Hope you don't mind my posting this here, Ape. I thought about originating another thread entitled "Prosecutorial Misconduct", but decided instead to place it here.
But let me tell you why... The Albany federal prosecutor mentioned is relatively new in this position, recently replacing his predecessor who was appointed a federal judge.. We've seen the set up and successful prosecution of the Imam Yassin Aref and another Muslim, pizza store owner Mohammad Hossain and the case of the Newburgh 4. Some believe these to have been just prosecutions of "Muslim terrorists."
I am not one who does, but I do believe prosecuting these cases to have been a complete perversion of our system of justice. And I consider myself to be rather conservative.
The former head federal prosecutor had a rather clear-cut case of City of Albany police officers illegally buying machine guns, fully-automatic rifles, and avoiding federal taxes on the bulk private purchase and possessing them illegally. More than 50 weapons were involved.
This all came to light after ATF&E agents visited a gun dealer who had a record of serious violations of his licenses and found one of these weapons openly up for sale.
One of the cops either traded it in or received cash for it from the gun dealer, I cannot right now recall more exactly the circumstances of the exchange, but regardless, the transfer of ownership was illegal. The firearms dealer should have been prosecuted and should have lost his licenses.
This scandalous criminal activity he chose not to prosecute. Nary a cop, nor dealer, nor the former Assistant county DA or any of the other unnamed private citizens
And now this former federal prosecutor sits in judgment of other felonious characters brought before him in an exercise of Justice.
September 24, 4:15 PM, 2010
An Ethics Meltdown at the Justice DepartmentBy Scott Horton
USA Today offers an extraordinary
multi-part study of prosecutorial misconduct at the Department of Justice over the last decade, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The stories generally show prosecutors out to support the political agendas of their bosses. They also indicate a systematic evasion of the requirements of prosecutorial ethics and a collapse of ethics training and enforcement within the Justice Department, where an ethos of “victory at all costs” now controls.
USA TODAY spent six months examining federal prosecutors’ work, reviewing legal databases, department records and tens of thousands of pages of court filings. Although the true extent of misconduct by prosecutors will likely never be known, the assessment is the most complete yet of the scope and impact of those violations. USA TODAY found a pattern of “serious, glaring misconduct,” said Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman, an expert on misconduct by prosecutors. “It’s systemic now, and … the system is not able to control this type of behavior. There is no accountability.” He and Alexander Bunin, the chief federal public defender in Albany, N.Y., called the newspaper’s findings “the tip of the iceberg” because many more cases are tainted by misconduct than are found. In many cases, misconduct is exposed only because of vigilant scrutiny by defense attorneys and judges.
The study quotes former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, who headed the Justice Department in the first Bush Administration and who was
harshly critical of the collapse of ethics standards in the second Bush Administration. Thornburgh surveys the record of the past decade and states that “No civilized society should countenance such conduct or systems that failed to prevent it.”
What does Thornburgh mean by “systems that failed?” The focus of his ire is plainly a culture within the Justice Department that promotes abuse and fails to deal with abuse when it is publicly exposed. Despite his promises to clean the situation up, Eric Holder has done nothing other than arrange
some ethics training courses. The Department
steadily resists disciplinary action against prosecutors who misbehave and attempts to block public exposure of their misconduct through congressional probes with claims of prosecutorial immunity. Holder refuses even to take questions on the subject at public events (as occurred just this week at an event marking the fiftieth anniversary of
To Kill a Mockingbird in Alabama). The U.S. attorney who is perhaps the worst single Bush-era offender remains in her position as Republican senators block efforts to appoint a replacement, and the Justice Department continues to stonewall an investigation into some of the most serious cases of abuse. In recent testimony before the House, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn
Fine has acknowledged (PDF) the damage these disclosures have done both to the Department’s morale and to its reputation. Fine’s own office has revealed significant evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, particularly in political cases. Moreover, his reports often show how even his internal team is often blocked from getting to the bottom of abuse stories.
The
USA Today study includes a
database reviewing 201 cases, interviews with some of the Justice Department’s innocent victims, and summaries of some of the searing criticisms of prosecutors run amok from federal judges. What it covers is only a tiny fraction of the systematic abuses that scar the administration of justice in this country. Still, the
USA Today effort is substantial and impressive, and clearly puts the publication in Pulitzer territory.
