Erm... you totally ought to ignore the stated "desires" of victims when, say, going after a murderer, who may threaten the surviving relatives so that they say

Erm... you totally ought to ignore the stated "desires" of victims when, say, going after a murderer, who may threaten the surviving relatives so that they say they don't want persecution. There are pretty good reasons for criminals being sued by the state for some crimes and by the victim in others (I don't have a source but I'd use "economic analysis of law" to find some of the sources that try to approach this issue systematically.) On the other hand, since in reality the rule of law is often way weaker than the rule of, say, public opinion, or bribes, etc. etc., it of course matters a lot what the victim thinks; if one thinks that the whole purpose of the FBI is to sway the public opinion to gain power, then of course the way to counter this is to sway the public opinion in the opposite direction, and the public will care about the victim's opinion. (In general, it feels that the share of the population truly believing in "the rule of law" as in "let's follow these written rules literally instead of arbitrarily interpreting them to suit our current desires and then priding ourselves on having and following great laws" is rather small; I'm not sure if it's good or bad...)