Criminal Prosecutor Quotes

For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.

Statistically, the odds that any given rape was committed by a serial offender are around 90 percent," Lisak said. "The research is clear on this. The foremost issue for police and prosecutors should be that you have a predator out there. By reporting this rape, the victim is giving you an opportunity to put this guy away. If you decline to pursue the case because the victim was drunk, or had a history of promiscuity, or whatever, the offender is almost certainly going to keep raping other women. We need cops and prosecutors who get it that 'nice guys' like Frank are serious criminals.

Trump’s friends and advisers had long observed that he had an amazing ability to disconnect from facts and remember experiences the way it suited him at the moment, a dangerous habit when being interviewed by federal prosecutors in a criminal investigation.

we are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. That is why nearly all criminal defendants today plead guilty to “reduced” charges rather than risk a trial with draconian sentences in the event of a conviction.

A trained Soviet KGB operative then heading its successor outfit, the FSB, Putin had done the sitting Russian president the memorable favor of successfully derailing the criminal investigation into the Yeltsin clan. He did so by blackmailing Russia’s prosecutor general with a fake sex tape.

After a victim has reported a crime to the police, many people believe that the decision whether or not to charge the suspect with a crime, and then prosecute the suspect, is the prerogative of the victim. News media often contribute to this misconception in stories about rape victims by reporting that a victim 'declined to press charges.' In fact, the criminal justice system gives victims no direct say in the matter. It's the police, for the most part, who decide whether a suspect should be arrested, and prosecutors who ultimately determine whether a conviction should be pursued.

The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just what particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.

Talk of "witch-hunts" conceals an inconvenient fact: men charged with rape stand a better chance of walking free than other defendants. The conviction rate in rape trials – 63 per cent in 2012/13 – is quite a lot lower. Prosecutors are taking a bigger risk when they bring rape cases to court, especially when the alleged offences happened decades ago, leaving no forensic evidence. The Independent, 9 February 2014

A black kid arrested twice for possession of marijuana may be no more of a repeat offender than a white frat boy who regularly smokes pot in his dorm room. But because of his race and his confinement to a racially segregated ghetto, the black kid has a criminal record, while the white frat boy, because of his race and relative privilege, does not. Thus, when prosecutors throw the book at black repeat offenders or when police stalk ex-offenders and subject them to regular frisks and searches on the grounds that it makes sense to “watch criminals closely,” they are often exacerbating racial disparities created by the discretionary decision to wage the War on Drugs almost exclusively in poor communities of color.

The seven countries that voted against the Internation Criminal Court treaty in 1998 were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen.

I pretended I had urgent business at the prosecutor's table which, in one of The System's obvious tells, was always millimeters from the jury box.

But there is no place a defendant in a criminal trial can go to find “experts” in sciences commonly known as “police sciences.” The police can virtually write up a report saying anything they want, and there is no way of refuting it. And there have been cases where “experts” have been double agents: working for a defendant while secretly working with the prosecutor.

The magistrates’ court is the accident and emergency department of criminal justice: any moment, a problem will walk through the door and the prosecutor will have to deal with it blind.

Bailey, a former prosecutor, attacked her credibility scattershot, an approach he would use throughout the trial, particularly with female witnesses. ... He accused her, that is--without coming out and saying it--of being a certain kind of woman: conceited, disingenuous, and dissatisfied. The universal misogynist caricature. I'd never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey's cross-examination strategy--with Farrar and other women to come--convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry.

..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ... I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.

Blackness is an implicit charge in the criminal justice system. Black defendants must defend against the charge as much as the stereotype that negates a presumption of innocence. They may find their own name at the end of “The United States versus,” but I assure you, their first line of defense will have to be combating the historic mistreatment, prejudice, and racist attitudes toward them—it is the Black defendant versus the history of the United States.

The blackest chapter in the history of this State will be the Indian guardianship over these estates,” an Osage leader said, adding, “There has been millions—not thousands—but millions of dollars of many of the Osages dissipated and spent by the guardians themselves.” This so-called Indian business, as White discovered, was an elaborate criminal operation, in which various sectors of society were complicit. The crooked guardians and administrators of Osage estates were typically among the most prominent white citizens: businessmen and ranchers and lawyers and politicians. So were the lawmen and prosecutors and judges who facilitated and concealed the swindling (and, sometimes, acted as guardians and administrators themselves). In 1924, the Indian Rights Association, which defended the interests of indigenous communities, conducted an investigation into what it described as “an orgy of graft and exploitation.” The group documented how rich Indians in Oklahoma were being “shamelessly and openly robbed in a scientific and ruthless manner” and how guardianships were “the plums to be distributed to the faithful friends of the judges as a reward for their support at the polls.” Judges were known to say to citizens, “You vote for me, and I will see that you get a good guardianship.” A white woman married to an Osage man described to a reporter how the locals would plot: “A group of traders and lawyers sprung up who selected certain Indians as their prey. They owned all the officials…. These men had an understanding with each other. They cold-bloodedly said, ‘You take So-and-So, So-and-So and So-and-So and I’ll take these.’ They selected Indians who had full headrights and large farms.

In our tribunal, we look only at personal criminal responsibility in a very tightly defined, narrow way and we demand proof beyond a resonable doubt about the involvement of the individual. We do no have a mandate to establish the moral responsibility of those who saw things happen and did nothing, including people who might have had the capacity to stop the process and did nothing. But we have to be careful in thinking that just because we focus on individual criminal guilt we therefore absolve the community. The old distinctions are too simplistic when we move up the chain of command and witness the merging of the collectivity into the personae of these charismatic political and military leaders.' -Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor for International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

In light of the decades-long failure by Israeli authorities to rein in serious abuses, the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor should investigate and prosecute individuals credibly implicated in the crimes against humanity of apartheid or persecution.

As the Civil War raged, large parts of the occupation experience were passed over and forgotten as quickly as possible. The Greek authorities showed little interest in pursuing war criminals, and war crimes petered out more quickly than anywhere else in Europe, whilst over-conscientious prosecutors were buried in provincial postings.

This is unjust. The questionnaire includes circumstances of a criminal’s birth and upbringing, including his or her family, neighborhood, and friends. These details should not be relevant to a criminal case or to the sentencing. Indeed, if a prosecutor attempted to tar a defendant by mentioning his brother’s criminal record or the high crime rate in his neighborhood, a decent defense attorney would roar, “Objection, Your Honor!” And a serious judge would sustain it. This is the basis of our legal system. We are judged by what we do, not by who we are. And although we don’t know the exact weights that are attached to these parts of the test, any weight above zero is unreasonable.

The murder of a child by a parent is horrific and is usually complicated by serious mental illness, as in the Yates and Smith cases. But these cases also tend to create distortions and bias. Police and prosecutors have been influenced by the media coverage, and a presumption of guilt has now fallen on thousands of women—particularly poor women in difficult circumstances—whose children die unexpectedly. Despite America's preeminent status among developed nations, we have always struggled with high rates of infant mortality—much higher than in most developed countries. The inability of many poor women to get adequate health care, including prenatal and post-partum care, has been a serious problem in this country for decades. Even with recent improvements, infant mortality rates continue to be an embarrassment for a nation that spends more on health care than any other country in the world. The criminalization of infant mortality and the persecution of poor women whose children die have taken on new dimensions in twenty-first-century America, as prisons across the country began to bear witness.

As he was about to press the button to shut the doors, a young woman stepped in. She had that sort of beauty that deserved to be prosecuted for appearing without notice. Professor Khupe was confident that an appropriate law existed for such a purpose. However, no prosecutor could remain undistracted for long enough to find the said law in the criminal code. The young lady would enjoy a life of impunity.

Immunizing prosecutors from claims of racial bias and failing to impose any meaningful check on the exercise of their discretion in charging, plea bargaining, transferring cases, and sentencing has created an environment in which conscious and unconscious biases are allowed to flourish. Numerous studies have shown that prosecutors interpret and respond to identical criminal activity differently based on the race of the offender.

We're trying to help people on death row. We're trying yo stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We're trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don't get the legal help they need. We're trying to help people who are mentally ill. We're trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We're trying to do something about the poverty and hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-makingroles in the justice system. We're trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We're trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors.

We're trying to help people on death row. We're trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We're trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don't get the legal help they need. We're trying to help people who are mentally ill. We're trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We're trying to do something about the poverty and hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-makingroles in the justice system. We're trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We're trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors.

Despite these criticisms of his criticisms, my stance has a major problem, one that causes Morse to conclude that the contributions of neuroscience to the legal system “are modest at best and neuroscience poses no genuine, radical challenges to concepts of personhood, responsibility, and competence.”25 The problem can be summarized in a hypothetical exchange: Prosecutor: So, professor, you’ve told us about the extensive damage that the defendant sustained to his frontal cortex when he was a child. Has every person who has sustained such damage become a multiple murderer, like the defendant? Neuroscientist testifying for the defense: No. Prosecutor: Has every such person at least engaged in some sort of serious criminal behavior? Neuroscientist: No. Prosecutor: Can brain science explain why the same amount of damage produced murderous behavior in the defendant? Neuroscientist: No. The problem is that, even amid all these biological insights that allow us to be snitty about those silly homunculi, we still can’t predict much about behavior. Perhaps at the statistical level of groups, but not when it comes to individuals.

In the mid-1980s, Congress authorized the creation of the US Sentencing Commission to examine prison terms and codify norms to correct the arbitrary punishments meted out by unaccountable judges. First, in 1989 the commission’s guidelines for individuals went into effect, establishing a point system for how many years of prison a convicted criminal might get, based on the seriousness of the misconduct and a person’s criminal history. In 1991, amid public and congressional outrage that sentences for white-collar criminals were too light and fines and sanctions for corporations too lenient, the Sentencing Commission expanded the concept to cover organizations. It formalized the Sporkin-era regime of offering leniency in exchange for cooperation and reform. The new rules delineated factors that could earn a culprit mercy. In levying a fine, the court should consider, the sentencing guidelines said, “any collateral consequences of conviction.” 1 “Collateral consequences” was, and remains, an ill-defined concept. How worried should the government be if a punishment causes a company to go out of business? Should regulators worry about the cashiering of innocent employees? What about customers, suppliers, or competitors? Should they fret about financial crises? From this rather innocuous mention, the little notion of collateral consequences would blossom into the great strangling vine that came to be known after the financial crisis of 2008 by its shorthand: “too big to jail.” Prosecutors and regulators were crippled by the idea that the government could not criminally sanction some companies—particularly giant banks—for fear that they would collapse, causing serious problems for financial markets or the economy.

I think too many people take advantage of their right to cloister, to live in their little echo chambers, to settle into small societies of like-minded souls, never taking the time to test and strengthen the rightness of their beliefs through searching inquiry, vigorous debate, and open dialogue. There is no such luxury at a criminal trial. There you cannot hide in your self-absorbed bunker, especially if you are the prosecutor. People are paid and obliged by oath and blessed by the Constitution. To do what? To attack every single allegation and argument you have made. And to do it with great zeal. So in that world you have to engage with your critics. And you must engage using facts, truth, and logic. You cannot just say, “I believe this” or “These are my alternative facts.” Honest engagement is the essence of the job. And it is the most exhilarating thing in the world. We malign lawyers as litigious and combative, often deservedly so, but I vastly prefer the spirit of respectful engagement and combat to what we have now in so many parts of society—siloed self-congratulation, self-affirmation, without risk of challenge or dissent or real and respectful debate.

a ring of jailhouse informants-- or 'snitches'--... allegedly received lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives... It's not difficult to imahine why a prisoner-informant would lie about overhearing a confession when it means real material benefits... [and] prosecutors are often motivated to make those informants sound believable to a judge. Testimony from a single jailhouse informant is enough to convict a person for a charge as serious as murder... [Snitch] testimony [is] the leading cause of wrongful convictions in US capital cases." -- Aaron Miguel Cantu

[N]o one has more power in the criminal justice system that prosecutors. Few rules constrain the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against the defendepant the can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguable exists. Whether a good plea deal is offered to a defendant is entirely up to the prosecutor. And if the mood strikes, the prosecutor can transfer drug defendants to the federal system, where penalties are far more severe. Juveniles, for their part, cam be transferred to adult court, where they can be sent to adult prison.

When I say that someone is being treated like a criminal, I mean that person is being treated like he broke the law or otherwise did something wrong. (When I want to say someone is being treated as less than human, I say that person is being treated like an animal, not a criminal.) Her chattel slavery and Jim Crow analogies are similarly tortured and yet another effort to explain away stark racial differences in criminality. But unlike prisons, those institutions punished people for being black, not for misbehaving. (A slave who never broke the law remained a slave.) Yet Alexander insists that we blame police and prosecutors and drug laws and societal failures—anything except individual behavior—and even urges the reader to reject the notion of black free will.

First there was Caine’s patently false “confession.” Then there was the fact that the FAYZ Legal Defense Fund racked up three million dollars in its first two weeks. Then there was a judicial panel that took statements from eminent scientists and concluded that the FAYZ was in fact a separate universe and thus not covered under California law. Finally, there was a shift in public opinion following the involvement of the two popular movie stars, the McDonald’s documentary starring Albert Hillsborough, the likelihood of a major Hollywood feature film, and the kiss seen round the world. Polls now showed 68 percent of Californians wanted no criminal charges brought against the FAYZ survivors. The kiss alone would have wrecked the career of any prosecutor or politician who had anything bad to say about Astrid Ellison or Sam Temple.

With most crimes, police generally do not arrest suspects without a warrant unless they personally witness it. Yet the mob justice surrounding domestic violence has brought the innovation of mandatory arrest, even when it is not clear who has committed the deed or even that any deed has been committed at all. One prosecutor in Hamilton County, Ohio, notes that this is “turning law-abiding citizens into criminals.” Judith Mueller of the Women’s Center in Vienna, Virginia, who had lobbied for the mandatory arrest law, says, “I am stunned, quite frankly, because that was not the intention of the law. It was to protect people from predictable violent assaults, where a history occurred, and the victim was unable for whatever reason to press charges. . . . It’s disheartening to think that it could be used punitively and frivolously.

Defenders of the prosecution seem to think that anyone charged with a felony must somehow deserve punishment. That idea can only be sustained without actual exposure to the legal system. Yes, most of the time prosecutors do chase actual wrongdoers, but today our criminal laws are so expansive that most people of any vigor and spirit can be found to violate them in some way. Basically, under American law, anyone interesting is a felon. The prosecutors, not the law, decide who deserves punishment. Today, prosecutors feel they have license to treat leakers of information like crime lords or terrorists. In an age when our frontiers are digital, the criminal system threatens something intangible but incredibly valuable. It threatens youthful vigor, difference in outlook, the freedom to break some rules and not be condemned or ruined for the rest of your life.

Ubiquitous surveillance means that anyone could be convicted of lawbreaking, once the police set their minds to it. It is incredibly dangerous to live in a world where everything you do can be stored and brought forward as evidence against you at some later date. There is significant danger in allowing the police to dig into these large data sets and find “evidence” of wrongdoing, especially in a country like the US with so many vague and punitive laws, which give prosecutors discretion over whom to charge with what, and with overly broad material witness laws. This is especially true given the expansion of the legally loaded terms “terrorism,” to include conventional criminals, and “weapons of mass destruction,” to include almost anything, including a sawed-off shotgun. The US terminology is so broad that someone who donates $10 to Hamas’s humanitarian arm could be considered a terrorist.

I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We’re trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who’ve been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We’re trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don’t get the legal help they need. We’re trying to help people who are mentally ill. We’re trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We’re trying to do something about poverty and the hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-making roles in the justice system. We’re trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We’re trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors—

Yes, ma’am. Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We’re trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who’ve been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We’re trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don’t get the legal help they need. We’re trying to help people who are mentally ill. We’re trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We’re trying to do something about poverty and the hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-making roles in the justice system. We’re trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We’re trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors—

On the rare occasions when a reporter asks if a criminal is an immigrant, government officials summarily dismiss the question as if it would be racist to discuss the defendant’s nation of birth. Ricardo DeLeon Flores killed a teenaged girl in Kansas after speeding through a stop sign and crashing into two cars. “When asked whether Flores was a U.S. citizen,” the local Kansas newspaper reported, “Deborah Owens of the Leavenworth County Attorney’s Office said she had no knowledge of his citizenship status.”33 Was the Spanish translator a hint? The ICE officials showing up in court? His Oakland Raiders T-shirt? Two families’ lives were forever changed by the reckless behavior of someone who should not have been in this country, but the prosecutor refused to tell a reporter that Flores was an illegal immigrant. Owens must have felt a warm rush of self-righteousness, thinking how much better she is than all those blood-and-soil types who want to know when foreigners kill Americans.

We may think we know how the criminal justice system works. Television is overloaded with fictional dramas about police, crime, and prosecutors—shows such as Law & Order. These fictional dramas, like the evening news, tend to focus on individual stories of crime, victimization, and punishment, and the stories are typically told from the point of view of law enforcement. A charismatic police officer, investigator, or prosecutor struggles with his own demons while heroically trying to solve a horrible crime. He ultimately achieves a personal and moral victory by finding the bad guy and throwing him in jail. That is the made-for-TV version of the criminal justice system. It perpetuates the myth that the primary function of the system is to keep our streets safe and our homes secure by rooting out dangerous criminals and punishing them. These television shows, especially those that romanticize drug-law enforcement, are the modern-day equivalent of the old movies portraying happy slaves, the fictional gloss placed on a brutal system of racialized oppression and control. Those

In the infamous Duke University lacrosse case, Durham, North Carolina, prosecutor Michael Nifong suppressed solid evidence of the innocence of the three rape defendants for months and proceeded to prosecute men he knew to be innocent in an effort to send them to prison for as much as thirty years each. Nothing suggests the Duke case was unusual. Nifong had willing accomplices throughout the state and local governments: assistant prosecutors, police departments, crime lab technicians, judges, and the state bar, plus the media. And again, no grand jury exercised its function to restrain Nifong. Though Nifong was eventually challenged and disbarred (but only after the evidence became overwhelming), he was never criminally prosecuted for framing innocent people. Moreover, his downfall occurred only after highly unusual media coverage; his fellow prosecutors’ first response was to circle the wagons around their obviously crooked colleague and defend his prosecution of innocent men, an open admission that he did nothing out of the ordinary and that they all use similar techniques to railroad the innocent.

The state's case against Smith, however, did claim to speak to his actual guilt or innocence, and it has to be considered carefully. The reason this is important has nothing to do with Roy Smith or Bessie Goldberg or even Al DeSalvo; they're all dead. In some ways there is nothing less relevant than an old murder case. The reason it is important is this: Here is a group of people who have gathered to judge--and possibly execute--a fellow citizen. It's the highest calling there is, the very thing that separates us from social anarchy, and it has to be done well. A trial, however, is just a microcosm of the entire political system. When a democratic government decides to raise taxes or wage war or write child safety laws, it is essentially saying to an enormous jury, "This is our theory of how the world works, and this is our proposal for dealing with it. If our theory makes sense to you, vote for us in the next election. If it doesn't, throw us out." The ability of citizens to scrutinize the theories insisted on by their government is their only protection against abuse of power and, ultimately, against tyranny. If ordinary citizens can't coolly and rationally evaluate a prosecutor's summation in a criminal trial, they won't have a chance at calling to task a deceitful government. And all governments are deceitful--they're deceitful because it's easier than being honest. Most of the time, it's no more sinister than that.

Each generation identifies with a small group of people said to have lived lives exemplifying the vices and virtues of that generation. If one were to choose a trial lawyer whose life reflected the unique characteristics of America’s “Wild West” of a criminal justice system in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, that person likely would be my father. New York City of the 1960s until the turn of the 21st century was the world’s epicenter of organized and white-collar crime. During those four decades, the most feared mafia chiefs, assassins, counterfeiters, Orthodox Jewish money launderers, defrocked politicians of every stripe, and Arab bankers arriving in the dead of night in their private jets, sought the counsel of one man: my father, Jimmy La Rossa. Once a Kennedy-era prosecutor, Brooklyn-born Jimmy La Rossa became one of the greatest criminal trial lawyers of his day. He was the one man who knew where all of the bodies were buried, and everyone knew it. It seemed incomprehensible that Jimmy would one day just disappear from New York. Forever. After stealing my dying father from New York Presbyterian Hospital to a waiting Medevac jet, the La Rossa Boys, as we became known, spent the next five years in a place where few would look for two diehard New Yorkers: a coastal town in the South Bay of Los Angeles, aptly named Manhattan Beach. While I cooked him his favorite Italian dishes and kept him alive using the most advanced medical equipment and drugs, my father and I documented our notorious and cinematic life together as equal parts biography and memoir. This is our story.

The most comprehensive studies of racial bias in the exercise of prosecutorial and judicial discretion involve the treatment of juveniles. These studies have shown that youth of color are more likely to be arrested, detained, formally charged, transferred to adult court, and confined to secure residential facilities than their white counterparts.65 A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.66 A study sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department and several of the nation’s leading foundations, published in 2007, found that the impact of the biased treatment is magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system. African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison.67 A major reason for these disparities is unconscious and conscious racial biases infecting decision making. In the state of Washington, for example, a review of juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently.68 Blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of external conditions such as family conflict. The risk that prosecutorial discretion will be racially biased is especially acute in the drug enforcement context, where virtually identical behavior is susceptible to a wide variety of interpretations and responses and the media imagery and political discourse has been so thoroughly racialized. Whether a kid is perceived as a dangerous drug-dealing thug or instead is viewed as a good kid who was merely experimenting with drugs and selling to a few of his friends has to do with the ways in which information about illegal drug activity is processed and interpreted, in a social climate in which drug dealing is racially defined. As a former U.S. Attorney explained: I had an [assistant U.S. attorney who] wanted to drop the gun charge against the defendant [in a case in which] there were no extenuating circumstances. I asked, “Why do you want to drop the gun offense?” And he said, “‘He’s a rural guy and grew up on a farm. The gun he had with him was a rifle. He’s a good ol’ boy, and all good ol’ boys have rifles, and it’s not like he was a gun-toting drug dealer.” But he was a gun-toting drug dealer, exactly.

As it turned out, Mary Jo White and other attorneys for the Sacklers and Purdue had been quietly negotiating with the Trump administration for months. Inside the DOJ, the line prosecutors who had assembled both the civil and the criminal cases started to experience tremendous pressure from the political leadership to wrap up their investigations of Purdue and the Sacklers prior to the 2020 presidential election in November. A decision had been made at high levels of the Trump administration that this matter would be resolved quickly and with a soft touch. Some of the career attorneys at Justice were deeply unhappy with this move, so much so that they wrote confidential memos registering their objections, to preserve a record of what they believed to be a miscarriage of justice. One morning two weeks before the election, Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general for the Trump administration, convened a press conference in which he announced a “global resolution” of the federal investigations into Purdue and the Sacklers. The company was pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as well as to two counts of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-kickback Statute, Rosen announced. No executives would face individual charges. In fact, no individual executives were mentioned at all: it was as if the corporation had acted autonomously, like a driverless car. (In depositions related to Purdue’s bankruptcy which were held after the DOJ settlement, two former CEOs, John Stewart and Mark Timney, both declined to answer questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.) Rosen touted the total value of the federal penalties against Purdue as “more than $8 billion.” And, in keeping with what had by now become a standard pattern, the press obligingly repeated that number in the headlines. Of course, anyone who was paying attention knew that the total value of Purdue’s cash and assets was only around $1 billion, and nobody was suggesting that the Sacklers would be on the hook to pay Purdue’s fines. So the $8 billion figure was misleading, much as the $10–$12 billion estimate of the value of the Sacklers’ settlement proposal had been misleading—an artificial number without any real practical meaning, designed chiefly to be reproduced in headlines. As for the Sacklers, Rosen announced that they had agreed to pay $225 million to resolve a separate civil charge that they had violated the False Claims Act. According to the investigation, Richard, David, Jonathan, Kathe, and Mortimer had “knowingly caused the submission of false and fraudulent claims to federal health care benefit programs” for opioids that “were prescribed for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary.” But there would be no criminal charges. In fact, according to a deposition of David Sackler, the Department of Justice concluded its investigation without so much as interviewing any member of the family. The authorities were so deferential toward the Sacklers that nobody had even bothered to question them.

The major shortages of judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, coupled with the number of people being held in jail awaiting rail has led to a crisis in which it is not possible for every defendant who wants a day in court to get one. So the courts need a way to keep the trials from taking place. By imprisoning poor people who cannot put up money for bail, the system uses the threat or reality of extended imprisonment to extract guilty pleas, even from people who are innocent or have other valid defenses. Not able to get a timely trial, they have only one option - plead guilty. It is a Hobson's choice, more so even than many of the defendants realize, because the guilty please have serious collateral consequences they may not even be aware of and which stay with them for the rest of their lives. But pleading guilty is what they do by the thousands, every day, all over America.

The case of City of San Francisco v. Anne Kihagi calls into question ethical judicial and prosecuting practices, the latter of which often dances the line on conflict of interest issues. Attorney Karen Uchiyama, a defense lawyer in this contentious case, references a 1985 California Supreme Court ruling that clarifies the role of a public attorney, in contrast to a non-governmental legal professional: [A] prosecutor’s duty of neutrality is born of two fundamental aspects of his employment. First, he is a representative of the sovereign; he must act with the impartiality required of those who govern. Second, he has the vast power of the government available to him; he must refrain from abusing that power by failing to act evenhandedly. These duties are not limited to criminal prosecutors: A government lawyer in a civil action or administrative proceeding has the responsibility to seek justice and to develop a full and fair record, and he should not use his position or the economic power of the government to harass parties or to bring about unjust settlements or results. (ABA Code of Prof. Responsibility, EC 7-14) That is to say, a public prosecutor’s responsibility goes beyond winning a case – in fact, victory is hardly the goal at all. A public prosecutor’s civic and ethical duty is to facilitate justice respectfully and impartially. This is, unfortunately, not the brand of behavior that is displayed by prosecuting Deputy City Attorney Michael Weiss (see more articles at annekihagisf.com).

July 5, Comey “announced his own conclusions about the nation’s most sensitive criminal investigation,” which was Hillary Clinton’s emails, preempting the decision of the prosecutor and offering “derogatory information” by calling Clinton’s conduct “extremely careless.” Then, 11 days before the election, he announced he was reopening the Clinton investigation because he believed it was a question of “speak” or “conceal.” This misstated the issue, Rosenstein said. He quoted five former attorneys general or deputy attorneys general agreeing that Comey had violated the rules.

Ferencz said that he suspected some of the Torahs may have disappeared, and he didn’t know whether purloining a Torah was a blessed act or a criminal offense.

DEFENDING A RAPIST What is the character of a person who becomes a sexual enabler? We get an early glimpse into this question from 1975, when Hillary Clinton defended a man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, who was accused of beating and raping a twelve-year-old girl. A virgin prior to the attack, she spent five days in a coma, several months recovering from her injuries, and years in therapy. Even people who are accused of heinous crimes deserve criminal representation. Hillary’s strategy in defending Taylor, however, was to blame the teenage victim. According to an affidavit filed by Hillary, children who come from “disorganized families such as the complainant” sometimes “exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.” Hillary suggested the girl was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.” Here Hillary seems to be echoing what Bernie Sanders wrote in his rape fantasy essay. In this case, however, the girl certainly didn’t dream up the assault and rape. There was physical evidence that showed she had been violated, and she was beaten so badly she was in a coma. Prosecutors had in their possession a bloodied pair of Taylor’s underwear. But fortunately for Hillary and her client, the forensic lab mishandled the way that evidence was preserved. At the time of trial, the state merely had a pair of Taylor’s underwear with a hole cut in it. Hillary plea bargained on behalf of Taylor and got him released without having to do any additional time. A tape unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon has Hillary celebrating the outcome. “Got him off with time served in the county jail,” she says. Did Hillary believe that, in this case, justice was done? Certainly not. On the tape, Hillary admits she never trusted her client. “Course he claimed he didn’t, and all this stuff.” So she decided to verify his story. “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” Clearly Hillary knows her client is guilty, and this fact doesn’t bother her. The most chilling aspect of Hillary’s voice is her indifference—even bemusement—at getting a man off after he raped a twelve-year-old. The episode is a revealing look into the soul of an enabler. In fact, it reminds me of Alinsky protesting to Frank Nitti about the wasted expense of importing an out-of-town-killer. Hillary, like Alinsky, seems to be a woman without a conscience.9

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The story recounted the vast wealth he had amassed under Hitler, and after Hitler, and outlined Flick’s friendship with mass murderer Himmler. Car buyers were told that “the man who profits most from the sales of Mercedes cars is a convicted war criminal who has not yet paid off his debt to society.

the Court has ruled that government officials who are sued for monetary damages—whether they are federal officers sued under Bivens or state or local officers sued under Section 1983—have an immunity defense. Step by step it has found that many in the criminal justice system—judges, prosecutors, and police officers as witnesses—are absolutely immune from being sued.

Armed with subpoena powers, an investigator would in theory be able to force whatever institution provided a bitcoin wallet to divulge the owner’s identity. This is why some people see bitcoin as a greater tool for prosecutors than as a cloak for criminals.

For many, they want absolute control of their fiefdom, so they work hard to politically intimidate their elected enemies, then do whatever they feel like. Where that is combined with seeking the maximum punishments is where one finds the worst prosecutors.

In Kuchma’s Ukraine, the institutional corruption that had pervaded all aspects of life in the Soviet era continued unabated. Kuchma kept the Soviet system of “telephone justice,” where politicians picked up the phone and told prosecutors and judges what to do. Tax audits, civil suits, and criminal investigations were weaponized against political adversaries and even businessmen, embroiling them in costly and time-consuming legal battles and often causing them significant public embarrassment.

good prosecutor. But I do not think that conduct—criminal or not—is okay. And the day we do think that’s okay is the day we will look back and say, “That is the day America lost its way.” And I will tell you one more thing that is apropos of the hearing today: I don’t think it’s okay that during a presidential campaign, Mr. Trump sought the Kremlin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune; according to the Special Counsel, hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t think it is okay that he concealed it from the public. I don’t think it is okay that he advocated a new and more favorable policy toward the Russians even as he was seeking the Russians’ help—the Kremlin’s help—to make money. I don’t think it’s okay that his attorney lied to our committee. There is a different word for that than collusion. And it is called “compromise.” And that is the subject of our hearing today.

Defending a criminal charge can be stressful. Whether it is a minor or a major crime, it can affect the defendants' lives. In addition to the time and money spent, a conviction can also bring prison penalties. An attorney's job is to ensure that their client is treated fairly by the criminal justice system. The defense lawyer must prove that the prosecution has failed to meet its burden of proof. To do this, they must investigate the case. They will question witnesses and examine the police and prosecutors' evidence. This is where they can uncover hidden laws or other facts that could help their client's defense. After they have heard the client's side of the story, the defense lawyer will begin to develop a strategy. These strategies can vary according to the particular circumstances of the case. One such strategy is to appeal to the jury's emotions. Using emotional appeals effectively shows that the defendant tried to avoid the crime before it happened. It can also help the defendant to gain sympathy from the judge. Another strategy is to find an alibi for the defendant. The lawyer can argue for the defendant's innocence by showing that the defendant did something before the crime.

But how exactly did I end up prosecuting a case that took place when, like Robin Samsoe, I had also just turned twelve years old? The background that I am about to describe might be more than a little upsetting, not just in the brutality of the crimes committed, but for the unforgivable failures of the criminal justice system in the way it handled a prolific sexual predator.

When monsters like Alcala are released, they will kill other people. It may not be popular to say this, especially in an era of professed “criminal justice reform,” and when we want to believe that everyone is redeemable, but Rodney Alcala was living proof that some people are not. Sexual predators do not get better. They may get better at not getting caught, but they do not change. When we release violent sexual predators, it is only a matter of time before more innocent people, and their families, suffer.

Although police can still exercise discretion on the beat, the problems of the criminal justice system are real. Many officers—and prosecutors— consider specific laws self-defeating. When police officers arrest a person who throws his narcotics to the ground, the officers may momentarily lose sight of the package. But if they testify in court that they did so, the case is likely to be dismissed. Some officers perjure themselves rather than lose the case. If an officer admits that he lost sight of the drugs, some police, attorneys, and judges infer that his testimony has been bought by the dealers. Lawmakers sometimes present police with unenforceable laws or fail to provide the funds necessary for enforcement. Courts issue rulings that impose unreasonable standards of proof, undermining public respect for law. Greater wisdom in legislators and judges will be required to square the balance between order and liberty, together with more communication to the public by police organizations, as in the growing opposition to easy purchase of cheap handguns.

this bizarre world of lies and deceit. There’s no honor in it anywhere. It’s all just a sick game, and the people who win the most are the ones who lie the best. They call it the criminal justice system. What a crock. Defendants lie and cheat, police officers lie and cheat, prosecutors lie and cheat, defense lawyers lie and cheat, and judges—Jesus, don’t get me started.

Ask any experienced prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys, and they will all tell you the same thing: after a police officer arrests you, if he later remembers additional details that he initially forgot to write down, those additional details will always confirm the original accusation and help the prosecutor. Those “new memories” will never undermine the original charges and help the defense. There

If you talk to the police for three hours and give them three hundred details that would all tend to support your defense, and you only mention three details that might help get you convicted, the prosecutor has every right under the law to ask the officers to only tell the jury about the three details that seem to implicate you in the crime. Do you think the police officers who falsely promised you that they were somehow offering to “help you” by collecting information to present to the judge will regret their lie after you have been convicted? No chance. They have done it to countless other criminal suspects, and they will do it again. But you can be sure that they have already made sure that no police officers will ever do it to one of their children.

Most Americans were familiar with their Miranda rights; they’d heard the words recited so often on the plethora of police and detective shows populating television, they could recite their Miranda rights from memory. What most didn’t know was their right to an attorney was guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, but only during a criminal interrogation, and only if the person was taken into police custody—the right was intended to prevent coercion and intimidation. Even fewer knew the Sixth Amendment embodied a second constitutional right to counsel when a prosecutor commenced a criminal prosecution by filing a complaint, or the suspect was indicted by a grand jury. The fallacy most Americans harbored was that they could simply shout, “I want a lawyer!” when confronted by a police officer, and the officer couldn’t talk to them. Not so. In fact, in the absence of a criminal charge, and so long as they didn’t take Strickland into custody, Tracy and Kins could talk to him until the cows came home. For now, however, Tracy was content to humor Montgomery.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, wrote in 2006: “International humanitarian law and the Rome statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) ... or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).

Though it is not widely known, the prosecutor is the most powerful law enforcement official in the criminal justice system. One

They're all the same-- the cop, the criminal, the defense, the prosecutor-- they all share a fundamental belief in the malleability of truth

Between 1970 and 2008, the ratio of Americans in prison ballooned to unprecedented heights, from—according to sociologists Bruce Western and Becky Pettit—around 100 per 100,000 people to around 762 per 100,000. The mechanisms of prison growth varied by state, but they included, in different combinations, local prosecutors charging more aggressively, state lawmakers stiffening criminal codes, parole boards denying release in cases where it previously would have been routine, federal grants encouraging punitive policies, and other factors.

A college student who wants to file a complaint of sexual assault within the campus disciplinary system informs a university employee such as an assistant dean for student life, or perhaps the Title IX coordinator. That person eventually forwards the complaint to a university disciplinary panel that may be composed of, for example, an associate dean with a master's degree in English literature, a professor of chemistry, and a senior majoring in anthropology. Unlike criminal prosecutors, members of the disciplinary panels do not have access to subpoena powers or to crime labs. They often have no experience in fact-finding, arbitration, conflict resolution, or any other relevant skill set. There is, to put it mildly, little reason to expect such panels to have the experience, expertise, and resources necessary to adjudicate a contested claim of sexual assault. Making matters worse, most campus tribunals ban attorneys for the parties (even in an advisory capacity), rules of procedure and evidence are typically ad hoc, and no one can consult precedents because records of previous disputes are sealed due to privacy considerations. Campus "courts" therefore have an inherently kangoorish nature. Even trained police officers and prosecutors too often mishandle sexual assault cases, so it's not surprising that the amateurs running the show at universities tend to have a poor record. And indeed, some victims' advocacy groups, such as the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), oppose having the government further encourage the campus judicial system to primarily handle campus sexual assault claims, because that means not treating rape as a serious crime. A logical solution, if federal intervention is indeed necessary, would be for OCR [US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights] to mandate that universities encourage students who complain of sexual assault to report the assault immediately to the police, and that universities develop procedures to cooperate with police investigations. Concerns about victims' well-being when prosecutors decline to pursue a case could also be adjudicated in a real court, as a student could seek a civil protective order against her alleged assailant. OCR could have mandated or encouraged universities to cooperate with those civil proceedings, which in some cases might warrant excluding an alleged assailant from campus.

It is a given of the criminal justice system, an axiom as certain as the laws of gravity, that defendants rarely tell the truth. Cops and prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges- everybody knows they lie. They lie solemnly; with sweaty palms and shifty eyes; or, more often, with a look of schoolboy innocence and an increased disbelief when their credulty is assailed. They lie to protect themselves; they lie to protect their friends. They lie for the fun of it, or because that is the way they have always been. They lie about big details and small ones, about who started it, who thought of it, who did it and who was sorry. But they lie. It is the defendant's credo. Lie to the cops. Lie to your lawyer. Lie to the jury that tries your case. If convicted, lie to your probation officer. Lie to your bunkmate in the pen. Trumpet your innocence. Let the dirty bastards out there with a grain of doubt. Something can always change.

The decision about Russia, in the end, was not a hard one for the Mueller team. They had conclusive intelligence proving that Moscow conducted a wide-ranging operation to interfere in the 2016 election with the goal of electing Trump. They also had plenty of evidence that the Trump campaign had extensive contacts with various Russians and intermediaries, welcomed Moscow’s help, and profited from it. What they did not have, the prosecutors agreed, was enough evidence to prove in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a criminal conspiracy on the part of the president or members of his staff. As an intellectual matter, they thought they could string together the disparate episodes and connections to make a technical case as if it were a law school exercise. There were an awful lot of “coincidences” there.

An anonymous tip led to a suspect, Alejandro Avila, who had a car that roughly matched the description. Investigators checked his criminal background and learned that two years earlier he had been accused of molesting two children, one of them his ex-girlfriend’s daughter—who lived in the very same complex as Samantha, with her father. Avila had been arrested, charged, tried, and (incredibly) acquitted.

But it would be a tendentious argument, they believed, not one an experienced prosecutor would take to a real court with a real jury. The only meaningful debate was about the Trump Tower meeting—some prosecutors thought they did not need to make a big deal out of it since it turned out to be so inconsequential, while others argued that even if not criminal it was still a deeply troubling episode that belonged in their final report.

What he certainly would have learned during that experience was that the criminal justice system sometimes fails. And now his next victim was dead. I would hope the lesson for jurors would be that if you let a child molester go free, this, sadly, is what can happen.

Any suggestion that Breitwieser is not a harmful criminal, says the prosecutor, is absurd. Breitwieser is one of the most malicious art thieves ever. The Swiss police have cataloged forty-seven different maneuvers he employed to steal art. He averaged a theft every twelve days for seven years.

Violent criminals "They are emotionally out of control; they are convinced that they are so justified that it isn't even a crime; and/or that they won't get caught, so punishment won't apply. Put more simply, the are so angry, delusional, arrogant, or lacking in moral conscience that they don't care about the punishment". from Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safe

Each country has its own extradition treaty with the US and various levels of cooperation. The consensus pick for the most extradition-friendly country in Europe was, interestingly, the Czech Republic. Apparently, all countries from the former Soviet bloc have a great deal of respect for the American system of justice and trust the fairness and due process afforded criminal defendants here.

In the end, the final judgment read as follows: “‘His crimes are those of an antisocial, sadistic, bloodthirsty being, who considers himself privileged to commit these atrocities because he was once upon a time treated in an asylum for insanity, and thereby escaped well merited punishment. He is a common criminal and there are no ameliorating circumstances to be found in his favour’—V. was sentenced to death.

The worst part about the censorship regime was that it was maddeningly arbitrary. Books that circulated for years might be banned without warning. Customs officials might declare a book legal only to have the Post Office issue its own ban. A judge or jury could acquit a book one day and condemn it the next, and the wording of the statues themselves stoked confusion. The New York law described criminal literature with what Ernst called the "six deadly adjectives": obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent and disgusting—lawmakers kept adding words when they updated the law. Multiplying the number of adjectives was a way of papering over the elusiveness of any given designation. What was the difference between obscene and lascivious? If a judge seemed reluctant to find something lewd, a prosecutor could argue that it was disgusting—and every one of those adjectives was subjective.

For a prosecutor, it’s easy to become annoyed at a criminal justice system that seems to be stacked so ridiculously in favor of defendants. But you have to have been on the downside looking up at the face of the law before you realize how thin those defenses really are. Once you’ve been there, you can’t honestly begrudge a defendant any help he can muster.

Criminal defense lawyers represent clients accused of a crime while prosecutors and district attorneys represent the interests of the state in prosecuting those accused of a crime.

If the criminal legal system only had white judges, prosecutors, and cops, then we could more easily assume the presence of racism or white supremacy. But with diversity, people of color can make the legal system appear more neutral or just by the virtue of them being "firsts." We need "firsts" to do more than break the barriers to get into the system; we need them to break the system itself.

Desperate, Tillman confessed to charges of murder and rape for which he wasn't responsible - a few weeks later, the CPD caught the real killer - but Burge still turned Tillman's false confession over to Daley's prosecutors, and Tillman was convicted.

When you steal other people’s belongings, you become a thief. This is very simple and clear. But people’s today think one becomes a criminal only after being arrested by a policeman, investigated by a prosecutor, sentenced by a judge, and confined in a prison. Therefore, corrupt politicians think they are men of virtue and skill if they can cover up their deeds and escape getting caught. They are heavily influenced by “group stupidity.” Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan were nothing other than great thieves, Hitler and Mussolini where greater robbers than the legendary thieves Ishikawa Goemon and Tenichibo. Although these dictators operated on a much larger scale, they were not fundamentally different from Kunisada Chuji, who said, “Let’s go as far as we can, no matter what.” And hey the henchmen of thieves think their bosses are respected. We’re always falling into ruts. Politicians and their followers, many schoolteachers, and opinion leaders work hard to manipulate people into biased, habitual ways of thinking. The ways we’re distorted are subtle, deliberate, and complicated. When we’re liberated from this distortion, we will find the true wisdom of Buddhism.

We can, however, see how much money is being spent out of legal-aid funds to compensate private prosecutors for the expenses they have incurred, and it is soaring.

We do not have statistics on the number of private prosecutions being brought, although judges and lawyers alike agree that the number is rising fast. We can, however, see how much money is being spent out of legal-aid funds to compensate private prosecutors for the expenses they have incurred, and it is soaring. In 2014–15 the total came to just £360,000. By 2019–20 it had risen to £12.3 million. At that rate of increase it won’t be long before expenditure on private prosecutions wipes out the entire saving made by the cuts to police and court budgets after 2010.

In short, private prosecutors get to take a one-way punt at public expense, while their opponents not only have to fund their own defence but face the prospect of losing everything if convicted.

And is that all there is to it?’ Nekhlyudov cried as he read these words. And the inner voice of his whole being said, ‘Yes, that’s all there is to it.’ And then something happened to Nekhlyudov, the kind of thing that often occurs with people living a spiritual life. What happened was that an idea that at first had seemed weird paradoxical, maybe even ridiculous, after being confirmed time after time by the process of living, suddenly presented itself as a simple, incontrovertible truth. In this way it became clear to him that the only sure way of salvation from the terrible evil whereby so many were made to suffer was for people to acknowledge that they are guilty before God and therefore disqualified from punishing or correcting other people. He now saw clearly that the terrible evil he had witnessed in the prisons and at the halting-stations, and the smug complacency of those who were committing it, all stemmed from one thing: people were trying to do something that was impossible – to correct evil while being evil. Sinful people tried to correct sinful people and thought this could be achieved mechanically. The only result was that people needing and wanting money have a profession out of the imaginary punishment and correction of others, and they have become corrupt themselves even as they have gone on ceaselessly corrupting their victims. Now he could clearly see the origin of all the horrors he had witnessed, and what had to be done to eliminate them. The answer he had been unable to discover was the one given by Christ to Peter: always forgive, forgive everyone an infinite number of times, because there are no guiltless people who might be qualified to punish or correct. ‘No, it can’t be as simple as that,‘ Nekhlyudov said to himself, yet he could see beyond doubt that, however outlandish this had seemed to him at first, because he was so used to the opposite, it was the one sure way to solve the problem, both in theory and emphatically in practice. The age-old objection that evil-doers had to be dealt with – we can’t let them go unpunished, can we? – no longer bothered him. As an objection it might have been valid if there was any proof that punishment reduces crime and reforms criminals; but when the proof is entirely in the opposite direction, and it is clear that it is not within our power for some men to punish others, the only natural and reasonable thing is to stop doing what is not only useless but pernicious, as well as callous and immoral. ‘For centuries you have been executing people classed by you as criminals. Have they been eliminated? They have not, their numbers have only increased, added to by criminals corrupted by punishment and by other criminals – the judges, prosecutors, magistrates and gaolers who sit in judgement and dole out punishment.’ Nekhlyudov could now see that society and good order in general exist not because of the legalized criminals who judge and punish others, but because, despite all the forces of corruption, people do in fact pity and love one another. Hoping to find confirmation of this idea in the Bible, Nekhlyudov started reading from the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel. After reading the Sermon on the Mount, which had always moved him, he discovered in it now for the first time not just abstract ideas of great beauty that imposed hyperbolical and impossible demands, but a series of simple, clear-cut, pragmatic commands, which, if followed (a distinct possibility), would establish a totally new order of human society, in which the violence that incensed Nekhlyudov would fall away of its own accord, and the greatest blessing for humanity, the kingdom of God on earth, would be achieved.

I fathered a child, my first one, during those sixty days that I was a "free" man. My beloved daughter, Oryanna Elizabeth Davis (Elizabeth is my mother's name) was born on November 11, 2001 while I was serving yet another sentence of three and a half years in federal prison for something I did not do and could not have done, even if I had wanted to. And the judge, prosecutor, my probation officer, and the arresting Secret Service officers all knew it.

As a prosecutor she had been able to knit a defendant's criminal life together that way when preparing for trial, bridging one step up to the next on the criminal evolutionary scale. And she would try like hell to get it all past the presiding judge. Now she was the judge. And as a judge, she had to adhere to a different standard.

[smart scientist (Climberg??)] and his team built an artificial intelligence system. They fed it the same information that prosecutors had given judges in those arraignment cases. Information such as the defendant's age and criminal record. They told the AI to go through those 550,000 cases and make its own list of 400,000 people to release. It was a bake-off - man vs machine... who's list committed the fewest crimes committed while out on bail and was most likely to show up for their trial date? The results weren't even close. The people on the computer's list were 25% less likely to commit a crime.. than the 400,000 people released by the judges of NY City.

And is that all there is to it?’ Nekhlyudov cried out as he read these words. And the inner voice of his whole being said, ‘Yes, that’s all there is to it. ’ And then something happened to Nekhlyudov, the kind of thing that often occurs with people living a spiritual life. What happened was that an idea that at first seemed weird, paradoxical, maybe even ridiculous, after being confirmed time after time by the process of living, suddenly presented it as a simple, incontrovertible truth. In this way it became clear to him that the only sure way of salvation from the terrible evil whereby so many were made to suffer was for people to acknowledge that they are guilty before God and therefore disqualified from punishing or correcting other people. He now saw clearly that the terrible evil he had witnessed in prisons and the halting-stations, and the smug complacency of those who were committing it, all stemmed from one thing: people were trying to do something that is impossible – to correct evil while being evil. Sinful people tried to correct sinful people and thought this could be achieved mechanically. The only result was that people needing and wanting money have made a profession out of the imaginary punishment and correction of others, and they have become corrupt themselves even as they have gone on ceaselessly corrupting their victims. Now he could clearly see the origin of all the horrors he had witnessed, and what had to be done to eliminate them. The answer he had been unable to discover was the one given by Christ to Peter: always forgive, forgive everyone an infinite number of times, because there are no guiltless people who might be qualified to punish or correct. ‘No, it can’t be as simple as that,’ Nekhlyudov said to himself, yet he could see beyond doubt that, however outlandish this had seemed to him at first, because he was so used to the opposite, it was the one sure way to solve the problem, both in theory and emphatically in practice. The age-old objection that evil-doers had to be dealt with – we can’t just let them go unpunished can we? – no longer bothered him. As an objection it might have been valid if there was any proof that punishment reduces crime and reforms criminals; but when the proof is entirely in the opposite direction, and it is clear that it is not within our power for some men to punish others, the only natural and reasonable thing is to stop doing what is not only useless but pernicious, as well as callous and immoral. ‘For centuries you have been executing people classed by you as criminals. Have they been eliminated? They have not, their numbers have only increased, added to by criminals corrupted by punishment and by other criminals – the judges, prosecutors, magistrates and gaolers who sit in in judgement and dole out punishment.’ Nekhlyudov could now see that society and good order in general exist not because of the legalized criminals who judge and punish others, but because, despite all the forces of corruption, people do in fact pity and love one another. Hoping to find confirmation of this idea in the Bible, Nekhlyudov started reading from the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel. After reading the Sermon on the Mount, which had always moved him, he discovered in it now for the first time not just abstract ideas of great beauty that imposed hyperbolical and impossible demands, but a series of simple, clear-cut, pragmatic commands, which, if followed, (a distinct possibility), would establish a totally new order of human society, in which the violence that incensed Nekhlyudov would fall away of its own accord, and the greatest blessing for humanity, the kingdom of God on earth, would be achieved. There were five of these commandments.

They call it the criminal justice system. What a crock. Defendants lie and cheat, police officers lie and cheat, prosecutors lie and cheat, defense lawyers lie and cheat, and judges—Jesus, don’t get me started. The American legal system would do itself a great service if it could somehow execute half the sitting judges in this country and start all over again

In an actual criminal trial, before a judge or jury, the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. In the grand jury proceeding, no one on the defense side is present to hold the prosecutor’s feet to the fire. And, because of the absence of defense arguments, grand juries almost always return an indictment. When prosecutors bring cases to grand juries, they are looking for a rubber stamp.

In fact, it was different. Crossing the border is a civil crime, adjudicated in immigration court, and only if prosecutors decide to press charges do families get placed into criminal proceedings.

Of her portrayal in the 1967 movie, Bonnie and Clyde, Blanche said, 'That movie made me out like a screaming horse's ass!' ... 'I was too busy moving bodies [to act hysterical],' Blanche herself said. ... Her image in this memoir, as well as in Fugitives and in Cumie Barrow's manuscript, was fashioned at a time when Blanche could have easily been charged with the Joplin murders. That may account for the great difference in tone Between Blanche, the young convict in Missouri State Penitentiary, and Blanche, the elder ex-fugitive. Indeed, at least one of Blanche Barrows' champions, Wilbur Winkler, the Deni— son man who co-owned (along with Artie Barrow Winkler) the Cinderella Beauty Shoppe, used Fugitives to try to obtain a parole for Blanche from the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole. In letters to the Platte County prosecutor and the judge involved in Blanche's case, Winkler alluded to the book's description of Blanche in Joplin in an effort to win their support for her release: 'Blanch [sic] ran hysterical [tic] thru [sit] the gunfire down the street carrying [her] dog in her arms,' Winkler wrote. He even sent copies of the book to them—and to others.

And as the movement spreads, it’s beyond the control of Washington and the Trump administration to stop. Local prosecutors handle more than 95 percent of the nation’s criminal docket, and by reinventing how they do their jobs, they can stand up to Trump, on issues surrounding punishment but also on immigration, drug policy, and civil rights.

To condemn a crime yet provide no impartial institution to try the offenders is to mock the victims and encourage more criminality.

Accepting Hitler’s orders without question showed the absence of any criminal intent. If the accused believes in good faith that anticipatory self-defense is lawful, the criminal intent required for conviction is lacking.