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Worse problem for democracy is refusal of prosecutors to prosecute public officials even in cases of obvious miscarriage of their duties to the public (or lets
by megous 8y ago
Worse problem for democracy is refusal of prosecutors to prosecute public officials even in cases of obvious miscarriage of their duties to the public (or lets say highly controversial acts with high casualty counts and largescale damage on property of other people - like going to arrest 4 people for parole violation and contempt of court,... and burning down the entire neighbourhood and killing 11 people).
One egregious example is (today is the aniversary) 1985 bombing of MOVE:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,141842,00.html http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,141842,...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE
What are the checks on refusal to prosecute? Are there even any? One might find it more apppealing to cooperate with a justice system that at least tries to do its job wrt people who police the public.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jfengel 8y agoAll of the lawyers I've spoken to (liberal, conservative, and other) seem to feel that it's a necessary evil to avoid exposing every public official to constant harassment on every decision. That is, it's not perfect, and bad things do happen, but rarely, and the alternatives to fix those rare cases are worse. I'm not entirely sure I buy that. It does sound an awful lot like collective ass-covering. But I do try to take into account that prominent, widely-noted failures do not necessarily invalidate a system that functions reasonably well most days.