There are roughly twenty-three hundred different local prosecutorial offices in the United States; most prosecutors are elected independently; and the lead lawyer in each office has considerable discretion in setting policies.
David Escamilla, the Travis County attorney and president-elect of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said that in prosecutorial offices across the state, there is, "to a lesser degree, a fear — knowing this could be us".
The decision by Robert Morgenthau not to seek re-election as the Manhattan district attorney after more than a third of a century of distinguished service in the job means a changing of the guard come January in one of the nation's premier prosecutorial offices.
The process has taken a long time to research, Lacey said, adding that she has gone to other prosecutorial offices asking for examples of how they do things.
Judge Alex Kozinski recently wrote that while most prosecutors are "fair-minded, forthright and highly conscientious," a "non-trivial number of prosecutors -- and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices -- engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials".
Romano acknowledged that Los Angeles has the largest caseload of any county but said the district attorney's office has not committed enough prosecutors to handle the volume and appears to be conducting a much stricter and more time-consuming review of cases than other prosecutorial offices.
"There are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors — and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices — engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials," Alex Kozinski, a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote last year in a landmark paper critiquing the criminal justice system nationwide.
Based on this positive practice, the country committed to establishing child-friendly facilities in all courts and prosecutorial offices, with UNICEF technical assistance.
Mr. Schneiderman has greater prosecutorial power: his office can sue if it finds wrongdoing and could even bring criminal charges under the state's Martin Act, a sweeping securities law, if the evidence warranted it.
He insisted that many universities in the conference would swear the SEC's compliance office worked in a prosecutorial role.
