Way back in March, when the U.S. Attorney purge scandal was front-page news, Kagro X wrote a great piece that touched on a likely trend: a new opportunity for defense attorneys. “Defense attorneys across the country are doubtless exploring the possibility of demanding new trials for their clients,” KX wrote, “and those awaiting trial will be seeking dismissal of charges, all because the Department of Justice has been exposed as a political attack machine”
As it turns out, that’s exactly what’s going on. Bush, Gonzales & Co. politicized the criminal justice system, public confidence in the political impartiality of federal prosecutors has taken a serious hit, and defense attorneys are now able to argue with a straight face that prosecutions that might look political are political.
Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.
Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors. […]
There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.
As one former U.S. Attorney told the LAT, “It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago.”
In other words, thanks to the Bush gang’s shameless attempts to politicize every aspect of the federal government, the president, the attorney general, and their cohorts have made it more difficult to prosecute corruption, even against their political enemies (i.e., Democrats).
Amazing.
Now, just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that every corruption charge brought against a Democratic official by a Republican prosecutor is baseless and partisan. Some of those GOP lawyers have integrity, and some of those Dems are guilty.
But with its little stunt, the Bush gang has undermined the one thing U.S. Attorneys used to have going for them: the public’s trust.
Defense lawyers in political corruption cases often argue to juries that the prosecution was motivated by politics, especially when the prosecutor happens to be of a different political party than the defendant.
B. Todd Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, said such arguments are now “given credence in the public eye because they are seeing that maybe there were political decisions made. Any defense lawyer worth their salt is going to say this is a political prosecution that shouldn’t have been brought.”
The controversy may also be feeding anti-government feelings that many jurors bring to cases, even when defense lawyers do not overtly try to exploit the situation.
“It has become part of the background that jurors have in their minds when they deliberate,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former assistant U.S. attorney. “Jurors will think, ‘Gee, is there a political motivation for this? Is it being brought because the U.S. attorney wants to curry favor with the attorney general and keep his job?’ Corruption cases are tough enough to prosecute without having to defend yourself against attack.”
In light of the scandal, the firing lists, the admissions of politicized hirings, and the humiliating memories of senior DoJ officials, U.S. attorney offices around the country are suffering from “drained morale.” Now that Gonzales & Co. have made it easier to question U.S. attorneys’ integrity, I suspect the mood in these offices is even worse.