Seeing news of a rare prosecution of a prosecutor. For “mishandling” the police murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Charges:“Showing favor & affection” to police. Not treating survivors “fairly & w/ dignity.” These are routine prosecutorial practices. Thread: nytimes.com/2021/09/02/us/…
Prosecutors are perceived as these great, caring protectors of survivors of crime. Often survivors will think of prosecutors as their own lawyer. Prosecutors gladly accept this perception. Yet in reality, they only care about survivors to the extent they’re cooperating.
As a public defender, time and time again I had conversations with prosecutors who’d tell me they couldn’t possibly offer less than prison “bc of the wishes of the complaining witness.” But anytime a survivor reached out to me, asking for leniency, prosecutors would ignore them.
At arraignments, when decisions about whether a person would be jailed pretrial or ordered to stay away from another person, complaining witnesses would beg to speak to the prosecutor. Offer nuance. Moms of sons w/ mental health issues. Partners. Employers. Refused or ignored.
The majority of those I represented charged w/ crimes of violence were survivors of violence themselves. Prosecutors didn’t care. Id endeavor w/ my office to educate them about cycles of violence. How prison wasn’t going to help anyone. Fell on deaf ears. They’re defendants now.
Rape survivors, sex trafficking survivors, & witnesses to violent crimes routinely get arrested & jailed for failing to comply with subpoenas to cooperate or testify until they agree to comply. I wrote a thread about this horrific prosecutorial practice:
https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1184192046913015809
Prosecutors love to claim that they are for survivors of crime. They benefit greatly, politically & otherwise, from this false impression. In reality, they use or ignore survivors. Often paralleling the very practices that got this GA prosecutor charged.nbcnews.com/video/former-d…
“Showing favor and affection.” If prosecutors all got charged for this, they’d all be caged. Overlook crimes & misconduct, brazen lies, give every benefit of the doubt not afforded to anyone else. Why: They depend on individual officers for vast majority of cases. It’s personal.
Doesn’t matter if large city or small town. Prosecutors depend on good will of individual officers to be able to continue doing their job. They’re close colleagues. In big cities, DA offices are divided into zones. So they only work w/ certain precincts. “Favor” is nature of job.
In short, prosecutors—like police—are rarely if ever held accountable in any way for brazen misconduct with the gravest of consequences. They should. I also believe there are more effective ways than criminal prosecution to do so. For example, simply revoking a law license:
https://twitter.com/scotthech/status/1131222718047772672
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