The New York Times earlier this year wrote Prosecutors’ Overreaching Goes Unchecked which talked about how US Attorney’s have become to power. The article had this to say,
Prosecutors are the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system. They decide whether criminal charges should be brought and what those charges should be, and they exercise almost boundless discretion in making those crucial decisions. Prosecutors alone decide whether to offer the defendant the option of pleading guilty to reduced charges. When one considers the fact that more than 95 percent of all criminal cases are resolved with guilty pleas, it is very clear that prosecutors control the criminal justice system through their charging and plea bargaining powers.
This is completely accurate, The right to jury trial has become virtually obsolete. You are punished now if use your constitutional right to trial, they stack so many charges against you, if you lose your case you receive the maximum a sentence typically 4-5 times longer than what one would receive with a plea deal, This is why everyone is taking a plea deal, including the innocent.
Equally problematic is the fact that the charging and plea bargaining decisions are made behind closed doors, and prosecutors are not required to justify or explain these decisions to anyone. If a prosecutor treats two similarly situated defendants differently — charging one but not the other or offering a better plea offer to one — it is almost impossible to challenge such differential treatment. The lack of transparency in the prosecution function also leads to misconduct, like the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence — a common occurrence made famous by the prosecutors in the Duke lacrosse and Senator Ted Stevens cases.
There is no longer accountability anymore for Federal Prosecutors, these people have become so powerful no one dares challenge them.
Federal judges, most of which are former federal prosecutors, allow the prosecution of Americans for crimes that the defendants did not know were crimes, crimes that never before existed until the federal prosecutor brought the charge. The invention of crimes by prosecutors violates every known legal principle of our law. Yet, this is becoming a commonplace in the federal justice system.
The worst thing about Federal Prosecutors is their appointment by the president to their position is not a career position, once they are appointed as a Federal Prosecutor their goal becomes to build name recognition for their own future gain. Being a federal prosecutors is a stepping stone to political positions or to corporate law firms where they can make seven figure incomes. This gives them every incentive to be the best at what they do, they no longer care about innocence nor quilt, they only care about advancing themselves for their own future gain at the expense of peoples liberty and freedom.
It might surprise a lot of people to point out how many of our governors, senators, and congressman are former Federal Prosecutors. Their political ads were all the same, they all said how great of a conviction rate they had, how they were hard on criminals, and served justice.
