Legal Commentary

In Praise of Craig Watkins

By TChris

An accurate and pointed observation by Scott Horton:

What makes a bad prosecutor? It’s simple: Does the prosecutor’s longing for the public limelight, his aspirations for public office, come to overwhelm his dedication to justice, to simply doing the right thing? It’s said that a famous chief prosecutor from Dallas, Henry Wade, summed up the thinking that goes into a really bad prosecutor like this: “any prosecutor could convict a guilty man, but ... it takes a real pro to convict an innocent man.”

Good prosecutors go about their jobs by blending duty, respect for the law and ethics with compassion and understanding. Average prosecutors just try to muddle through the day without upsetting the boss or a judge. There are many more good and average prosecutors than there are bad ones (although the bad ones are far from a tiny minority).

A few prosecutors stand out in their dedication to justice. Horton and the Wall Street Journal both call attention to a district attorney who has been repeatedly praised at TalkLeft: Craig Watkins in Dallas. [more ...]

Mr. Watkins, who became the first African American district attorney in Texas when he was elected in 2006, said in a recent interview that he has been accused of being "a criminal-loving DA, a hug-a-thug DA." But he says such criticism of him and his office misses the point: "We have the constitutional obligation to seek justice."

Amen. Craig Watkins for Obama's Attorney General?

Sidebar: The WSJ article quotes a district attorney from Clatsop County, Oregon who fears "the public's false impression from TV cop shows that most prosecutors are bloodthirsty and routinely railroad defendants." Fear not. Some urban juries become sensitive to the credibility of police officers in the wake of highly publicized incidents of police corruption, but juries rarely have a negative opinion of prosecutors. Defense attorneys fear being viewed as hired guns who will say and do anything to win, because that is often the dramatized image of defense lawyers (with an able assist from Nancy Grace). In reality, in most trials, both sides work diligently to earn the jury's trust, and most juries try to follow the law and decide the case on its facts without regard to the jury's collective perception of one lawyer or the other.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 16, 2008 (boomark / email).