| Chapter
10
How Prosecutors Work: Resources
By Steve Weinberg
[Author’s Note: Many of the best resources for covering prosecutors are listed elsewhere in this Guide, most notably as a sidebar to Chapter Eight, “Covering the Courts” by Maurice Possley. A few of those resources are repeated here because they are especially helpful.]
Online Information
National District Attorneys Association: www.ndaa.org. Exploring the site item by item will yield valuable information from the prosecutors’ point of view. By clicking on Links, you will find a short cut to the Web site of almost every local prosecutor’s office in the United States. The link to the American Prosecutors Research Institute, an organization within the National District Attorneys Association, is especially vital to explore for policy-related background.
Executive Office for United States Attorneys: www.usdoj.gov/usao
National Association of Attorneys General: www.naag.org. The attorney general is the chief legal officer of each state. They sometimes assist U. S. attorneys, and sometimes assist local district attorneys, in specific criminal cases. Attorneys general also handle enforcement litigation against polluters of the environment and other despoilers of life. Furthermore, attorneys general provide advice to the state legislature and executive branch agencies on matters such as open records laws.
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: www.nacdl.org. Articles in the organization’s magazine, The Champion, sometimes include important revelations about local and federal prosecutors. In addition, the organization publishes a membership directory that shows public defenders and private-practice defenders by city. I have used the directory to gather names of criminal defense lawyers in a city, then send an email to all of them with a request for comment about the district attorney or U. S. attorney. The technique has worked well more than once.
Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse: http://trac.syr.edu. This center, with a home at Syracuse University, collects and analyzes data about how federal prosecutors handle their responsibilities. The information is data heavy. Narratives accompanying the data, composed by TRAC co-founder David Burnham, a former New York Times investigative reporter, help place the numbers in context.
A 2006 study by Steven W. Perry in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice provides an overview of local prosecutors’ offices across the United States. Perry’s study is available at www.ncjrs.gov. In the site search box, type the number 213799. Periodically, the prolific staff at the Bureau of Justice Statistics offers other studies with relevance to coverage of local and federal prosecutors.
American Bar Association: www.abanet.org. Far too many court rulings go unreported on judicial databases because judges unconscionably choose to keep them private. That is another issue, of course. Still, databases of judicial decisions contain tens of thousands of rulings about prosecutors. The ruling to read first, because of its lasting significance, is Brady v. Maryland, a U. S. Supreme Court decision from 1963. The citation is 373 U. S. 83.
National Organization of Bar Counsel: www.nobc.org.
Prosecutors are normally immune from civil lawsuits seeking to punish them for professional misbehavior. Each state and the U. S. Justice Department designate a review authority to hear allegations of misconduct. Prosecutors, however, are almost never disciplined or disbarred. Occasional complaints do end up in punishment for prosecutors, however. One of the fullest public records of a disciplinary action involves Kenneth J. Peasley, a prosecutor in Pima County, Arizona. The file at the state disciplinary commission is numbered 97-1909. The Arizona Supreme Court case is numbered SB-03-0015-D. Some of the rulings are available through online databases, including the opinion cited as 90 P. 3d 764 (2004).
Books
District attorneys rarely write books meant for general readers about how the office functions day to day. A few books by prosecutors published recently, to good effect, include:
“The D.A.: A True Story” by Lawrence Taylor (set in Los Angeles, Morrow, 1996)
“Ready for the People: My Most Chilling Cases as a Prosecutor” by Marissa N. Batt (also set in Los Angeles, Arcade, 2004)
“Down and Dirty Justice: A Chilling Journey Into the Dark World of Crime and the Criminal Courts” by Gary T. Lowenthal (set in Maricopa County, Arizona, New Horizon, 2003)
“Scoundrels to the Hoosegow: Perry Mason Moments and Entertaining Cases From the Files of a Prosecuting Attorney” by Morley Swingle (set in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, University of Missouri Press, 2007)
Perhaps the best book ever by a journalist with untrammeled access to a district attorney is “The Prosecutors: A Year in the Life of a District Attorney’s Office” by Gary Delsohn (Dutton, 2003).
Another insider book by a journalist is “Boston D. A. : The Battle to Transform the American Justice System” by Sean Flynn (set in Boston, TV Books, 2000).
Probably the most searing book-length expose of a specific district attorney’s office is “Mean Justice: A Town’s Terror, a Prosecutor’s Power, a Betrayal of Innocence” by journalist Edward Humes (Simon & Schuster, 1999). After publication of the book, the elected district attorney in Bakersfield, California (Kern County), issued a lengthy rebuttal and mailed it to those who had reviewed the book favorably.
A telling view of prosecutors from the judge’s bench can be found in a book by journalist Steve Bogira, “Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse” (Knopf, 2005). It is set in Chicago.
Law professor Angela J. Davis, a former public defender, provides insights into the minds of district attorneys and U. S. attorneys in “Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor” (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Besides Davis, Bennett L. Gershman is among the prominent academic experts regarding prosecutors. One of Gershman’s most useful articles, to supplement his textbooks, can be found in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. The citation is 53 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 393 (1992).
Books by journalists and lawyers about specific criminal cases abound. Many of them focus on wrongful convictions. Such cases are atypical of the criminal justice system, but more common than generally acknowledged. Journalists can learn a great deal of value from such book-length case studies. Of all such books, “The Innocent Man” by John Grisham (Doubleday, 2006), until then a writer of mystery fiction, is almost certainly the biggest seller ever. It covers the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of two men in Ada, Oklahoma.
|
