NYT editorial: The Prosecution(Patrick Fitzgerald)Should Give it a Rest

[MinM]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/opinion/13coburn.html

LOST amid the understandable clamor over the charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois are questions raised by the pretrial public comments about the case by the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has emphasized that “a prosecutor has a special duty commensurate with a prosecutor’s unique power, to assure that defendants receive fair trials.” Another United States Court of Appeals has observed that “prosecutors sometimes forget that the prosecutor’s special duty is not to convict, but to secure justice.”...

The court in which Mr. Blagojevich is charged, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, has a local rule mandating that a “lawyer shall not make an extrajudicial statement the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is likely to be disseminated by public media and, if so disseminated, would pose a serious and imminent threat to the fairness of an adjudicative proceeding.” The rule goes on to say that a public statement “ordinarily is likely to have such an effect when it refers to” a criminal matter and to “the character or reputation of the accused, or any opinion as to the accused’s guilt or innocence, as to the merits of the case, or as to the evidence in the case.” The American Bar Association’s model rules are similar, if not more restrictive.

Against this backdrop, it is hard to feel comfortable with Mr. Fitzgerald’s remarks in announcing the charges that Mr. Blagojevich’s conduct amounted to a “political corruption crime spree” and “would make Lincoln roll over in his grave,” that “the breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering,” that Mr. Blagojevich “put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator” and that his conduct was “cynical” and “appalling” and has “taken us to a truly new low.”...

[pnwmom]

1. I agree, Fitzgerald's comments crossed the line. I'm disappointed in him. n/t

[rateyes]

2. I agree, as well. nt

[roguevalley]

8. he's not actually wrong. the man was fixing to seel the seat and

so he spree was on. anyone else, I might agree more. IMO. :)

[pnwmom]

10. The issue isn't whether Fitz was right about bringing charges. The issue is

that no prosecutor -- including Fitz -- is supposed to make inflammatory pretrial statements. No matter how guilty a person appears to be, the defendant is still entitled to the presumption of innocence. That is the line that Fitz crossed.

[roguevalley]

19. True. I am still amazed that people have press conferences to

announce charges and outline evidence.

[unblock]

13. it's not a matter of his statements being truthful or not. justice is about following a fair process

and it does seem that fitz took the moment in the spotlight to speak his mind a bit too freely.

if his statements are truthful, then they would make great opening or closing arguments at trial. he should have waited until then.


i, for one, would now clearly be ineligible to serve in a jury as a result, even if i did live in the proper jurisdiction.

[EFerrari]

3. I agree. He was out of line. n/t

[BlueJessamine]

15. So do I.

K&R

:patriot:

[eleny]

4. A Republican who did his job

[babylonsister]

14. Fitz isn't a rethug. He's apolitical/independent. nt

[eleny]

21. I wouldn't put money on that, sis

Maybe he's registered as such. But his extraordinary theatrics this time around tells me that something else is going on in his heart. There just wasn't the need to convict before a trial but he did it.

[babylonsister]

22. According to him, there was ample reason. This from a NYT opinion

piece by Scott Turow-interesting read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/opinion/10turow.html

snip//

In his news conference Tuesday, Mr. Fitzgerald indicated that he hadn’t planned to indict Governor Blagojevich until next spring, meaning that the prosecutor was going to wait until his own fate was decided. Instead, with wiretap evidence piling up that showed that Mr. Blagojevich was intent on selling the Obama seat in exchange for a substantial personal benefit, like a high-paying job for himself or his wife, Mr. Fitzgerald was forced to make the arrest. He decided that he could not even wait for the grand jury investigating Mr. Blagojevich to meet on Thursday and indict him.

Bypassing the grand jury and proceeding through a criminal complaint instead effectively puts the case against Mr. Blagojevich on the express route. Mr. Fitzgerald will now have only 20 days to either give the governor a preliminary hearing — which would amount to free discovery for his defense lawyer — or return an indictment. Given Mr. Fitzgerald’s frank appeal for information from the public at his news conference, it’s obvious that his case is not fully buttoned up, and that Mr. Blagojevich forced the prosecutor’s hand.

[elleng]

5. Interesting.

I didn't object. Fitz was clearly upset by the whole business, including when to announce.

Well, the worst mischief has been at least avoided, and maybe he recognized that would be the effect of 'early' announcement anyway.

[LiberalHeart]

6. I think his remarks were appropriate because now is the time to stop the jerk.

Thanks to Fitz, people knew the serious of the crimes and the urgency (not allowed by an orderly progression through the courts) of stopping Blago from inflicting on the public a Senator who bought his way into office. Fitz's characterization of what went down is what resulted in immediate moves to block further crimes.

[pnwmom]

11. Fitz prevented further crimes by bringing the charges against Blago. That's where

Fitz should have stopped. The "complaint" spoke for itself. Fitz crossed the line when he editorialized about it in front of the cameras.

[EFerrari]

17. That's pretty much the logic Bush used to invade Iraq.

"Forget the process, we have a threat here."

Whenever our process is short circuited, we regret it.

[KoKo]

23. Agree........

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. In Britain, what's he's said in public would stop any trial going ahead

and if it had been said by the media after they'd obtained the information some other way, they'd be prosecuted for contempt of court (so I would think a public prosecutor would be dismissed for saying it in public, at least). I know the US has always been much laxer in its rules about contempt, but it did seem to me that Fitzgerald is behaving as if the trial is already over.

[pnwmom]

12. I'm wondering if he might have done it because, as damning as those recordings

appear to be, Fitz was worried that a jury might not find him guilty. This way at least he could make sure Blago was out of a job.

[KoKo]

24. He went a little "OTT" but what if his opinion of the situtation called for OUTRAGE?

Certainly many of us here through the years have expressed similar outrage. If he truly saw a "crime just about to be committed.."Blago" appointing a false Senator to replace Obama...wasn't it Fitz's job to SPEAK OUR FORCEFULLY!

Haven't many of us been complaining for YEARS that NO (who has power) SPEAKS OUT? :shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. No, I'd say his job is to get criminals convicted

Of course, he knows far better than I what he can or can't do without affecting the chances of a conviction; but the op-ed in the NYT is by a 'former federal prosecutor', and he seems to think he's pushing the boundaries.

We'll see what Blagojevich's defence team says, once the trial starts, but it seems quite possible that some potential jurors have been prejudiced by Fitzgerald's remarks.

[mopinko]

9. dick kaye on thom hartmann the other day-

dick kaye is a long, long, long time chicago reporter known for telling it like it is. he has seen many a corrupt politician come and go. one of his comments was that this was grandstanding in the extreme. especially going to his house to arrest him. even mob bosses are usually invited to come in themselves, outside the media glare.
he also said that he thought that the fact that this was a criminal complaint, and not an indictment, after years of surveillance showed that the package was a little light.

look, i think the guy should be removed. not because he is extraordinarily corrupt, but because i think he is seriously mentally disturbed. most of what is on those tapes is not a crime. crass, stupid, out of control, yes. criminal? mostly no. if it was, we would have seen an indictment.
when we start finding stunning evidence of corruption on the other side of the aisle, i will be a lot quicker on the bandwagon. but in the meantime, we have bill clinton, gray davis, elliot spitzer and rod blagojevich being muscled out of their offices, successfully and not. george ryan (who finished his 2nd term, then retired before being indicted), george bush, and dick cheney, go merrily along.
what's wrong with this picture?

[pacalo]

16. I totally agree. He could have easily used comparable language about the Bush administration.

But he didn't.

He walked on egg shells in dealing with that appalling, corrupt cabal during their political crime spree, taking this country to a new low.

[EFerrari]

18. Bingo. n/t

[HardWorkingDem]

20. Forget it...Blago deserves it...

I've read a couple of profiles on Fitzgerald and each one says about the same thing - that he loves the law and has a very high ideal about the importance of the law and the rule of law.

We need more people like this man and it's time our elected officials are called out on their bullshit.

My last word on this subject is it has been fascinating watching the rest of the nation comment about Illinois politics. I simply can't get over how many people outside of Illinois, especially the pundits, have such a shallow base of knowledge when it comes to Illinois politics when it comes to Blagojevich.

[KoKo]

25. Mr. "Helmut Hair" seems to be a low life bottom feeder. The Transcripts

show a "self-absorbed" guy who was looking to the corruption on Wall St. as a way to run his Governorship. He figured: "WTF...those guys on Wall St. got away with TONS OF CRAP! When is MY TURN?"

His "turn" might be in his cell block. He ain't WALL ST.!