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6 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 581 (2008-2009)
How Prosecutor Elections Fail Us

handle is hein.journals/osjcl6 and id is 585 raw text is: How Prosecutor Elections Fail Us

Ronald F. Wright*
I. INTRODUCTION
When government officials have discretion, the rule of law also requires that
they be accountable. This ideal carries even into the world of criminal justice,
where the individual prosecutor's power dominates the scene. We hope that every
exercise of prosecutorial discretion takes place within a framework of prosecutorial
accountability.1
There are several methods for holding prosecutors accountable in this country.
Judges enforce a few legal boundaries on the work of prosecutors, and legislatures
sometimes have their say about criminal law enforcement. Prosecutors with
positions lower in the office or department hierarchy must answer to those at the
top. As licensed attorneys, prosecutors must answer to the bar authorities in their
states. But none of these controls binds a prosecutor too tightly. At the end of the
day, the public guards against abusive prosecutors through direct democratic
control. In the United States, we typically hold prosecutors accountable for their
discretionary choices by asking the lead prosecutor to stand for election from time
to time.
This is not true in most places around the globe. In the various civil law
systems in other countries, the idea of electing prosecutors is jarring. In the civil
law depiction of the public prosecutor's job, training and experience hold criminal
prosecutors accountable to public values and legal standards. Prosecutors in a civil
law tradition perform a ministerial function as they progress through a career-long
bureaucratic journey. He or she simply assembles and evaluates the available
evidence; if that evidence meets the relevant standard of proof to support a
conviction for each element of a crime, the prosecutor has the duty to initiate a
prosecution.   This lawyerly evaluation-nothing more and nothing less-
constitutes the prosecutor's job.2
.  Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Wake Forest University
School of Law. I owe thanks to Sara Beale and the other participants in the Ohio State symposium
on prosecutorial discretion, including Doug Berman, Stephanos Bibas, Darryl Brown, Sharon Davies,
Bruce Green, Alan Michaels, Robert Mosteller, and Ellen Yaroshefsky. Wayne Logan and Marc
Miller provided their usual perceptive comments as readers. I also appreciate the excellent research
assistance of Jeff Kuykendall, Daniel Moebs, and Joanna Wright.
I  Cf. Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in
Judicial Reasoning, 23 YALE L.J. 16 (1913) (relational theory of common law rights, defining rights
of some in terms of duties owed by others).
2  See generally Yue Ma, A Comparative View of Judicial Supervision of Prosecutorial
Discretion, 44 CRIm. LAW BULL. 31 (2008); William T. Pizzi, Understanding Prosecutorial

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