South Carolina prosecutors, having been read the riot act by one of their Supreme Court justices for wide ranging abuses that are continually overlooked tell the Judge to 'fuck off'. Hattip instapundit.com.
THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
Late last year, South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty joined Kozinski. At a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, Beatty cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been “getting away with too much for too long.” He added, “The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license.”
You’d think that there’s little here with which a conscientious prosecutor could quarrel. At most, a prosecutor might argue that Beatty exaggerated the extent of misconduct in South Carolina. (I don’t know if that’s true, only that that’s a conceivable response.) But that prosecutors shouldn’t suborn perjury, shouldn’t retaliate against political opponents, shouldn’t suppress evidence, and that those who do should be disciplined — these don’t seem like controversial things to say. If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned.
The state’s prosecutors didn’t see that way. . . . The most plausible explanation for all of these stories is that a significant number of prosecutors just don’t want to be held accountable to anyone but themselves. I suppose a lot of us would like to have that sort of protection when it comes to what we do for a living. But few of us do. And the rest of us don’t hold positions that give us the power to to ruin someone’s life with criminal charges, to convince a jury to put someone in prison or to ask the state to put someone to death.
This reminds me of the case last year where a libertarian Republican judge in San Diego county CA, was agreeing with defendants on unreasonable search and seizures a little too often and otherwise not automatically siding with the bebadged gun totin' thugs. The thugs (prosecutors) banded together to boycott his courtroom until he was transferred to traffic court. This has happened in several California counties. Of course Cali is known for it's excellent, impartial government, just like South Carolina but I'm sure this crap goes on everywhere. And the Feds are by far the worse - just ask ex Sen Ted Stevens who was railroaded using fraudulent evidence that wasn't shared with the defense and had his entire conviction thrown out with the judge denouncing the prosecutors. Of course none of the legal thugs lost their jobs. They've got official immunity. An immunity resident in no law, it is evidently routine for the courts to give themselves and prosecutors official immunity, protecting them from claims against their criminal behavior. I'm surprised they didn't give each other 'Ferraris' too.
Remember: law enforcement isn't on your side or the law's side or America's side, they're on their side.
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