As we bid adieu to Charles Rosenthal, the Houston DA accused (among other things) of sending racist emails, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that race and prosecution is a toxic mix. We need only go back a to the 1987 Philly DA training tape (note that the tape says 1996 – and that’s not right) where junior DA’s are taught that: "let’s face it, the blacks from the low income areas are less likely to convict and as a result you don’t want those people on your jury…you’re just being realistic." Am I suggesting that all prosecutors or prosecutions are racist? Not at all. But given the outputs of our criminal justice system – the overwhelming disproportionate representation of minorities, for example – it seems to me that we have a special duty of vigilance when it comes to state sponsored racism.
Racist Prosecution By Design: The Philly DA Training Tape
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Even with recognition of the inherent competition in an adversarial system, I've always been surprised by how many people want Prosecutors to always win and how many future prosecutors think that winning is the goal of the job. Shouldn't the goal be to convict the guilty, not just convict the accused?