Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Sweetheart Plea Deals (& A**hole Prosecutors who Get Them)

Certainly I'm not the only one who noticed that the Johnson County Prosecutor has pled guilty to a number of crimes, including felonies, and has been removed from his official position. Good riddance! I find the law enforcement apparatus to be sufficiently despicable (deplorable, anyone?) without having a known, convicted wife beater as a prosecutor. (Apologies . . . apparently it was his fiance).

Anyway, in reading through this story, I couldn't help but notice that this guy was charged on April 15, 2019 and signed a plea deal (that supposedly expired at 9:00 a.m.) on April 15, 2019.

This is a lot like the Scott Harris case and begs numerous questions. First and foremost, why is it that the powerful get advance warning of their impending charges and have a plea deal drawn up before they're even charged? How does that happen? It seems pretty obvious to me that there was "collusion" between the prosecutors and their "targets" in both cases to ensure that the "indiscretions" of the powerful were quickly swept under the rug.

I also can't help but note the difference between how these powerful men are treated and how, for example, educators (or professional athletes, for that matter) are treated when they get busted for OWI. Before anything is proven, and often before formal charges are even filed, these poor people have their faces plastered in the newspaper. For example, here is a prototypical "newsblotter" crime story.

Clearly my feelings on prosecutor tactics are unambiguous.

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