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The judge/jury/overall process seek the truth. I do not consider that the role of the prosecutor at all. I don't think legal philosophy aligns that way either?

• dagw 11y ago
  This is one of the core debates in legal philosophy: Do you want a adversarial or inquisitorial system? Different countries come down on different sides and most legal systems exists somewhere on the continuum. The US adversarial system is far from universals.
• Tomte 11y ago
  I think it's a bit different in the United States, but in my country (D), for example, prosecutors have detailed guidelines how to proceed. For one, they are obligated to investigate any exonerating evidence and circumstances, and any exculpatory circumstances. All of this must be revealed fully to the court and the defense, prior to the main trial. For another, they must only charge when they believe that a conviction is more probable than an acquittal ("my chances are at best 20%, but let's see how it goes" would be clear misconduct). In practice, the conviction rates are more than 90%, for sure (if you count a conviction for a lesser crime). As a prosecutor once told me: trials can be freak events. After listening to the witnesses firsthand, or after some dramatic revelation, everything can look much different than it looked in the file. But other than that, they almost always win at least partially. And another reason is workload. Apart from really high profile, highly publicized cases, resources are extremely limited and prosecutors mostly try to close the files.