But I think your choice of verbs is apt. Justice isn’t “done” or “found” or “achieved”. It, like shit, just happens. (Hmmm. T-shirt idea!) If we are lucky, we step in it despite our limited knowledge. And just as we don’t know justice is before we see it, we never really know it after it happens either.

I think many of the current prosecutors are compassionate people who, if they gave it deep thought, would say that they see greater utility in causing suffering to the accused than in preventing suffering. They’re not the compassionless imprisonment machines that the public thinks they want.

I’m pretty sure that there is nothing that I can say here that is really going to change anyone’s mind, but I would point out that it seems that a lot of your posts are so very pessimistic. It seems as if you are lamenting that Justice NEVER happens in a Harris County courtroom. Surely that can’t be the case.

As a prosecutor, I tried plenty of cases against Defendants that I actually liked. And that extended from DWIs to murders (believe it or not). But I had to set aside the fact that I liked them and ask for justice (in the form of punishment) from a jury. It wasn’t that I felt no compassion for them, I just had a different view of justice than the defense attorney.

This could go on and on.

Whenever people speak up in defense of prosecutors, they evoke images of violent crime. But prosecutors are spending the bulk of our resources prosecuting mala prohibita (take that, Latin-man!).

Please don’t nail me to a tree.

Mark you’re beginning to sound like all those weak kneed liberals like Jesus and Buddha.

Those cases (Drugs) carry extreme sentences and drain vast resources from the criminal justice system.

The result is that important cases, malum in se crimes, proceed without complete investigations and with little evidence.

The result, innocent people go to jail, and our prisons are clogged with dealers.