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paulddraper

To quote another comment "prosecutors are as vicious as the law allows them to be".

That's their job.

* Legislators create the law. (legislative branch)

* Prosecutors sue for enforcement of the law. (executive branch)

* Judgement to use JUDGEment in applying the law. (judical branch)

If you have sucky laws or indescriminate judges, fix those. Don't cast dispersions on prosecutors for prosecuting laws they didn't write, for sentences they don't make.

Not maintaining the balance of powers is how you wind up with out-of-whack and mismanaged governments.

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EDIT: Prosecutors are the inverse of defense attornies. Why is the DA defending this scumbag of a human being?!?! Because that's their job: provide the best possible defense for accused criminals. Likewise, prosecutors provide the best possible prosecution. Denegrating either one for their role is misunderstanding their functions in the judical system.

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Even in an adversarial system, the point of prosecutors is not to be "as vicious as the law allows them to be". The point is to pursue actual crime as vigorously as they can. Instead, we are seeing repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct where the prosecutor's office tries to win the case on a legal technicality, even when it's actually counter to the basic goal of justice (i.e. establishing the truth of charges) - by, for example, trying to place procedural hurdles in the way of procedures, like DNA tests, that might exonerate the defendant, or withholding evidence that might indicate innocence, but which the prosecutor is not legally obligated to introduce. Here's a recent example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/09/25/...

There's absolutely no social good coming out of such behavior, and it should be pointed out and castigated.

And yes, this does, in fact, happen, because prosecutors are effectively rewarded for successful prosecutions, regardless of the false positive rate.

> prosecutor's office tries to win the case on a legal technicality

Curious: By that token, how do you feel about DA's trying to win cases on legal technicalities. Are they living up to the expectations of their job?

“It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

I don't think there needs to be parity between the prosecution and defense in this matter. Those technicalities on the defense side serve to help protect the rights of the accused, while on the prosecution side they just obscure the truth of the matter.

This is not unavoidable, but a specific aspect of America's incarnation of the adversarial system. In plenty of other jurisdictions, prosecutors have a more neutral, quasi-judicial role, where – especially during the investigative phase of a case – they are required to act more like French examining magistrates. In some jurisdictions, prosecutors can even have an affirmative duty to act on the behalf of the defendant if they believe that the defendant is not receiving a fair trial.

There are also pragmatic issues; prosecutorial accountability matters even in adversarial systems (accountability not in the sense of dealing with prosecutorial misconduct, but to ensure that prosecutors act consistently and in the public interest). Prosecutors aren't or shouldn't be free agents.

Be careful though, this is an easy argument into "just following orders." Which, nobody should ever be comfortable with that argument.

That's fair.

That said, if we're focusing on the most effective change like downandout, we should be changing the orders, not expecting each person to each adjust them, hopefully in appropriate ways.

Depends on efficiency measure. In both cases, you have to train enforcement on proper enforcement. So, really, you don't save much. (Any?)

It is idealistic to think you can make perfect laws that are easily understood by anyone such that training isn't necessary.

And most importantly they should understood by judges.

No, this is a distinct argument. It's that this system was designed to function best when everyone does their jobs. Attorneys in the US are supposed to be zealous advocates. The judge and jury don't know going in whether the person did it or not, but the hope is that if the prosecutor fights their hardest (even if the accused is innocent) and the defense attorney fights their hardest (even if their client is guilty) that hopefully ultimately the one that comes out ahead will be the one that's right. It's not a perfect system, but this is how it's meant to work.

That is the exact same argument. Just instead of "lawyer" pick "any government job."

And be clear that was never the case. Prosecutorial discretion is and has almost always been the case.

I could just as easily claim that attorneys in the US are supposed to be about upholding the spirit, as much as the letter, of the law.

It's the same argument. Someone created a system and I'm just doing my assigned part to keep it going without having to decide if it's a good system or not == just following orders.

The system wasn't "designed" in any such manner. The system is the sum of myriad accretions of laws and precedent over the course of centuries. This idea that there is a design with a purpose for which anything is meant reminds us of the "intelligent design" take on biological evolution. In this case, however, the history is clearly written in records recorded in English at the time that each such accretion took place, rather than locked up in obscure geologic formations.

No, being vicious is not their job, despite the fact that most of them think that it is their job and conduct themselves accordingly. Rather, the responsibility of a prosecutor is to seek justice - that means pursuing appropriate, reasonable outcomes based upon specific conduct and evidence in each case. It does not mean intimidating witnesses, manufacturing evidence, overcharging defendants so that they plead guilty lest they face decades in prison for relatively minor criminal infractions, and all of the other evil things that many prosecutors do. These things are a perversion of justice, engaged in by evil, selfish people looking for personal career advancement by inflicting misery on others at taxpayer expense.

Prosecutors are as vicious as the people who elect them.

Or to be more exact it's very hard for a DA to be elected when they appear to be lenient on crime.

The prosecution and the policing parts of the criminal justice system can quite easily be influenced through the popular vote.

And that's at the heart of all these problems. People are vicious, especially when they're in large groups making decisions that they don't need to feel even remotely accountable for. Oddly enough, I'm not trying to make a small-government or anti-democracy point in general: this is probably the least vicious we as a species have managed to make ourselves behave.

Don't fix prosecutors, fix judges!

Where do you think judges come from? A judge who doesn't believe all the bullshit that prosecutors believe, is a rare judge indeed.

A prosecutors job is not to convict as many people as possible. This would suggest going after minor crimes where the cases are short vs. major crimes which takes more effort.

Their job is to see justice for the harm to society which is not benefited by sending innocent people to prison.

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