press 19 February 2009:
After 17 years behind bars for a murder that a judge says he did not commit, a Missouri inmate, Joshua Kezer, left, walked out of a prison a free man. "This is the kind of stuff you dream about," said Mr. Kezer, 34, who has been imprisoned since 1992 for the slaying of a 19-year-old nursing student in southeast Missouri. The judge, Richard Callahan of Cole County Circuit Court, ruled Tuesday that Mr. Kezer had been wrongly convicted in the death of the student, Angela M. Lawless. Prosecutors will not seek a new trial. The judge criticized the conduct of a prosecutor, who he said withheld several pieces of evidence.
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Journalist Katy Reckdahl wrote for The Times-Picayune 21 December 2008:
John Thompson talks about his sons, the time he wrongly spent on death row and his half-year of freedom. ...This Saturday marks the six-month anniversary of Thompson's freedom. But in the spring of 1999, all of his appeals had been exhausted and his eighth — and final — execution date was only a month away. Then an investigator, hired as a last-ditch effort by his pro bono legal team, discovered a piece of microfiche containing a crucial 1985 lab report. In November 2002, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit ruled that Thompson deserved a new murder trial, citing the prosecution's "intentional hiding" of evidence.

On May 8 of this year, Thompson was acquitted of the murder charge that he'd been convicted of exactly 18 years before. He became the 108th person to be exonerated from this nation's death rows since 1973.

...The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to toss out a $14 million judgment against the Orleans Parish district attorney's office that a federal jury awarded last year to former death row inmate John Thompson.
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The district attorney "has asked for state authority to file for bankruptcy over the jury award to the former inmate", saying they "cannot afford to pay".


Journalist Richard Moran wrote for the New York Times 2 August 2007:
LAST week, Judge Nancy Gertner of the Federal District Court in Boston awarded more than $100 million to four men whom the F.B.I. framed for the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan, a local gangster. It was compensation for the 30 years the men spent behind bars while agents withheld evidence that would have cleared them and put the real killer — a valuable F.B.I. informant, by the name of Vincent Flemmi — in prison.
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Journalist Corey Kilgannon wrote for the New York Times 17 October 2008:
In one of the largest wrongful-conviction payouts in state history, New York City has agreed to pay $3.5 million to a Queens man imprisoned for 12 years after being found guilty of attempted murder. The man, Shih-Wei Su, was convicted by a jury in 1992 after Queens prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from the star witness, according to a ruling in 2003 by the United States Court of Appeals, which overturned Mr. Su's conviction and condemned the Queens district attorney's office.
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Journalist Bill Moushey wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 22 November 1998:
Hundreds of times during the past 10 years, federal agents and prosecutors have pursued justice by breaking the law. They lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover-ups, paid for perjury and set up innocent people in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions, a two-year Post-Gazette investigation found. Rarely were these federal officials punished for their misconduct. Rarely did they admit their conduct was wrong. New laws and court rulings that encourage federal law enforcement officers to press the boundaries of their power while providing few safeguards against abuse fueled their actions. Victims of this misconduct sometimes lost their jobs, assets and even families. Some remain in prison because prosecutors withheld favorable evidence or allowed fabricated testimony. Some criminals walk free as a reward for conspiring with the government in its effort to deny others their rights.
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SmarterthanYou said:
eliminating absolute immunity as well as qualified immunity. the hurdle to overcome in filing a lawsuit against an evil prosecutor is too high and leaves citizens rights violated with no redress.
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I can see both sides, but I agree that absolute immunity should be eliminated. I took a job as a prosecutor making $27,000 a year, fresh out of law school with about $120,000 in debt. I loved the job. About 80% of the people I prosecuted were pissed at me for not dropping the case or giving them a better deal or for some other reason. If they felt they could make my life miserable by filing a lawsuit most of them would have done so.

The nature of the job makes people very upset at you. Most people feel they are being wrongfully prosecuted. There needs to be some protection from such attacks much like there is for Doctors. (even though the nature of medicine does not inherently make people feel mistreated.)

Now, if it could be shown by real evidence that a prosecutor misused his power or was malicious for what ever reason in his prosecution of a particular person... Lawsuits for that should be allowed.

I am for qualified immunity.
 
I was once accused of being a racist by a United States Congressman, luckily my boss stood up for me and the Congressman wisely chose not to take it any further.
 
Jarod said:
I can see both sides, but I agree that absolute immunity should be eliminated. I took a job as a prosecutor making $27,000 a year, fresh out of law school with about $120,000 in debt. I loved the job. About 80% of the people I prosecuted were pissed at me for not dropping the case or giving them a better deal or for some other reason. If they felt they could make my life miserable by filing a lawsuit most of them would have done so.

The nature of the job makes people very upset at you. Most people feel they are being wrongfully prosecuted. There needs to be some protection from such attacks much like there is for Doctors. (even though the nature of medicine does not inherently make people feel mistreated.)

Now, if it could be shown by real evidence that a prosecutor misused his power or was malicious for what ever reason in his prosecution of a particular person... Lawsuits for that should be allowed.

I am for qualified immunity.
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shielding government officials from accountability 'as a practice' goes completely against the intention of the framers. IF you, as a prosecutor, are sued by a citizen.... your defense costs are provided by the taxpayers. IF your defense is successful then the plaintiff should be penalized by reimbursing the costs of defense. IF your defense fails and it's decided by a jury that you violated a citizens rights by misconduct, then you are removed from office, arrested and charged, and face trial for your crimes.
 
SmarterthanYou said:
shielding government officials from accountability 'as a practice' goes completely against the intention of the framers. IF you, as a prosecutor, are sued by a citizen.... your defense costs are provided by the taxpayers. IF your defense is successful then the plaintiff should be penalized by reimbursing the costs of defense. IF your defense fails and it's decided by a jury that you violated a citizens rights by misconduct, then you are removed from office, arrested and charged, and face trial for your crimes.
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I understand, and if the State would provide the full cost of Defense that makes it more palatable.

Juries don't always get it right, and if you are subjected to 100 frivolous lawsuits, you are likely to lose one of them.
 
I don't think I would take a job as a prosecutor without some form of immunity.
 
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