Tuesday, May 02, 2017

New Orleans, where the prosecutors deserve jail more than the accused

Prosecutors and public defenders are supposed to be adversaries in the courtroom. But prosecutors have a significant upper hand: a largely unchecked power to bring criminal charges against anyone they want. In most parts of the country, prosecutors don’t wield this tool against their own professional opponents. But in New Orleans, it’s become a pattern. 

At least six defense attorneys and investigators say they faced threats of criminal charges by the Orleans parish district attorney for doing their jobs, the Guardian has found. Since DA Leon Cannizzaro took office in 2009, the attorneys have been accused of kidnapping, impersonation and witness tampering in the course of defending their clients. Each case has failed to stand up to scrutiny: all charges that have been brought were eventually dropped or overturned.


One of the roots of 'progressivism' that they don't like people to remember:
They believed in science and progress, and nothing was more cutting edge and modern than social Darwinism. Man now had the ability to intervene in his own evolution. Instead of natural selection and the law of the jungle, there would be planned selection. And what could be more socialist than planning, the Fabian faith that the gentlemen in Whitehall really did know best? If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies? The aim was to do what was best for society, and society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.

What was missing was any value placed on individual freedom, even the most basic freedom of a human being to have a child. The middle class and privileged felt quite ready to remove that right from those they deemed unworthy of it.

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