There's only so much that a society can punish a lawyer. The task of litigating the criminal misbehaviors of the worst and most depraved in our society is a duty which eventually taints and demoralizes any morally-upright barrister. When your job is to;
Maybe I'm jaded, but I have to wonder if the work doesn't taint and tarnish a prosecutor's view of humanity, in general? I've watched some really good people take on the job and I've watched them develop tainted attitudes toward poor people. Some ethnic minorities have seen the discrepancies and misidentified the inequities as racism, but it's really more of a social class prejudice. The outcome is an inconsistency of applying the laws. I've watched parental neglect result in prison time for poor parents, while rich parents get no charges filed at all (or dropped as soon as they lawyer up). |  |
That's the 2nd common form of prosecutorial corruption. They become bullies.
I won't name the judge, but recently I was consulting with a district court judge on some needed legislation impacting certain adjudication processes. The judge used the term, "Stack 'em deep & settle 'em cheap"; to describe the DA's objective of prioritizing resources to prosecute felonies with more diligence than relentlessly dogging a misdemeanor charge. The reality is that our legislature has made the DA's raise more of their own operating budgets.that worked when people wrote lots of bounced checks, because the DA's were competing with private industry to collect on bad checks.
But now the DAs are turning to piracy of property under the guise of asset forfeiture. They are negotiating more court fines and fees to help meet payroll at the end of the month. It's no different of a motivation than a notorious speed trap used to fund county commissioner raises. But it's certainly not motivated purely by public safety outcomes. At least not as a primary motivator.
And then there's the actually corrupt & power-hungry DA who seeks to destroy political opponents with the powers he bears. Those are the worst DAs and they rarely start out as overtly thuggish. You've seen some of them and perhaps read stories about several more.
All these are just the beginning of reasons to term out DAs after 8 years of public service and bring in new DAs from among the communities they serve.
But now the DAs are turning to piracy of property under the guise of asset forfeiture. They are negotiating more court fines and fees to help meet payroll at the end of the month. It's no different of a motivation than a notorious speed trap used to fund county commissioner raises. But it's certainly not motivated purely by public safety outcomes. At least not as a primary motivator.
And then there's the actually corrupt & power-hungry DA who seeks to destroy political opponents with the powers he bears. Those are the worst DAs and they rarely start out as overtly thuggish. You've seen some of them and perhaps read stories about several more.
All these are just the beginning of reasons to term out DAs after 8 years of public service and bring in new DAs from among the communities they serve.
