When Cops and Prosecutors Get Special Rights

Yesterday, Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille
decried one of the hypocrisies on display in Ferguson this
week: “Police Chief Tom Jackson says he won’t release the [cop who
killed Michael Brown’s] name unless charges are filed or he’s
ordered to by a judge. Does anybody believe he would be so reticent
to point the finger if the situation were reversed and an officer
was killed by a civilian?”

Today, Ken White of Popehat
extends the point:

Cops and other public servants
get special treatment because the whole system connives to let
them. Take prosecutorial misconduct. If you are accused of breaking
the law, your name will be released. If, on appeal, the court finds
that you were wrongfully convicted, your name will still be
brandished. But if the prosecutor pursuing you breaks the law and
violates your rights, will he or she be named? No, usually not.

Even if a United States Supreme Court justice is excoriating you
for using race-baiting in your closing, she usually won’t name
you. Even if the Ninth Circuit—the most liberal federal court in
the country—overturns your conviction because the prosecutor
withheld exculpatory evidence, they usually won’t
name the prosecutor.

And leaks? Please. Cops and prosecutors leak information to screw
defendants all the time.
It helps keep access-hungry journalists reliably compliant. But
leak something about an internal investigation about a shooting or
allegation of police misconduct? Oh, you’d better believe the
police union will
sue your ass.

Cops, and prosecutors, and other public employees in the criminal
justice system have power. It is the nature of power to make people
believe that they are better than the rest of us, and entitled to
privileges the rest of us do not enjoy.

Read the rest
here.