Prosecutor Best Quotes

Go out there and try to be good. If you go out there and try to be good, you've got a chance to be great.

So - to the best of your ability - demonstrate your own guilt, conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. Play the part first of prosecutor, then of judge, and finally of pleader in mitigation. Be harsh with yourself at times.

Is it always in the interest of the public safety to seek the prosecutor's traditional solution -- the harshest penalty possible? Or is the public best served by finding ways to change a kid's lot in life for the better, even if that means opening the prison door?

Police and prosecutors are morally and professionally obligated to make every effort to identify specious rape reports, safeguard the civil rights of rape suspects, and prevent the falsely accused from being convicted. At the same time, however, police and prosecutors are obligated to do everything in their power to identify individuals who have committed rape and ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. These two objectives are not mutually exclusive. A meticulous, expertly conducted investigation that begins by believing the victim is an essential part of prosecuting and, ultimately, convicting those who are guilty of rape. It also happens to be the best way to exonerate those who have been falsely accused. Rape victims provide police with more information--and better information--when detectives interview them from a position of trust rather than one of suspicion.

As I traveled the country promoting my book, I was asked by many people, ‘What are you trying to prove here? Lyndon Johnson is dead. He can’t be prosecuted. What is the point of this other than an academic exercise?’ Here is the point: The government does not always tell us the truth. In fact, the government seldom tells us the truth. If ONE citizen understands by reading my book that everything the government says must be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism, then I will have achieved my goal. Perhaps the best analysis comes from former federal prosecutor and US Attorney David Marston, who wrote to me, “You have viewed the JFK assassination through the prism of a murder investigator’s first question, cui bono (who benefits)? The shocking answer is that the primary suspect has been hiding in plain sight for fifty years: LBJ.

New Rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word "liberal," they also have to take back the word "elite." By now you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite media," and the "liberal elite." Who may or may not be part of the "Washington elite." A subset of the "East Coast elite." Which is overly influenced by the "Hollywood elite." So basically, unless you're a shit-kicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists. If you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being "elite," you'd be almost as wasted as Rush Limbaugh. I don't get it: In other fields--outside of government--elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad--the elite aren't down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screwups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's thirty-three, and though she never even worked as a prosecutor, was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all ninety-three U.S. attorneys. How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College--you know, home of the "Fighting Christies"--and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you have to read only one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix. Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist diploma mill work in the Bush administration? On hundred fifty. And you wonder why things are so messed up? We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? In two hundred years, we've gone from "we the people" to "up with people." From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber. And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by elites. It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law school.

So – to the best of your ability – demonstrate your own guilt, conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. Play the part first of prosecutor, then of judge and finally of pleader in mitigation. Be harsh with yourself at times.

If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly misremember your exact words. [....] Even if the officer gets only a few words wrong, it only takes a slight rewording of the privilege to make it sound like a confession. So what do you do instead? Instead mention your Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer, and tell the police that you want a lawyer.

It had personally pained Trump not to be able to give it to him. But if the Republican establishment had not wanted Trump, they had not wanted Christie almost as much. So Christie got the job of leading the transition and the implicit promise of a central job—attorney general or chief of staff. But when he was the federal prosecutor in New Jersey, Christie had sent Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, to jail in 2005. Charlie Kushner, pursued by the feds for an income tax cheat, set up a scheme with a prostitute to blackmail his brother-in-law, who was planning to testify against him. Various accounts, mostly offered by Christie himself, make Jared the vengeful hatchet man in Christie’s aborted Trump administration career. It was a kind of perfect sweet-revenge story: the son of the wronged man (or, in this case—there’s little dispute—the guilty-as-charged man) uses his power over the man who wronged his family. But other accounts offer a subtler and in a way darker picture. Jared Kushner, like sons-in-law everywhere, tiptoes around his father-in-law, carefully displacing as little air as possible: the massive and domineering older man, the reedy and pliant younger one. In the revised death-of-Chris-Christie story, it is not the deferential Jared who strikes back, but—in some sense even more satisfying for the revenge fantasy—Charlie Kushner himself who harshly demands his due. It was his daughter-in-law who held the real influence in the Trump circle, who delivered the blow. Ivanka told her father that Christie’s appointment as chief of staff or to any other high position would be extremely difficult for her and her family, and it would be best that Christie be removed from the Trump orbit altogether.

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.

Now it happened that just the night before last Julien had been to see M. Casimir Delavigne's tragedy, Marino Faliero. - Wasn't Israel Bertuccio a greater figure than all those Venetian nobles? our rebellios plebian asked himself; and yet they were men whose noble lineage can be traced back to the year 700, a century before Charlemagne, while all the best born of those who were at M. de Retz's ball this evening only go back, and even then most lamely, to the thirtheenth century. Well, good! in the mids of those Venetian nobles, so very high born, it is Israel Bertuccio one remembers. A conspiracy annihilates all the titles produced by the arbitrary decisions of society. In it a man instantly assumes the rank given him by his manner of envisaging death. Intelligence itself loses its sway... Where would Danton be today, in the age of Valenod and de Rênal? - not even a deputy crown prosecutor...

It was now my responsibility to build my own culture within the U.S. Attorney’s office, one that would get the best out of our team and drawing, in different ways, on the lessons of Giuliani and Fahey. I tried to attend to this task from the very first day. I hired about fifty new prosecutors during my time as U.S. Attorney and sat with each of them as they took the oath of office. I invited them to bring their families. I told them that something remarkable was going to happen when they stood up and said they represented the United States of America—total strangers were going to believe what they said next. I explained to them that, although I didn’t want to burst their bubbles, this would not happen because of them. It would happen because of those who had gone before them and, through hundreds of promises made and kept, and hundreds of truths told and errors instantly corrected, built something for them. I called it a reservoir. I told them it was a reservoir of trust and credibility built for you and filled for you by people you never knew, by those who are long gone. A reservoir that makes possible so much of the good that is done by the institution you serve. A remarkable gift. I would explain to these bright young lawyers that, like all great gifts, this one comes with a responsibility, a solemn obligation to guard and protect that reservoir and pass it on to those who follow as full as you received it, or maybe even fuller. I would explain that the problem with reservoirs is that they take a very long time to fill but they can be drained by one hole in the dam. The actions of one person can destroy what it took hundreds of people years to build.

If there's something I want to do I have to do it," Song-uk says, then stops talking, obstinate. I suppose you can say something like that if you grow up hearing what a gifted child you are, study at the best undergraduate law department in the nation, tutor high school kids for fun to buy yourself the newest tablet notebook, and hang out with friends who want to become judges, prosecutors, diplomats, or politicians. I'm sure if you say something like this, everyone usually feels guilty and says they're sorry and lets you do whatever you want. I'm different. I know what kind of person you are. I think you expect me to be maternal with you, but that's not part of the deal. I'm a woman, not your mother.

SOLOMON’S LAWS 1. Try not to piss off a cop unless you have a damn good reason . . . or a damn good lawyer. 2. The best way to hustle a case is to pretend you don’t want the work. 3. When arguing with a woman who is strong, intelligent, and forthright, consider using trickery, artifice, and deceit. 4. A prosecutor’s job is to build a brick wall around her case. A defense lawyer’s job is to tear down the wall, or at least to paint graffiti on the damn thing. 5. Listen to bus drivers, bailiffs, and twelve-year-old boys. Some days, they all know more than you do. 6. When the testimony is too damn good, when there are no contradictions and all the potholes are filled with smooth asphalt, chances are the witness is lying. 7. A shark who can’t bite is nothing but a mermaid. 8. When the woman you love is angry, it’s best to give her space, time, and copious quantities of wine. 9. Be confident, but not cocky. Smile, but don’t snicker. And no matter how desperate your case, never let the jurors see your fear. 10. Never sleep with a medical examiner, unless you’re dead. 11. If you can’t keep a promise to a loved one, you probably aren’t going to keep the loved one, either. 12. Life may be a marathon, but sometimes you have to sprint to save a life.

I admired Bolden’s abilities. I’ve long thought that a good prosecutor is a well-trained union carpenter building a sturdy house with shiny tools and freshly hewn wood. She follows blueprints to the letter, makes sure the framing is in plumb, lines up the two-by-fours, and hammers the nails straight. The best courtroom carpenters are Renaissance men and women. They double as bricklayers, installers, tapers, finishers, electricians, and even plumbers. They can build the whole damn house, and it’s a thing of beauty that will pass the toughest inspection by city inspectors . . . or juries. Until the defense lawyers come along. We’re the stealthy vandals wielding crowbars and spray paint. We tear down door frames, break windows, and spray graffiti on the walls. Our job is to destroy what the carpenters have built and feed it into the woodchipper.

I was about to head out of one polling site when a Black man my father’s age approached me. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He was ushering an old woman dressed in her Sunday best, complete with a lavender hat, by the elbow. She pressed her cane into the ground as she repositioned her leg between strides. She trained her eyes on mine as she walked. I walked to meet her where she was. “Hello, ma’am. How are you?” I said, smiling, as she extended her warm, soft hand, contorted by arthritis. I clasped it between both of mine. She released her cane to the man who had introduced us, who must have been her son, placing her other hand on top of mine and squeezing. She shuffled closer, and I could instantly smell my own grandmother’s hair cream. I wondered how old she was. “You tell President Obama”—her words fired like a slow cannon as she patted the top of my hand with each syllable, lingering on the final word with a swallow—“that I voted for him and that he is making us proud. You tell him that I lived to see the day.” I indulged her willingly. “I sure will, ma’am.” “You tell him and those babies that we are prayerful. A Black man in the Oval Office. My God. We are prayerful.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said, still holding her hands. “My grandson brought me down here to vote today.” I was dying to ask her age now. “And he told me that we had a Black woman, a sister, making sure no one messed with our votes.” I nodded. “God bless you for coming. God bless President Obama for making it so. I always vote now. I always come out. Rain or shine. I’m here, isn’t that right?” she said, turning to her grandson. She must have been in her nineties if he was her grandson. “Yes. She wouldn’t miss it. Means too much. She was on the front lines. Been on the front lines,” he explained.

Father Allender, one of my Jesuit teachers in high school, used to quote Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service of others.” I am beyond flawed, and far from pious, but the hug from a bereaved mother at the end of a hard-fought trial is an intensely satisfying experience. In fact, it is downright intoxicating. With alcoholic parents of my own, and with the “curse of the Irish” pretty rampant in my family, I resolved at a very young age that I was never going to let that happen to me. Through high school, college (including a four-year stint living in a fraternity house), and all of law school, I never touched a drop of alcohol. To this day, I have never really been drunk. I never wanted the monkey of addiction on my back.

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.

Viewing this orchestrated sabotage with frustration, critics accused the Gates grantees of purposefully designing these studies, at best, to fail and, at worst, to murder.75 Brazilian prosecutors have accused the authors of the study of committing homicide by purposefully poisoning the elderly subjects in their study with high doses of chloroquine.

We have to wait and see what happens with the legal process,” he told media before adding: “We would much prefer to have her in the news for great goalkeeping performances than anything else.” Solo promptly went back to starting games for the national team and looking like one of the best goalkeepers the world had ever seen. She even wore the captain’s armband on September 18, 2014, in honor of the fact that she had set a new shutout record for the national team. All the while, media outlets slammed U.S. Soccer for it because her assault case was still unresolved. The case against Solo didn’t seem particularly strong—the alleged victims were not cooperating and it looked like it would probably be dismissed. In December 2014, that’s exactly what happened, although prosecutors vowed to appeal.

What’s the “best” trade-off? Such decisions typically are buried within antitrust or antimonopoly laws, as enforced by administrative agencies and interpreted by prosecutors and courts.

   David sat down in the only unoccupied chair in the room.                  The kid scooted his chair a few inches in the direction of the door.  David frowned at his new attorney.  “You think I did everything they’re saying about me.”                 “Ah… ah… no… “the kid said, sweat popping out on his brow.  “Let’s get started.”  David made a sudden move, his hands shooting out across the table.  The lawyer jumped back, his chair scrapping against the concrete floor.  His face paled, his hand trembled, his finger above the orange button on the radio.                  “Great, just what I needed, an attorney who believes I’m guilty.”                  “Mr… er… Reverend Padgett, I’m trying to help you.”                 “Am I your first client?”  The boy cleared his throat.                  “I assure you, Reverend Padgett, I will defend you to the best of my ability.”                 “You just passed the bar, didn’t you?”                  “Ah, yes, but I did so on my first try.  Some don’t pass until their second or third try.”                                                   “Wonderful, well we have something in common; this is the first time I’ve been on trial for my life.”                  “I have some good news for you,” Barlow said, picking up a piece of paper he handed it to David.                  “What’s this?” David said, his eyes scanning the sheet.                  “It’s a plea agreement.  I persuaded the prosecutor to only sentence you to 50 years; you will be eligible for parole in 25.”                 “You want me to plead guilty to something I didn’t do and spend the next 25 to 50 years in prison?”                 “If we go to trial, the prosecutor is going to ask for the death penalty.”                 “Have you even looked at the evidence?                 “I’m sorry, as you know I was just assigned the case this morning.”                 “Get out!”                 “Excuse me?”                 “Press your talk button on the radio and tell them you want to leave.”                  “But we haven’t discussed...”                 “If you persist I will fire you as my attorney, how will that look on your record?”     “Okay, okay, Reverend Padgett,” confused, Barlow pressed the orange button, “I’m ready to go now.”  Somewhere an alarm sounded. Suddenly there was a rumbling of running feet coming down the hall.      “You pushed the wrong button,” David shouted.  With hands trembling, he reached for the radio.  “Here let me have it.”     Keys jingled in the lock. Five officers rushed in, pulling David from the chair.  They threw him face down on the floor, he cried out in pain as one of the officers put his knee in the middle of his back.  Another grabbed David’s hands, snapping the handcuffs on his wrists.

Hester had something of a gift for mimicry. She often used it in the courtroom to subtly if not immaturely undermine a prosecutor. Doing her best impression of Rick Chad, she repeated his earlier words verbatim: “This guy should be in prison, no questions asked.” “That will be up to a court of law,” Hipster Rick Chad said, “but maybe if a man acts like this, if he punches people in the face in broad daylight, he deserves to be canceled and lose his job.

prosecutor at the post–World War II Nuremberg trials) said it best: “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

I once attended a conference on the crises in the banking system where I was able to have a brief, informal chat with an economist for one of the Bretton Woods institutions (probably best I not say which). I asked him why everyone was still waiting for even one bank official to be brought to trial for any act of fraud leading up to the crash of 2008. OFFICIAL: Well, you have to understand the approach taken by U.S. prosecutors to financial fraud is always to negotiate a settlement. They don't want to have to go to trial. The upshot is always that the financial institution has to pay a fine, sometimes in the hundreds of millions, but they don't actually admit to any criminal liability. Their lawyers simply say they are not going to contest the charge, but if they pay, they havent't technically been found guilty of anything. ME: So you're saying if the government discovers that Goldman Sachs, for instance, or Bank of America, has committed fraud, they effectively just charge them a penalty fee. OFFICIAL: That's right. ME: So in that case… okay, I guess the real question is this: has there ever been a case where the amount the firm had to pay was more than the amount of money they made from the fraud itself? OFFICIAL: Oh no, not to my knowledge. Usually it's substantially less. ME: So what are we talking here, 50 percent? OFFICIAL: I'd say more like 20 to 30 percent on average. But it varies considerably case by case. ME: Which means… correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that effectively mean the government is saying, "you can commit all the fraud you like, but if we catch you, you're going to have to give us our cut"? OFFICIAL: Well, obviously I can't put it that way myself as long as I have this job… (p. 25-26)

We are also the only lawyer in the courtroom striving for the justice of a rightful conviction. It is a matter of ethics to zealously represent your client. This requires the prosecutor to use every strategy in our arsenal, to exercise our best efforts at trial, within the bounds of the law and ethics, to bring about a conviction. The desire to convict is not unethical when it is founded on your considered judgment, and good faith belief, that a conviction is supported by the evidence. And I know I’m preaching to the choir, and that you all know all this, but I think it’s worth reminding ourselves every now and then, that what we do when we secure a conviction of someone who has broken the law is a quintessentially ethical thing”. Anne Grady, Richmond County N.Y. A.D.A -2011 Dewey Award Winner

We are also the only lawyer in the courtroom striving for the justice of a rightful conviction. It is a matter of ethics to zealously represent your client, which is justice. This requires the prosecutor to use every strategy in our arsenal, to exercise our best efforts at trial, within the bounds of the law and ethics, to bring about a conviction. The desire to convict is not unethical when it is founded on your considered judgment, and good faith belief, that a conviction is supported by the evidence. And I know I’m preaching to the choir, and that you all know all this, but I think it’s worth reminding ourselves every now and then, that what we do when we secure a conviction of someone who has broken the law is a quintessentially ethical thing”. Anne Grady, Assistant District Attorney 2011 Dewey Award Winner Richmond County New York

Smart laws do not assure justice any more than a good recipe guarantees a delicious meal. The law is merely an instrument, and without the involvement of human hands it is as lifeless and uninspiring as a violin kept in its case. The law cannot compel us to love each other or respect each other. It cannot cancel hate or conquer evil; teach grace or extinguish apathy. Every day, the law’s best aims are carried out, for good or ill, by human beings. Justice is served, or thwarted, by human beings. Mercy is bestowed, or refused, by human beings.

But there's always that fucking question, every dinner party; "How do you act for someone you KNOW did it!?" But, a lawyer's job is not that grand - uh uh - the job is not to KNOW. It's to NOT know. The only way the system works is because we all play our roles. My role is defence, the prosecutor, prosecutes; we each tell a story and the jury DECIDE which story is the one they believe. They take the responsibility. A good lawyer just tells the best version of their client's story. Nothing more. Nothing else. Just the storyteller, the voice piece. Never judge, never ever judge.