Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.
Everything from who sits on your local board of education to the prosecutors and judicial appointments in your area and much more are all impacted by who holds political office.
If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.
On television and in the movies, crimes are always solved. Nothing is left uncertain. By the end, the viewer knows whodunit. In real life, on the other hand, many murders remain unsolved, and even some that are 'solved' to the satisfaction of the police and prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to result in a conviction.
This is a very highly charged investigation. People are very interested in this, and we've got a prosecutor, a very well respected prosecutor who's been looking at this issue, this investigation for a long time.
Many legal experts note that prosecutors regularly seek indictments of people or companies for destroying evidence or impeding investigations, even if they cannot prove other charges.
Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, has seen a few financial schemes in his time. As the lead local prosecutor in the world's financial capital, he has battled frauds like the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which stole billions of dollars from investors worldwide.
As a former prosecutor, I will always be on the side of the law and not any particular constituency.
When I was prosecutor we had truancy and curfew issues and we made a refrigerator magnet, and that was hot with parents. They loved putting it up on the wall and saying, you know, if you don't follow these rules, you could get prosecuted. Whether or not it actually happens, it changes a culture, and that's part of what we're trying to do here.
When I was a prosecutor, we had one straightforward goal: convict the guilty and protect the innocent. To me, that simple mission still holds true.
