In Bristol County, Mass., the force of public prosecution will protect your lawful comings and goings only when the D.A. approves of them [Eugene Volokh on environmentalist blockade case, earlier]
In Bristol County, Mass., the force of public prosecution will protect your lawful comings and goings only when the D.A. approves of them [Eugene Volokh on environmentalist blockade case, earlier]
3 Comments
Many people upset about a prosecutor following his personal beliefs and not prosecuting the people in this case are also people cheering on sheriffs in New York pledging not to enforce the SAFE gun provisions. And we just finished a campaign to shame a New Jersey prosecutor into not to sending a Pennsylvania woman to prison over violating New Jersey gun laws while at the same time complaining about the easy prosecution response to a football player over spouse abuse.
Kind of depends on your viewpoint whether the prosecutor is a %^*&^% doesn’t it?
No, not really. Most serious legal thinkers have given thought to the appropriate bounds of prosecutorial discretion between the equally untenable extremes of “all infractions must be prosecuted always” and “prosecutors should feel free to let off their friends.” The New Jersey gun case (in which Shaneen Allen appears not to have realized that she was violating the law, no one was harmed, etc.) is not on all fours with the Bristol County case. Some background reading: http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/20/brief-history-enforcement-discretion/
Fred, it’s one thing to refuse to enforce a law you think is unconstitutional. It’s another to refuse to enforce a law because you like the people breaking it more than you like their victim.