When District Attorneys Attack

[Draggingtree]

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When District Attorneys Attack

by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON May 31, 2015 4:00 AM

 

The GOP should turn its attention to prosecutorial misconduct. As the old Vulcan proverb has it, “Only Nixon can go to China.” And only Nixon’s political heirs can fix the persistent — and terrifying — problems that continue to plague this country’s law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ offices. Exhibit A: Orange County, California.

The sunny Southern California county with a population surpassing that of nearly half the states has a Republican county executive, Steve Neuhaus, and a Republican district attorney, Tony Rackauckasproblem on its hands: Its entire prosecutorial apparatus — all 250 lawyers in the district attorney’s office — have been disqualified from participation in a high-profile capital-murder case following revelations that the office colluded with the Orange County sheriff’s department to systematically suppress potentially exculpatory evidence in at least three dozen cases, committing what legal scholars have characterized as perjury and obstruction of justice in the process.