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I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? If someone is not chosen by a public and popular vote, it must be chosen differentl

I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? If someone is not chosen by a public and popular vote, it must be chosen differently. Any mechanism of choice will have an inherent bias. For example, you could decide that a prosecutor is the best at knowing the law, so let's have a law exam where the one with the best score is named prosecutor. However, being a good prosecutor can't always be reduced to a technical know-how. And those good at laws might be those who were able to pay to go to the best universities, buy the textbooks, be allowed to study for years without working, etc. So you also have a bias on wealthy families. I don't think that the problem of allocation of power in our modern societies is a solved problem...

simonh 5y ago
Just because any system could or do have biases, that’s no good defence of a system we know has terrible pernicious biases that are visibly compromising it’s integrity. I’m a Brit, and I’d have good expectations of being treated fairly if I faced prosecution as an innocent person here in the UK, in France, Germany, or plenty of other countries. I have no such confidence about the USA. Especially so if the crime I was accused of was politicised. I actually know someone in the US who’s life was destroyed by that system, he spent a year in prison and it took years more to clear his name. Politicisation is endemic to the US justice and policing system, it’s an absolute disgrace. I agree no system is perfect, we have miscarriages of justice here in the UK too, but perfection is not the enemy of the good and your system is below mediocre. You can do, and deserve, a lot better.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Specially when the public side is underfunded and defending yourself is insanely expensive. Not that law is cheap anywhere, but from recent cases like Kyle Rittenhouse and officer Potter it seems just stupid and broken.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    After both looking into the details myself and watching LegalEagle's analysis of the case, I'm not convinced that there was anything wrong with the Rittenhouse trial. Rittenhouse was stupid for driving into the city in the first place, but each of the times he fired his gun seemed perfectly reasonable. And I had initially thought that he was looking for an excuse to shoot black people, but then found out that all 3 people he shot were white.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    What was wrong with the Potter case?
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      That that sort of case would take weeks in court room and even longer outside and cost tens or hundreds of thousands to pay for defence.
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    Did you disagree with the result of the Potter case? I am unfamiliar with it but it seems like they charged a police officer who "mistakenly used a handgun instead of a Taser"? Am I missing something here?
- luckylion 5y ago
  Germany just had Pimmelgate (Pimmel is a synonym for penis). Hamburg's Senator of the Interior did something and some random guy wrote "you're such a dick" ("du bist so 1 pimmel"). The Senator apparently was very annoyed and asked the state attorney to go after the guy. They summoned him to the precinct, he went, said that he wrote that tweet and declined to say anything else without a lawyer present. They then got a judge to sign a search warrant against his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his children who live with her), and executed it, which was unnecessary (they knew who did it and he had already confessed) and meant to punish extra-judicially since the case would likely be thrown out in court. The state attorneys and police are part of the executive branch and subject to directives of the politician in charge. Theoretically, electing the state attorneys directly would motivate them to not just do whatever the administration wants, be that legally reasonable or not. In practice it probably does not matter.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Like I said, no system is perfect. It’s a matter of the overall results. You’ll always find individual lapses unfortunately, and we always need to hold authorities to account. Anyway it’s good that there was an uproar about that case.
rsynnott 5y ago
It varies by country. For instance, in Ireland, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is a civil service bureaucracy. It's lead by the director, who's appointed by the government for a ten year term and must be an experienced barrister or solicitor. The director is a civil service executive, not a dictator, so the amount of damage a bad or corrupt one can do is somewhat limited. Until the 70s, the role was filled by the office of the attorney general, who's a direct government appointee (strictly speaking appointed by the president on direction of the government). The separate agency was created to defend against bias.
TomSwirly 5y ago
> I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? The same way you select the heads of hospitals, or police chiefs, or head librarians? What a strange question. Only in the US do you VOTE for prosecutors!
abecedarius 5y ago
The current setup where only official prosecutors can prosecute crimes is historically recent. I don't know what would be better, but these officials becoming too cozy with other officials is what you'd expect a priori.

simonh 5y ago

Just because any system could or do have biases, that’s no good defence of a system we know has terrible pernicious biases that are visibly compromising it’s integrity. I’m a Brit, and I’d have good expectations of being treated fairly if I faced prosecution as an innocent person here in the UK, in France, Germany, or plenty of other countries. I have no such confidence about the USA. Especially so if the crime I was accused of was politicised. I actually know someone in the US who’s life was destroyed by that system, he spent a year in prison and it took years more to clear his name. Politicisation is endemic to the US justice and policing system, it’s an absolute disgrace. I agree no system is perfect, we have miscarriages of justice here in the UK too, but perfection is not the enemy of the good and your system is below mediocre. You can do, and deserve, a lot better.

Ekaros 5y ago
Specially when the public side is underfunded and defending yourself is insanely expensive. Not that law is cheap anywhere, but from recent cases like Kyle Rittenhouse and officer Potter it seems just stupid and broken.
- ziml77 5y ago
  After both looking into the details myself and watching LegalEagle's analysis of the case, I'm not convinced that there was anything wrong with the Rittenhouse trial. Rittenhouse was stupid for driving into the city in the first place, but each of the times he fired his gun seemed perfectly reasonable. And I had initially thought that he was looking for an excuse to shoot black people, but then found out that all 3 people he shot were white.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  What was wrong with the Potter case?
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    That that sort of case would take weeks in court room and even longer outside and cost tens or hundreds of thousands to pay for defence.
- ttybird2 5y ago
  Did you disagree with the result of the Potter case? I am unfamiliar with it but it seems like they charged a police officer who "mistakenly used a handgun instead of a Taser"? Am I missing something here?
luckylion 5y ago
Germany just had Pimmelgate (Pimmel is a synonym for penis). Hamburg's Senator of the Interior did something and some random guy wrote "you're such a dick" ("du bist so 1 pimmel"). The Senator apparently was very annoyed and asked the state attorney to go after the guy. They summoned him to the precinct, he went, said that he wrote that tweet and declined to say anything else without a lawyer present. They then got a judge to sign a search warrant against his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his children who live with her), and executed it, which was unnecessary (they knew who did it and he had already confessed) and meant to punish extra-judicially since the case would likely be thrown out in court. The state attorneys and police are part of the executive branch and subject to directives of the politician in charge. Theoretically, electing the state attorneys directly would motivate them to not just do whatever the administration wants, be that legally reasonable or not. In practice it probably does not matter.
- simonh 5y ago
  Like I said, no system is perfect. It’s a matter of the overall results. You’ll always find individual lapses unfortunately, and we always need to hold authorities to account. Anyway it’s good that there was an uproar about that case.

rsynnott 5y ago

It varies by country. For instance, in Ireland, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is a civil service bureaucracy. It's lead by the director, who's appointed by the government for a ten year term and must be an experienced barrister or solicitor. The director is a civil service executive, not a dictator, so the amount of damage a bad or corrupt one can do is somewhat limited. Until the 70s, the role was filled by the office of the attorney general, who's a direct government appointee (strictly speaking appointed by the president on direction of the government). The separate agency was created to defend against bias.

TomSwirly 5y ago

> I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? The same way you select the heads of hospitals, or police chiefs, or head librarians? What a strange question. Only in the US do you VOTE for prosecutors!

abecedarius 5y ago

The current setup where only official prosecutors can prosecute crimes is historically recent. I don't know what would be better, but these officials becoming too cozy with other officials is what you'd expect a priori.