Prosecutorial Abuse Quotes
Chase a Supreme Court justice at the time was a very partisan Federalist. The Senate was controlled by the Democratic Republicans. Randolph, then a member of the House of Representatives, orchestrated the impeachment of Chase because of his extreme partisanship. The Senate in trying the case had to decide for the first time what “high crimes and misdemeanors” the actually means in terms of impeachment. A number of the Democratic Republicans joined the Federalists in taking the view that however undesirable the Supreme Court justice’s partisanship would be, that did not reach the threshold of a “high crime and misdemeanor.” Chase was acquitted. In this sense this impeachment trial was similar to that of President William Clinton almost 200 years later. The behavior was undesirable but did not amount to a high crime and misdemeanor, Clinton was also acquitted.
a dozen grand jury probes In 2000 Edwards was convicted.
In most jurisdictions grand jury proceedings are secret. However it is common for the prosecutors to violate the law and leak the grand jury proceedings to bias the prospective jury pool towards a guilty verdict. Sometimes, the prosecutors will leak the proceedings to get headlines and news coverage.
He had been fired by the George W. Bush White House because he would not rush an indictment against a democratic politician to make the newspapers before the election that year. Unfortunately, many prosecutors will file a questionable case without sufficient evidence for a conviction. They get the newspaper headlines and TV coverage when they file the indictment, and little negative press when they person is found not guilty months or years later. The best prosecutors never will allow politics to influence their prosecution decisions, but there are still many who do.
Many like Black were concerned that prosecutors had the power to decide who would be charged, with what crimes, what penalties to ask for, and even able to start or end investigations of private citizens and politicians. By overcharging they are able, if they choose, to intimidate many people into pleading guilty, even for crimes that the never committed, in order to avoid taking a chance and possible have a very long jail sentence. Thus they were the most powerful people in the legal system, and had more power and less accountability, checks and balances of any public figures except perhaps for Federal Judges.
