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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

The responsibility to determine whether the state has a reasonable chance at winning a trial prior to requesting an arrest warrant falls squarely on the shoulders of prosecutors. Because the stigma and expense of even a failed prosecution like this one is so extreme to the defendant, there need to be consequences for prosecutors when they proceed with cases where the statute of limitations has clearly expired or other obvious problems barring a successful prosecution exist.

Unfortunately, prosecutors cannot be put in jail for being utter failures at their jobs, and successfully suing them is nearly impossible, so these people got away with seriously damaging someone's life and career for nothing. It happens everyday throughout the US at both the state and federal levels. Sadly, until laws are changed to allow jail time for willful prosecutorial misconduct, it will keep happening.

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Prosecutorial overreach is a huge issue at all levels of society, particularly when applied towards youth to an extent that it perpetuates a cycle of crime; it should come as a surprise to none that this disproportionately affects communities of color.

The problem is deep: Because prosecutors are elected, by an electorate made of those who fear criminals more than missteps of the criminal justice system, they are instantly biased towards fearing the perception of being "soft on crime" above all else, above even the instinct and professional duty to be fair in their evaluations. Ken White (author of the Popehat law blog) eloquently describes from personal experience the caustic, self-feeding culture of the "brotherhood of prosecutors" that ingrains this trend, a must-read for anyone interested: http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/23/confessions-of-an-ex-p... And this article expands on the problems behind electing prosecutors: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/24/it-s-too-da...

I once asked a question at a panel about whether technology could help to rein in this culture: whether, for instance, easy access to statistics might allow a prosecutor to justify to their peers and the public that they could give certain individuals the benefit of the doubt... that they might press for less than the maximum sentence permissible by law, because the data shows they are statistically unlikely to be repeat offenders or escalate into violence, and that the individuals' contribution to society would be maximized by behaving firmly but fairly as a prosecutor... that they should take into account that the system is stacked in their favor, and that they should not just assume that public defenders have equal adversarial power, in making their decisions. (It's more than a little absurd that the former sentence isn't already the case.) I should have anticipated the answer: such a tool would be tremendously helpful, but to exist, it would require belief and cooperation and adoption at levels not yet seen, a classic chicken-egg problem. I hope thoughtful minds, with more insight into this problem, find a path forward.

How about having the prosecutor put up a bond that goes to the defendant if the case is cleared?

Ah, but what politician would argue for such a law that would hobble our "brave defenders of law and order"? Imagine the TV spots! (And pay no mind whether the private prison industry is funding the PAC that put them up...)

This would give too much incentive to the prosecutor to do unethical things to secure conviction once they've brought the case.

They already have tremendous pressure to secure conviction - I'm don't believe this would encourage even more unethical things.

Then you have a very naive view of just how bad things can get.

These guys don't get paid particularly well. Requiring something like this means that they'll decline to prosecute anything risky. You'd literally have zero rape cases litigated.

Or to bring prosecutions against friends who whould split the bond with them under the table. (You don't think that the prosecutors would have to put up their own money, do you?)

The solution is not to elect prosecutors (or judges, same reason).

Almost no countries worldwide elect judges or prosecutors, that is to say, this is already a solved problem almost everywhere on Earth except in the USA.

No need to spend a lot of time thinking about a solution when an excellent one already exists and is deployed widely.

It's like people worried about writing a secure program but still picking C as the implementation language.

Which is to say, terrible if you think that's all that matters but sensible once we consider tooling, portability, productivity, and network effects.

I don't think you can make such a universal statement. It depends on the software being constructed and the purposes to which it will be put.

Context probably matters, granted. That said, I was responding to a universal condemnation of C, so it seems reasonable to respond in kind.

I disagree.

The current atmosphere has more to do with having too much money in policing where prosecutors hold a leading role. Many district attorney offices are dependent on seized property to function, so a cozy relationships and keeping the vote from rocking become important.

Personally, I prefer elected judges and prosecutors. Leaving things in the hands of the people will always be a better outcome than letting political hacks decide.

Those are not the only possible options. In many countries judges get their positions by a technical competition. Also in my country the case is built by a judge, even if there is a DA during the trial. I think they're going to change that, unfortunately... we suspect the reason is putting political corruption cases in more friendly hands.

Climbing the career ladder is managed by an entity formed by judges... in theory. In practice Constitution is ignored and politicians chose a good number of its members.

Seized property seems like total madness.

>Leaving things in the hands of the people will always be a better outcome than letting political hacks decide.

In most parliamentary countries this is not the case.

In Australia, specifically the state of NSW, the judges are appointed by the Governor who goes with the suggestion of the Attorney General (by convention, not requirement), and while the position of Attorney General is not directly elected each member of cabinet has to be elected by the public.

To make sure allegations of corruption are independently assessed, there is an Independent Commission Against Corruption, or ICAC, that can investigate individuals for corruption in a public office.

The checks and balances are pretty broad in that model, and there's no risk of appealing to fallacies which can happen in the direct election model e.g. appealing to 'common sense'.

In Brazil there is a technical competition to ingress the career (both for judges and prosecutors). Often there are 100 or more candidates for each available chair.

The problem here is that judges are unaccountable: a judge can have 100% of his decisions reformed in an upper court and keep working. In a sane system he would be fired.

Great article, I hadn't come across that one yet.

But I also think he's part of the problem and doesn't even realize how.

> Even as Americans are facing the ruination of their lives at the hands of prosecutors, even when they're innocent, even when they're being mistreated by the government, they're still skeptical of defense lawyers and trusting of prosecutors. They prefer to hire a former federal prosecutor because they don't want to think of themselves as someone who has to hire a criminal defense lawyer

Uh... no? How out of touch do you have to be to believe this? You get an ex-prosecutor as your defense attorney because he understands how to work a corrupt system, and hopefully can do some wink wink nudge nudge stuff with his old drinking buddies still at the DA office.

I certainly am not a lawyer, but I've been involved with enough legal cases to understand this is generally the case. No one is hiring an ex-prosecutor because they "don't want to think they need a defense attorney" - come on man! They want to get the best chance they can, and know the system is entirely corrupted from it's original intent and stacked against them. So you play as dirty as you can as well.

I think this guy sort of gets it. But he's being far too lenient on his past self, as well as current prosecutors. His bank robbery story made my skin crawl - and he saw nothing wrong with it in the end (apparently).

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Your suggestion about the statistics would naturally start giving one group less jailtime for the same crime than other groups, and at some point the policy themselves would start affecting the statistics.

It's the kind of thing that lends itself to groupthink and digs itself so deeply into people's minds that fixing the wrongs that would be created by this system becomes extremely difficult.

I think the overreach has less to do with 'we fear criminals' and more towards a large body count of prosecutions leads $$$ (great paying government jobs, book royalties, etc.)

take away the huge financial incentive, the overreach will diminish even in the presence of fearing criminals over criminal injustice.

I don't think it's correct to say that the statute of limitations has "clearly expired." The alleged fraud included among other things having invoices his company owed submitted to GT for payment. The dispute was about whether the statute of limitations ran from when he put in the orders or submitted the invoices, or when GT later paid them.

I also don't think it's fair to presume bad faith on the part of the prosecutor. Outside the loosey-goosey world of incubators and academia, having your employer pay off invoices for your side business (or personal expenses) is classic white collar fraud.

Yeah, everyone but Laskar (even other profs in the article) pretty much agree that he stole $50k. See the quotes from peers saying that eg this was an overreaction, or that their university would have handled it internally, but that all agrees with the facts. Laskar stole $50k. Maybe other places slap people on the hands for doing that, but that doesn't make this prosecution wrong.

The fact remains, Laskar stole the $50k. And as for prosecutorial misconduct, if you discover someone stole $50k, it's nothing like misconduct to go see what else he or she may have stolen.

>The fact remains, Laskar stole the $50k. And as for prosecutorial misconduct, if you discover someone stole $50k, it's nothing like misconduct to go see what else he or she may have stolen.

If it is a fact then why was he not charged with stealing $50K? It should have been pretty easy to get a conviction. Many have been convicted for stealing far less.

Most of the damage was done by his employer for firing him and others for misjudging him. Simply being accused of something doesn't mean we should punish that person in advance.

Agreed; There are structural problems with no obvious solution in the justice system. However, there is one thing people can do - adjust their expectations and biases using information of the system's corruption.

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