Friday, June 01, 2007

Bad DA Blowback

Very nice piece here on the tainting of good DAs by bad ones. NC prosecutors need funding but are seeing their appropriations questioned by the state legislature, presumably, they believe, because of fallout from the Duke lacrosse case. I know from over a decade working with policy types that legislators frequently resent the swagger of prosecutors (and yes, there’s no other word for it) and their threats to “get” the legislators at election time as being “soft on crime” if the prosecutors don’t get their way with bills. You often see the results in what the prosecutors end up with in appropriations, which aren’t as attackable. Don’t know if that’s the case here, but it’s something all the camera-hungry DAs should think about as they run roughshod. The guys who are trying to do a good and honest job get caught in the backwash, too.

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