Prosecutorial discretion: sometimes…
…as we saw yesterday, prosecutors make a seemingly politically-motivated decision not to prosecute a case even though the offense that has been committed satisfies all the elements of the crime and then some.
And sometimes, as we’ve seen in the recent past (see this and this, for example), prosecutors make a seemingly politically-motivated decision to go ahead and prosecute a case even though the case is very weak or even non-existent, or even if they have to cheat to do it.
Another example of a politically-motived prosecutorial decision to prosecute weak or nonexistent cases involves the decision to go ahead with the trials around Freddie Gray’s death. The fourth in the series will begin tomorrow.
It appears to this non-lawyer that Comey justified his failure to recommend indictment based of Hillary’s lack of provable “intent” to harm the U.S. He only finds her guilty of gross negligence.
But wasn’t her gross negligence due to her intent to evade FOIA accountability, and isn’t that also a felony?
And didn’t Clinton’s law firm commit at least obstruction of justice by destroying what they judged to be her “personal” emails? (Not all of it was personal.)
Her staff deliberately stripped security tags from classified and top secret messages before forwarding them on her system. That must be a violation of law.
I thought it was the cover-up that was supposed to be damaging, yet she’s on tape lying over and and over and over about literally everything. She did her own version of “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky. I did not ask anyone to lie, not one time” dozens of times right in America’s face, and she and all her staff are getting away with all of it.
Same as the IRS harassment, Fast & Furious, Benghazi clusterf*ck, multiple admitted constitutional overreach, and so much more in this administration.
Rule of law – RIP (if you’re on the left.)
Geo
The real story is that Hillary’s lawyers read all the emails, deleted the incriminating emails and then wiped the hard disk so well that even the FBI couldn’t recover the deleted emails. And all this work is covered by attorney-client privilege.
When the hacked emails are released there will be a firestorm.
Politically motivated, prosecutorial ‘discretion’… puts the lie to the principle that “justice is blind”. When justice is no longer blind, permanently supporting and enabling those in power, then tyranny has arrived. The tyrannized then have both the right and obligation to overthrow the oppression of their unalienable rights, by whatever means those imposing tyranny make necessary.
Addendum. The computer search by key words is just a bad cover story. Given the stakes, three young lawyers read ALL of the emails two or three times. Kendall made the final call or gave them instructions on what to delete.
This is obvious to me.
Cornhead,
I’m under the impression that attorney-client privilege prevents an attorney representing a client from being compelled to reveal information, it does NOT act as a license to destroy evidence prejudicial to their client. Doing so is absolutely obstruction of justice, yes?
Geoffrey Britain
Depends on who’s defining “justice”, right?
The Clintons have demonstrated AMAZING … , uh … , “flexibility” …. in their comprehension of the meanings of words.
“just”: adjective; based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair: synonym; impartial
“impartial”: adjective; treating all rivals or disputable equally; fair and just: synonyms; unbiased, unprejudiced, neutral, nonpartisan
By no means can justice be logically ‘defined’ as, one party declared innocent but another party declared guilty… of the same crime.
Geoffrey Britain:
The counter-argument would be that the fact situation is never the same, so there is no “same crime.” Someone could be found guilty and another not guilty in a similar fact situation (sometimes very similar), but never the same, so those who are predisposed to believe justice was served could always point out some differences and/or extenuating factors.
What’s more, “justice” never can be perfect. “Justice” involves a system that is supposed to treat everyone equally and give everyone an equal chance and protect everyone’s rights equally (knowing of course that this is not humanly possible). But “justice” can never guarantee equal outcomes, although equal treatment (the process under which a verdict is rendered) should lead to equal outcomes in very similar fact situations.
Note that I’m not arguing that justice was served here. I’m just talking about what justice involves in a very general sense. Most people actually believe that “justice” is getting the result they want.
To claim that there is “no same crime” is to argue over the definition of “is”…
A first degree murder with a knife is ‘technically’ different than a first degree murder with a gun and, entirely irrelevant.
It’s a lawyer’s argument where ‘winning’ is all and truth and justice aren’t even a distant consideration. And a system where justice isn’t the primary concern isn’t a system of justice at all but a system of who has the best lawyers and most resources.
Prosecutors, judges and jurors, that in the aggregate reflect the morality or lack thereof of the larger society from which they are drawn, determine whether justice is the norm or absent.
Geoffrey Britain:
There is no “same” crime.
The fact situation of each criminal act—even if the crime is the same in terms of the controlling statute and the language defining the crime—is always different.
That is true irrespective of the other differences that come later—the police investigation, lawyer skills, judge, makeup of the jury, testimony, forensic evidence, venue of the trial, etc. etc. etc..
No two murders are exactly alike. No two thefts are exactly alike. This is an obvious fact, not some arcane argument.