Having covered and exposed prosecutorial corruption for the last few years, I have lost my once staunch belief in the justice system and those who claim to be working for the greater good. How can they be when their job is political? I have often been attacked for trying to expose prosecutorial misconduct. Bryan Smith shows us yet another example of such underhanded tactics by prosecutors more interested in politics than in justice:
"In their own ways, they have risen to stardom on a stage built from
misery, two battlers who grapple with questions of life-and-death
justice: Anita Alvarez, a Chicago native and career prosecutor with
working-class roots, who dramatically emerged from a pack of formidable
opponents to become the first woman and first person of Hispanic
descent to hold the top job in the second-largest prosecutor’s office
in the nation; and the Northwestern University professor David Protess,
a crusader against wrongful convictions who has guided his students to
find fresh evidence that helped free five people from death row and
sprang six others from imprisonment for murders they did not
commit—putting prosecutors on the defensive with each notch in his belt.
Over
the more than two decades they built their careers, the two rarely
crossed paths. That changed when Alvarez, who took office a little over
a year ago, found herself dealing with the latest Protess cause: the
claim that a man named Anthony McKinney had been wrongly jailed for
more than 30 years."
Imagine if you found out that you were responsible for robbing 30 years from an innocent person? Imagine that in that time, the guilty party has been free? What would you reaction be? My first reaction would be grief, remorse, sadness. My second reaction would be to help free the person I had wronged. My third reaction would be to publicly apologize. Then, when all of that was done, I would resign my position. There is nothing special about me in having this series of reactions. Most decent people would respond in the same manner.
But some people are not decent and when they sit in positions of authority, holding the power of freedom, life, and justice in their hands, then they threaten the very fabric of democracy. This is the entire reason for a free press: to protect the governed from the government; to stand between those with power and those without. When a prosecutor uses that power to attack a journalist in retribution for doing what they are entrusted by the Constitution to do, the line crossed is so serious, it requires outrage from all.
Such has been the case with the Bush appointed prosecutors, whom the Obama administration has allowed to remain in their positions of power and authority .
Not all prosecutors are corrupt of course, but enough are corrupt (and some aggressively so) to cause a significant breach of public trust. Some have even engaged in criminal activity to further their own political ambitions. An example of the latter is the still sitting US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, Leura Canary, who continues to remain in her post and do more damage.
Now we see the actions of Anita Alvarez, who needs to resign or be removed for her attacks on David Protess in particular and press freedoms in general:
"In this case, Alvarez turned the tables on Protess, challenging the
motives and ethics of him and his students. In a court filing, her
office has given voice to deeply unflattering, sometimes personal
accusations: that some students may have paid a witness to recant; that
other students “flirted” with witnesses, in effect, to persuade them to
make incriminating statements; and that students may have been so
driven to get an A that they twisted or suppressed evidence to suit
their cause of freeing McKinney."
If that were the case, why have no charges been brought against the students? Why have statements such as these been made ONLY after the Innocence Project brought evidence that might free McKinney? Why has this been done instead:
"Meanwhile, outside court, her office has given at least two reporters a
memo about a 1996 case as “background” information. The memo recounts
scurrilous and unsubstantiated claims about the conduct of Protess and
students who were working on an investigation that resulted in freeing
two men from death row and two others from life sentences. “What on
earth does [an old] memo based on lies and designed to smear my
students have to do with the truth of whether Anthony McKinney was
wrongfully convicted?” asks Protess."
David Protess is a highly regarded journalism professor who has devoted his life to freeing the innocent imprisoned in the US among the guilty. Alvarez cannot win this battle, not by a long shot. As I often urge you to do, protect your journalists.
Not that it much matters to me, but I should tell you that Alvarez is a Democrat.