England has an independent "director of public prosecutions" concerned only with the most serious types of crime, but most prosecutions have been conducted by private barristers briefed by him or by the police.
What will you do when liberals, over Mr. Obama's objections, encourage Congress, the courts and the Justice Department to pursue investigations and prosecutions concerning the Bush administration's surveillance and interrogation policies?
…prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions concerning offences that, in view of the extent and seriousness of the interference with the fundamental rights in question, may be considered to be sufficiently serious to justify such an interference.
In continental European law, on the other hand, the question is whether the second prosecution concerns the same "material fact" or "historical event," and the state cannot subject a person to a second trial for any offense arising out of the same factual situation.
By the 1990s, with increasing scrutiny of the costs of such operations (charges of gross indecency in a sauna normally needing the expense of undercover officers), a reduced likelihood of successful prosecution, concerns of being perceived as homophobic, and little public interest in victimless crime, gay saunas became free to operate without the risk of being raided by police.
John Beyer to Julian Petley In 1972 Lord Denning, then Master of the Rolls, observed that the 1959 Obscene Publications Act had "misfired" so far as prosecutions are concerned.
And it was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood at the center of the trial.
It was not truly Eichmann in the dock, Arendt concluded: "It was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood in the center of the trial".
A man who acted as a spokesman for the 'hacktivist' group Anonymous and whose prosecution raised concerns about the protections supposedly guaranteed to journalists under the constitution, has been jailed for more than five years.
The accusations raised an interesting legal paradox: as far as the prosecution was concerned, if the organisation could be deemed to be undermining state policy it followed that torture itself must be state policy.
