The decision to prosecute should be made on whether the evidence of a crime is good and whether this is the most valuable prosecution to spend resources on. Politics should not be a factor in either direction.
It was wrong to pardon Nixon, it would be wrong not to prosecute Trump and it would be wrong and a waste of public resources to prosecute someone for political reasons.
@clacke "For political reasons" is loaded here. The entire definition of "crime" is political, so prosecuting someone is always for political reasons, even if it isn't for the prosecutor's/ruling party's personal reasons.
@hypolite Good point. I guess what I mean is there should be rule of law: The law should be clear, apply equally to all people, and the trial should be fair and based on fact.
This of course leaves open to entirely legally prosecute someone because they said "the king is ugly" if there's a law for that. At some point we have to leave it to the nation to write law, otherwise my comment would be a whole book of laws I find reasonable.
After reading the many branches of this thread and pondering things I guess my stance comes down to "strong agree", meaning this:
A prosecutor should not have political rivals or allies, but if a prosecutor does have political rivals or allies and they are under investigation, that particular prosecutor should be removed or remove themselves from the process and some other prosecutor should make the decision and lead the prosecution if they decide to prosecute.
But that's the principle of conflict of interest and recusal, isn't it? Is it controversial?
I tried to provide a succinct statement of the principle of political neutrality in civil service, sometimes called prosecutorial non-partisanship.
I'm strongly agree. I think this is an important principle in participative democracy, clean government, and rule of law. I support structural tools to avoid politically-motivated prosecutions, like independent justice ministries or departments.
It is not an absolute principle; there are lots of other factors to consider.
Many of the replies pointed out that prosecutors are often in non-political positions, so shouldn't have political rivals, and thus the question is moot in such places.
I think the reason we have those structures is because this is an important principle. The fact that our societies bothered to set up and defend those structures means we think they are important.
So, how to deal with situations where a public official has to deal with crimes committed by a political opponent?
I think there are some tried and true techniques, such as independent prosecutors, recusal for interested persons, engaging with bipartisan or multi-party efforts, and letting different levels of government pursue the prosecution.
And, of course, having a judicial system where the accused can expect a transparent and fair trial.
A lot of replies felt like they could agree more strongly if the exceptions or safeguards were fully enumerated.
I think it's better to state principles plainly in clear language, and to use "somewhat" or "qualified" agreement to handle the galaxy of conditions different people might apply.
Finally, I understand that this is a Republican talking point in American media right now, related to the Trump indictments.
I don't think it's healthy to discard this principle just because someone I disagree with is using it. It might be harder to do, but I think it's worth the time to agree with the principle and disagree with the application in this instance, with reasons why.
@evan Well yes of course you need an independent judiciary and justice dept - but the fact is that whatever party has the executive branch will be accused of using the law to wage political war. That is not a valid reason for not prosecuting. That was my point. You can say whatever you want about independent counsels and non-partisan prosecution, but there is great skepticism of such claims.
@evan
This is such an interestingly worded poll, in that it's using a construct that is being deliberately used as disinformation about the USDOJ Independent Counsel Jack Smith by making this false comparison of him being just a sock puppet for the POTUS.
A better statement might be, "Public officials should not interfere in independent justice departments and their prosecutions in any way, including to favor their friends or prosecute their rivals."
@evan Somewhat agree, because someone with a clear conflict of interest should not order or oversee the prosecution of their opponent (or anyone else whose prosecution would be convenient for them).
That said, while e.g. Joe Biden should not prosecute Trump, the Biden administration can and must find a way to do so. When someone tries to overthrow the gov't...
@evan It can be a balancing act, and there will be overlap. But if the law is contravened as shown by evidence, there shouldn’t be any special action or non-action due to the fact that there are also be political connotations. Counterpoint being that there can be accusations against a political opponent without evidence and political gains then had, and persecution resulting years later in exoneration. Hence the need for an impartial third party justice system. Plenty of recent examples in both directions spring to mind but I’m not going to bother mentioning them.
@evan The people who decide whom to prosecute should do so on the basis of likelihood of conviction. Those who make the decision should be isolated from politics: civil servants, who do not have "political rivals", supervised ultimately by an Attorney General who, to the degree she is involved with decisions to prosecute or not, does not take politics into account.
With the Westminster system of government, there's no entirely new problem; there's a precedent for everything. Sometimes to be sure the precedent is a course to be avoided, rather than a solution to apply.
I was definitely thinking of #JodyWilsonRaybould when adding a comment to this poll.
@evan anyone in that position should recuse, but you cannot let crimes go unpunished. A rival investigating them is better than a crime going unpunished.
@alpha1beta I mean, I guess it depends on the crime? A political rival bringing down the hammer for a minor crime seems more of a problem than just letting the crime pass.
@evan that too, but also is it public? Like if a candidate punches someone in public, is pretty different than jaywalking in the middle of the night. But ideally, there should always be a recusal or alternative jurisdiction which can investigate. Same with cops, it should automatically move to another jurisdiction or special task force to investigate cops (when there's not a real AI department or a conflict).
The appearance of no conflicts is almost as important as having no conflicts.
@evan that's not how those options work, though. I don't "somewhat" anything, I "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" depending on if the person being prosecuted has committed any crime.
If I told you my answer was "somewhat agree", then how would you interpret that? What if I said "somewhat disagree" instead? There's no way for those options to accurately convey they nuance of my answer, so I'm not able to respond to the poll. I would select "neutral" if that was an option, but it's not.
@evan Depends. Did their rival break the law and there is evidence of doing so or are they just trying to eliminate the competition by making stuff up? If it's the former, strongly agree. If it's the latter, strongly disagree.
@travis it's hard to tell though, right? Especially when the crimes are indirect or abstract. Corruption, extremism, sedition are all charges that get abused for political trials, despite the fact that they're very serious.
Courts should be able to rise above party, but defendants should be able to allege bias as a basis for an appeal, so long as they can make a case that bias occurred (not just claim bias because they were indicted).
Of course, the reality is that party should not matter as much as it does in this country.
These should be reasonable people with reasonable positions within the normal scope of politics, not fascists who want to burn the country down.
@evan You’re missing a qualification here, “…for political reasons.” Public officials should prosecute criminals, regardless of their political affiliation.
@evan That’s fair! I just think about it as a fundamentally different question, and I’d want to say that I strongly disagree (if the question had that qualification). But in any case, consider my qualification noted!
@evan@connor that’s how I answered it but I really had to think about it. I agree that the prosecution should happen but it may be a good idea to recuse yourself and let somebody more neutral handle it if it is a direct political rival. So qualified agree.
@evan Public Justice and Law Enforcement officials should prosecute crimes, regardless of who commits them. And must be independent of political officials.
@evan in theory the U.S. system has a lot in place for handling that. Enforcement is key, of course. One example is the Kansas paper that was just raided by police. State investigators are following up on that now.
Unfortunately the Right in the US seems to have no problem breaking the law, and false claims of bias against them hide the truth of things being biased in their favor.
I don't know that I agree with all of them, but I also know that there are a lot of courts in the US, and we've had a lot of history, and I don't think our union is yet so perfect that it couldn't happen here.
@evan from my US pov your post sounded to me like the RW complaints about Trump being held accountable. Your response indicates that is not what you intended. Thanks for clarifying. I certainly agree, US is imperfect.
@evan this is not a well formed question. It assumes a world where there are no other options (such as independent prosecutors), and so parrots populist right-wing views.
@evan@mnot Does an independent prosecutor have political rivals? Is the judicial system functional or a corrupt kangaroo court? I didn't vote because there were too many assumptions I didn't want to make.
@evan One should not prosecute a rival who has committed no crime. Prosecuting a rival who has committed a crime is called equal justice. Otherwise, to avoid being prosecuted, commit crimes and run for office.
This is why we have Special Prosecutors. To make it not ‘personal’
@evan I think there’s some important semantics here:
Those in a position to prosecute should be politically impartial. Thereby nobody is ever a rival or an ally, and everyone is held to the law equally, and the question is moot.
However humans are known to be terrible at being impartial, and therefore your question is (unfortunately) relevant.
@evan Even more than most, I think this one deserves some nuanced follow up.
I don't think anyone should be prosecuted based on their political stance/office/whatever.
But, if someone broke the law, they should, be treated like anyone else breaking the same law, regardless of their social or political standing.
These systems are supposed to be impartial. But they're implemented by humans. The best we're going to get is "aware of where our biases lie, and honest about them"
@evan The poll results will be nonsense since the question can only make sense in countries where public officials who have political rivals also control the actions of their justice department (ie their DOJ is not independent of the political apparatus).
I changed the wording from "government officials" to "public officials" since a lot of people were getting hung up on the Commonwealth definition of "government" meaning specifically the governing majority/coalition in Parliament or whatever.
It probably messed up the poll a bit. Sorry if so!
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