America's Misbehaving Prosecutors, And The System That Protects Them

[Pointedstick]

Fantastic article in the Huffington Post today about the scope of prosecutorial overreach in the USA:

Even among outrageous false conviction stories, his tale is particularly brutal. He was wrongly convicted not once, but twice -- separately -- for a carjacking and a murder. He spent 18 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, 14 of them on death row. His death warrant was signed eight times. When his attorneys finally found the evidence that cleared him -- evidence his prosecutors had known about for years -- he was weeks away from execution.

But what most enrages Thompson -- and what drives his activism today -- is that in the end, there was no accountability. His case produced a surfeit of prosecutorial malfeasance, from incompetence, to poor training, to a culture of conviction that included both willfully ignoring evidence that could have led to his exoneration, to blatantly withholding it. Yet the only attorney ever disciplined in his case was a former prosecutor who eventually aided in Thompson's defense.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/0 ... 29891.html

[MediumTex]

They're going to be doing a video series called "Prosecutors Gone Wild!", except rather than lifting their own shirts for a cheap thrill, the prosecutors will be lifting Lady Justice's robes.

In an early clip, we see a cherub-cheeked assistant DA from Atlanta snickering at the camera.  "We're going to see if the carpet matches the drapes", he whispers as he sneaks up on an unsuspecting Lady Justice.

Very disturbing stuff. 

[Ad Orientem]

Wow. That was damned sobering. Thanks for posting.

[Libertarian666]

I'm shocked, shocked that there's government going on here.

[MediumTex]

Wow. That was damned sobering. Thanks for posting.

At least the dude in Louisiana got out and is alive.

Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas wasn't so lucky.  They killed him.  Here is an outstanding New Yorker piece about this sad story of prosecutors railroading a guy who had already lost his three children in a fire (prosecutors claimed that he had set the fire).  Very, very sad case.

[Mdraf]

I'm shocked, shocked that there's government going on here.

+1

[moda0306]

I'm shocked, shocked that there's government going on here.

+1

Yes, but it wasn't the federal government.

Guess this guy tried to vote with his feet and lost.

[Libertarian666]

I'm shocked, shocked that there's government going on here.

+1

Yes, but it wasn't the federal government.

Guess this guy tried to vote with his feet and lost.

Government is government. Some units are worse than others, but they're all the same at the root.

[moda0306]

+1

Yes, but it wasn't the federal government.

Guess this guy tried to vote with his feet and lost.

Government is government. Some units are worse than others, but they're all the same at the root.

Well at least we now know that state and local governments aren't the cure to federal tyranny but just another perpetrator of it.  In fact, they haven't so much as blinked at most of the grossest forms of federal intrusion on individual sovereignty and freedom, but the Feds have on repeated occasions been a check on disgusting abuses of state/local government power against individuals.

Voting with your feet doesn't seem to have the effect we all hope for.

Maybe we should worry less about taking power away from the Feds if it's just going to be done by the states to a worse effect.

[Libertarian666]

Yes, but it wasn't the federal government.

Guess this guy tried to vote with his feet and lost.

Government is government. Some units are worse than others, but they're all the same at the root.

Well at least we now know that state and local governments aren't the cure to federal tyranny but just another perpetrator of it.  In fact, they haven't so much as blinked at most of the grossest forms of federal intrusion on individual sovereignty and freedom, but the Feds have on repeated occasions been a check on disgusting abuses of state/local government power against individuals.

Voting with your feet doesn't seem to have the effect we all hope for.

Maybe we should worry less about taking power away from the Feds if it's just going to be done by the states to a worse effect.

Yes, as we know there is no other choice: someone is going to tyrannize us, so it might as well be the Feds, who are much harder to get away from?

How about if we just all commit suicide then?

[RuralEngineer]

Yes, but it wasn't the federal government.

Guess this guy tried to vote with his feet and lost.

Government is government. Some units are worse than others, but they're all the same at the root.

Well at least we now know that state and local governments aren't the cure to federal tyranny but just another perpetrator of it.  In fact, they haven't so much as blinked at most of the grossest forms of federal intrusion on individual sovereignty and freedom, but the Feds have on repeated occasions been a check on disgusting abuses of state/local government power against individuals.

Voting with your feet doesn't seem to have the effect we all hope for.

Maybe we should worry less about taking power away from the Feds if it's just going to be done by the states to a worse effect.

Yes Moda, but, if I'm not mistaken, I've seen your answer before to "Look!  State and Local Government can be just as corrupt as the Federal can!" be to abolish State and Local and leave us with the massive and pervasive National system that we can't fight, can't escape, and have no hope of influencing because it's TOO DAMN BIG.  The whole point of State and Local Governments is that yes, they suck pretty much all of the time, but you at least have some hope of escaping if you're discontented and they're small enough that there is some hope of changing them.  To be honest State populations have grown such that change has become difficult, but it's still possible at the local level, I've seen it.  Replacing all of that with some kind of massive "one size fits all" system is not the answer whether small governments sometimes misbehave just as badly as big ones or not.

[MediumTex]

Federal prosecutors with their "madness helmets" and supermax solitary confinement trophy cases are every bit as bad as state and local prosecutors.

[moda0306]

Government is government. Some units are worse than others, but they're all the same at the root.

Well at least we now know that state and local governments aren't the cure to federal tyranny but just another perpetrator of it.  In fact, they haven't so much as blinked at most of the grossest forms of federal intrusion on individual sovereignty and freedom, but the Feds have on repeated occasions been a check on disgusting abuses of state/local government power against individuals.

Voting with your feet doesn't seem to have the effect we all hope for.

Maybe we should worry less about taking power away from the Feds if it's just going to be done by the states to a worse effect.

Yes Moda, but, if I'm not mistaken, I've seen your answer before to "Look!  State and Local Government can be just as corrupt as the Federal can!" be to abolish State and Local and leave us with the massive and pervasive National system that we can't fight, can't escape, and have no hope of influencing because it's TOO DAMN BIG.  The whole point of State and Local Governments is that yes, they suck pretty much all of the time, but you at least have some hope of escaping if you're discontented and they're small enough that there is some hope of changing them.  To be honest State populations have grown such that change has become difficult, but it's still possible at the local level, I've seen it.  Replacing all of that with some kind of massive "one size fits all" system is not the answer whether small governments sometimes misbehave just as badly as big ones or not.

RE,

I don't think I ever suggested abolishing state and local governments... if so, it might have been a tongue-in-cheek comment about all the difficulties states place on inter-state businesses via various regulatory, licensing, income and sales tax schemes that are all just different enough from each other to be mind boggling.

I'm referring mostly to the common asssertion by conservatives and libertarians that the federal government is completely corrupt and innept and if we just had state and local governments take over those tasks things would get much better.  It's hogwash.  I'm definitely not saying to centralize all power to the feds, but simply that focusing too much on them blinds us to the problems that exist in other levels of government or even the private sector.

[Pointedstick]

I'm referring mostly to the common asssertion by conservatives and libertarians that the federal government is completely corrupt and innept and if we just had state and local governments take over those tasks things would get much better.  It's hogwash.  I'm definitely not saying to centralize all power to the feds, but simply that focusing too much on them blinds us to the problems that exist in other levels of government or even the private sector.

I don't think that's really the argument. The real argument is that state and local governments are smaller, easier to escape, and more responsive to local pressure. Nobody's blind to the fact that they can be just as bad; it's just that we think they're easier to change.