Download or read book The Politics of Federal Prosecution written by Christina L. Boyd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Federal prosecutors have immense power and discretion to decide when to bring criminal charges, what plea bargains to offer, and how to implement the federal government's legal priorities in their districts. While U.S. Attorneys take pains to emphasize their independence, we know relatively little about the extent to which politics colors federal prosecutorial staffing and decision making. The Politics of Federal Prosecution draws upon a wealth of data from 1990s to the present to examine the interplay of political factors and federal prosecution. First, the authors find that congressional and presidential politics affect who becomes federal prosecutors and how long those individuals serve. Second, the book demonstrates that signals of presidential and congressional preferences, along with local priorities, affect key prosecutorial decisions: whether to bring prosecutions, how to approach plea bargaining negotiations, and when to utilize criminal asset forfeiture to cripple criminal activities. In short, the book demonstrates that politics affects the behavior of U.S. Attorneys at nearly every stage of their service.
Download or read book The Politics of Federal Prosecution written by Christina L. Boyd and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In February 2016, while testifying in a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a Barack Obama appointee, promised that her department would act with independence in investigating Hillary Clinton's usage of a personal email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. During that hearing, Congressman John Carter (R-TX) asked Lynch: If the FBI makes the case that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and put America's security at risk, will you prosecute the case? . . .[P]lease look the American people in the eye and tell us what your position is as you are the chief prosecutor of the United States. In response to this questioning, Lynch asserted that: [The matter] is being handled by . . . independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they'll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate. . .This will be conducted as every other case. We will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as how to best handle it. And I am also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all (Goldman 2016). Despite strong claims of prosecutorial independence, many Republicans complained that a Department of Justice run by Obama appointees could not impartially pass legal judgment on the Hillary Clintonemails matter. A June 27, 2016 meeting between Lynch and former U.S. President Bill Clinton would not help matters. The two privately talked for approximately 20 minutes on a plane sitting on the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport tarmac in a meeting described as unplanned and "primarily social." Despite the meeting's claimed innocuous content, it "caused a cascading political storm" for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and "provided fodder for Republicans who have accused the Justice Department of bias in its inquiry into Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server at the State Department" (Chozick 2016). Even Democrats expressed concerns about the meeting Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) remarked that "I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal . . . I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual social meeting with the former president"--
Download or read book Independent Justice written by Katy Jean Harriger and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress created the Office of the Special Prosecutor in 1978. Its mandate was to insure the rule of law, to check abuses of power in the executive branch, and to restore public confidence in government after the Watergate scandal. Harriger (politics, Wake Forest U.) focuses on the symbolic, constitutional, and political dimensions of her subject to provide a comprehensive, in-depth review of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and how it has operated in practice. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book United States Attorneys Manual written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Principles of Federal Prosecution written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Politics of Prosecution written by Roger Parkinson and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prosecutors and Democracy written by Máximo Langer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the relationship between prosecutors and democracy, this volume throws light on key questions about prosecutors and the role they should play in liberal self-government. Internationally distinguished scholars discuss how prosecutors can strengthen democracy, how they sometimes undermine it, and why it has proven so challenging to hold prosecutors accountable while insulating them from politics. The contributors explore the different ways legal systems have addressed that challenge in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Contrasting those strategies allows an assessment of their relative strengths - and a richer understanding of the contested connections between law and democratic politics. Chapters are in explicit conversation with each other, facilitating comparison and deepening the analysis. This is an important new resource for legal scholars and reformers, political philosophers, and social scientists.
Download or read book U S Attorneys Political Control and Career Ambition written by Banks P. Miller and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: United States Attorneys (USAs), the chief federal prosecutors in each judicial district, are key in determining how the federal government uses coercive force against its citizens. How much control do national political actors exert over the prosecutorial decisions of USAs? In this text, the authors investigate this question using a unique data set of federal criminal prosecutions between 1986 and 2015 that captures both decisions by USAs to file cases as well as the sentences that result.
Download or read book The Special Prosecutor in American Politics written by Katy Jean Harriger and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal special prosecutor: unprincipled abuser of power or staunch defender of the law? As Katy Harriger shows, the special prosecutor was a hotly debated and controversial subject throughout much of its existence. This was especially true, she argues, during the lengthy, expensive, and highly-politicized investigations of Lawrence Walsh and Kenneth Starr into allegations concerning Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Harriger offers the most complete assessment available of the use of special prosecutors in the post-Watergate era. She analyzes the independent counsel's role within the framework of the separation of powers, explaining how each has interacted with other key players in the political and legal system and showing how those relationships have affected the prosecutor's ability to conduct investigations. Harriger's previous edition focused on the legacy of Watergate but was published before Walsh's Iran-Contra investigations were concluded. Her new study adds substantially more information on Iran-Contra, provides a clearheaded appraisal of Starr's sensationalized Whitewater-Lewinsky investigations, examines a number of senior-level cabinet probes, and critiques and clarifies the role of Attorney General Janet Reno in these latter matters. A completely new chapter compares Iran-Contra and Whitewater-Lewinsky to explore the limits of the law in the special prosecutor's efforts. In this new edition, Harriger includes 20 new interviews with Washington insiders-including one with Kenneth Starr-and covers the debates that led to both the reauthorization of the independent counsel statute in 1994 and its demise in 1999. She then examines the pros and cons of the office and offers constructive suggestions for improvement should it be revived. For students, scholars, and concerned citizens, her book takes us well beyond frenzied media hype and partisan politics to provide a timely reminder about the crucial role of separation of powers in our system of governance.
Download or read book Political Influence and Its Relation to the Federal Prosecution of Public Corruption written by Jamie Bologna Pavlik and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the US, federal prosecutors are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and have significant discretion over which cases they choose to take to court. Federal prosecutors handling an overwhelming majority of corruption cases invites the possibility of political influence in the monitoring of corruption. Additionally, political disparities across states may result in differences in corrupt behavior. Using individual case level data, I examine the effect political factors have on federal corruption cases, with an emphasis on states that are an important focus in the next presidential election. I find that corruption convictions tend to be higher in politically important states. This effect seems more significant when Democratic administrations are in power. In addition, it seems that these effects are relevant only for corruption crimes labeled as “federal”
Download or read book Subsidiarity Federalism and Federal Prosecution of Street Crime written by John F. Stinneford and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, Congress has expanded the reach of federal criminal law to the point where it substantially overlaps with state law. Many defendants who commit essentially local "street" crimes, such as arson, carjacking, or illegal firearms possession, now violate both state and federal law. Defendants who are prosecuted in the federal system typically face greater procedural disadvantages, higher conviction rates and longer sentences than those prosecuted for the same conduct in state court. But neither the Department of Justice nor the federal judiciary has articulated uniform standards for determining which cases belong in federal court and which do not. Rather, this issue has been left largely to the discretion of individual United States Attorneys. The essay that follows will argue that the best source for a standard to govern prosecutorial discretion in this area is the principle of subsidiarity: the principle that higher order institutions (such as the federal government) should avoid taking over the functions or disrupting the internal life of lower order institutions (such as state and local government), but should provide assistance to such institutions where necessary. This principle would permit federal intervention in criminal matters traditionally handled by the states only where the federal government enjoys an inherent advantage by virtue of its nature as a national government. Cases could not be moved from state to federal court simply to avoid procedural or evidentiary problems under state law, to avoid local juries, or to obtain a longer sentence than is available under state law. Inclusion of such a standard in the federal prosecutorial guidelines is consistent with basic principles of federalism, and will eliminate the most egregious disparities resulting from the overlap of state and federal criminal law.
Download or read book Conviction Machine written by Harvey Silverglate and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009, Harvey A. Silverglate, a prominent criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, published his landmark critique of the federal criminal justice system, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. In 2014, Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor in three districts under nine United States Attorneys from both political parties and who has been lead counsel in 500 federal appeals, published her landmark indictment of the system, Licensed To Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice, after she witnessed appalling abuses by prosecutors—more than a decade after she entered private practice. Now these two leading authorities have combined their knowledge, experiences, and talents to produce a much-needed and long-awaited blueprint for reforming the way business is conducted within the Department of Justice and in the federal criminal courts. Both Powell and Silverglate decided to join forces to write this essential and long-awaited book in order to answer the questions and the challenges that each of them has faced over the past several years: “OK,” they’ve been told. “We understand your criticisms. Now how about telling us what has to be done to restore justice to federal criminal justice.” This collaboration is their response.
Download or read book Constitutional Inquisitors written by Scott Ingram and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of the federal prosecutor's role from a pragmatic necessity to a significant political figure. In the United States, federal prosecutors enjoy a degree of power unmatched elsewhere in the world. They are free to investigate and prosecute—or decline to prosecute—criminal cases without significant oversight. And yet, no statute grants them these powers; their role is not mentioned in the Constitution. How did they obtain this power, and are they truly independent from the political process? In Constitutional Inquisitors, Scott Ingram answers these questions by tracing the origins and development of federal criminal law enforcement. In the first book to examine the development of the federal law enforcement apparatus in the earliest part of the early republic, Ingram explains how federal prosecutors' roles began as an afterthought but quickly evolved into powerful political positions. He also addresses two long-held perceptions about early federal criminal prosecution: that prosecutors tried many more cases than historians thought and that the relationship between prosecution and executive power is much more complex and interwoven than commonly assumed. Drawing on materials at the National Archives as well as correspondence and trial reports, Ingram explores the first federal criminal case, the first use of presidential pardon power, the first federal prosecution of a female, and the first interstate criminal investigation. He also discloses internal Administration discussions involving major criminal cases, including those arising from the Whiskey Insurrection, Neutrality Crisis, Alien and Sedition Acts, and Fries' Rebellion. As the United States grapples today with political divisions and arguments over who should be prosecuted for what, Constitutional Inquisitors reveals that these problems began with the creation of the federal prosecutor role and have continued as the role gained power.
Download or read book Hard Bargains written by Mona Lynch and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The convergence of tough-on-crime politics, stiffer sentencing laws, and jurisdictional expansion in the 1970s and 1980s increased the powers of federal prosecutors in unprecedented ways. In Hard Bargains, social psychologist Mona Lynch investigates the increased power of these prosecutors in our age of mass incarceration. Lynch documents how prosecutors use punitive federal drug laws to coerce guilty pleas and obtain long prison sentences for defendants—particularly those who are African American— and exposes deep injustices in the federal courts. As a result of the War on Drugs, the number of drug cases prosecuted each year in federal courts has increased fivefold since 1980. Lynch goes behind the scenes in three federal court districts and finds that federal prosecutors have considerable discretion in adjudicating these cases. Federal drug laws are wielded differently in each district, but with such force to overwhelm defendants’ ability to assert their rights. For drug defendants with prior convictions, the stakes are even higher since prosecutors can file charges that incur lengthy prison sentences—including life in prison without parole. Through extensive field research, Lynch finds that prosecutors frequently use the threat of extremely severe sentences to compel defendants to plead guilty rather than go to trial and risk much harsher punishment. Lynch also shows that the highly discretionary ways in which federal prosecutors work with law enforcement have led to significant racial disparities in federal courts. For instance, most federal charges for crack cocaine offenses are brought against African Americans even though whites are more likely to use crack. In addition, Latinos are increasingly entering the federal system as a result of aggressive immigration crackdowns that also target illicit drugs. Hard Bargains provides an incisive and revealing look at how legal reforms over the last five decades have shifted excessive authority to federal prosecutors, resulting in the erosion of defendants’ rights and extreme sentences for those convicted. Lynch proposes a broad overhaul of the federal criminal justice system to restore the balance of power and retreat from the punitive indulgences of the War on Drugs.
Download or read book Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses written by Craig C. Donsanto and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Politics and Criminal Prosecution written by Raymond Moley and published by . This book was released on 1929 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Crimes of Terror written by Wadie E. Said and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. government's power to categorize individuals as terrorist suspects and therefore ineligible for certain long-standing constitutional protections has expanded exponentially since 9/11, all the while remaining resistant to oversight. Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions provides a comprehensive and uniquely up-to-date dissection of the government's advantages over suspects in criminal prosecutions of terrorism, which are driven by a preventive mindset that purports to stop plots before they can come to fruition. It establishes the background for these controversial policies and practices and then demonstrates how they have impeded the normal goals of criminal prosecution, even in light of a competing military tribunal model. Proceeding in a linear manner from the investigatory stage of a prosecution on through to sentencing, the book documents the emergence of a "terrorist exceptionalism" to normal rules of criminal law and procedure and questions whether the government has overstated the threat posed by the individuals it charges with these crimes. Included is a discussion of the large-scale spying and use of informants rooted in the questionable "radicalization" theory; the material support statute - the government's chief legal tool in bringing criminal prosecutions; the new rules regarding generation of evidence and the broad construction of that evidence as relevant at trial; and a look at the special sentencing and confinement regimes for those convicted of terrorist crimes. In this critical examination of terrorism prosecutions in federal court, Professor Said reveals a phenomenon at odds with basic constitutional protections for criminal defendants.
