Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.

Post by rbcgerard » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 3:49 PM UTC

vilhelm_s wrote: post #24

rbcgerard wrote: post #10

Two things: 1. I suspect the genisis of this immunity was to inoculate prosecutors from coercion by politicians - which is probably a good thing. But I would be curious to know about the logic behind it. 2. While perhaps it might be worthwhile to have some level of immunity that logic frays somewhat when acts that would generally be considered immoral and perhaps criminal are unaddressable.

The "absolute immunity" for prosecutors was established in Imbler v. Pachtman (1976). The logic is that if prosecutors could be sued by people they accused but failed to convict, that "would cause a deflection of the prosecutor's energies from his public duties, and the possibility that he would shade his decisions instead of exercising the independence of judgment required by his public trust." ( http://scholar.goog…

Post by Crito » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 5:42 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #27

Glyptodon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add on top of the few bad apples spoiling the barrel the fact that certain positions and jobs create quite strong arrogant bastard self-selection pressures and it's an extra recipe for disaster. It's the same as the NSA -- people who have doubts about the system or feel like being lenient will self-select out, just like those who believe in actual privacy and civil liberties will self-select out of the NSA, creating…

I appreciate the intent to use random citizens to hold power, but prosecutor might be the position where years of professional training matters. Remember what Churchill said about five minutes with the average voters? Well, there is one bigger scandal in any democracy (it is actually mentioned in the article) and that’s how much someone accused of anything, specially if he happens to be unattractive, socially isolate…