Samaha CJ7e
Chapter 8
Is police-prosecutor cooperation worth the effort?
In some places, police-prosecutor teams have overcome some of the problems arising out of their different interests. The teams, consisting of police investigators and prosecutors, work closely from the early stages of investigation all the way to conviction to establish legal guilt. In 1987, Maine created an entirely new agency, the Bureau of Intergovernmental Drug Enforcement.
The strength of the prosecution’s case depends on evidence; physical evidence is often the most compelling. Here, prosecutor Sharlene Honnaka holds what she claims is a murder weapon during closing arguments in the trail of Charles Ng in Santa Ana, California, in February 1999. Ng, a Hong Kong native, was charged with murdering two infants, three women, and seven men.
Enforcement. In unprecedented language, the statute charged the agency with the responsibility for “the integration and coordination of investigative and prosecutorial functions in the State with respect to drug law enforcement.” For the first time, state law “mandates that prosecutors and investigators team up to create a more efficient and effective drug law enforcement strategy.” “It’s not an investigation and then a trial; it’s a unitary process, a case throughout,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney for Maine, John Gleason.
The agency has reduced basic misunderstandings arising out of the different vantage points of police and prosecutors. Bureau supervisor Dan Ross said, We have had to change some of our ideas because the attorney’s perspective is that of the courtroom.
Officers may not be concerned with how things appear in court because they tend to concentrate on just the facts. But the attorney has to care because appearances are so important in getting a conviction.
For example, to obtain evidence, investigators frequently rely on informants. Prosecutors hesitate to call informants as witnesses. Despite their persuasiveness to police investigators, prosecutors know that such witnesses negatively impress jurors. Investigators now realize this and gather additional evidence. Prosecutors also benefit from the teamwork because, as one prosecutor observed, “The insights I have gained into case
Officers of the Court
In addition to law enforcement officers, prosecutors are supposed to do justice. They are supposed to uphold and protect defendants’ constitutional rights even as they prosecute them for crimes. Prosecutors are supposed to tailor the law to suit individual defendants’ needs as well as apply the law evenhandedly. These are difficult functions to perform because so little is known about exactly what “suits” individuals and what punishment satisfies the purposes of criminal law. Further, no one agrees about the purposes of punishment: should it be merely to punish, deter others from committing crimes, or rehabilitate offenders (Chapter 12)? In addition, as officers of the court with responsibility for protecting the constitutional rights of defendants, prosecutors are legally bound to enforce laws and other rules controlling police conduct. This either brings them into direct conflict with police or forces them to balance their formal public duty and their informal relationships with police.
Administrative Officers
Prosecutors are also administrators of organizations in which missions not related to law enforcement or court proceedings are paramount. Prosecution offices, especially large ones, have basic organizational goals: efficiency, economy, and smooth-working relations among staff and between staff and outside agencies, such as police, public defenders, and courts. As administrators, prosecutors strive to further the organization’s effective, efficient, economical, and speedy dispatch of business, often by using limited public resources in the most cost-effective manner. Accordingly, prosecutors may put a premium on cases and crimes that produce the greatest impact for the quickest and most economical processing.
Prosecutors as administrators also favor rules that foster routine, regular, predictable results. Here, prosecutors may emphasize the uniformity of cases, rather than the uniqueness of individuals.
Careerists
Finally, prosecutors are careerists. They seek to advance in the legal profession, not necessarily as prosecutors or even judges, but as private practitioners. If they want to be career prosecutors, they build amicable relationships with their superiors and with members of related agencies, mainly the police, public defenders, and judges. If they aspire to higher public office, local political interests influence their actions.
If private practice appeals to them, they seek the goodwill of members of private law firms.59
Not all prosecutors perform their various functions with equal vigor. They develop prosecutorial styles, much as the police develop policing styles. Some prosecutors favor their role as chief law enforcer and, as a result, stress conviction rates. Others lean toward the role of court officer, emphasizing the need to prosecute only according to rules that do not violate defendants’ rights. Still others are concerned mainly with running efficient, economical organizations where cases are processed rapidly with minimal obstruction or difficulty.
Some treat prosecution as only a stepping stone to a higher political office or more lucrative law practice, or as “just a job” in which hassles are to be minimized and material benefits gained. Others are career prosecutors who work to establish investigation translate into better courtroom performance.” As prosecutors work closely with investigators, they learn that officers must make quick decisions to search based on limited information. Knowing this, prosecutors can make more effective arguments for the good faith exception to the search warrant requirement, an area, according to one prosecutor in Maine, “where prosecutors are sometimes weak.
Laconia, New Hampshire, has adopted policeprosecutor cooperation to test its effectiveness in misdemeanors, order maintenance problems that rarely receive publicity but account for the largest expenditures of police resources. In Laconia, a prosecutor with an office in the police department prosecutes all misdemeanor arrests. Officers consult with the prosecutor about filing criteria and investigative practices, and the prosecutor provides timely information on case dispositions.
This information leads to police decisions that close legal loopholes in cases of driving while intoxicated (DWI), disorderly conduct, theft, and assault. According to the chief of police in Laconia, the close contact between police and prosecutors has also reduced the number of lawsuits against the police. The chief says, “A higher degree of legal awareness has developed and it is reflected in the officers’ actions on the street.
A New York program adopted to decrease felony case attrition by improving the coordination between police and prosecutors in preparing cases produced mixed results. James Garofolo examined felony arrests and interviewed prosecutors and liaison officers in a sample of six county prosecutor’s offices and the New York State Police. Four of the counties instituted the liaison program and two did not. The liaison program had little effect on felony case attrition; liaison officers had little effect on whether cases resulted in conviction.
However, liaison officers did affect the amount of case “slippage”—that is, a conviction for an offense less than the charge, such as from a Class E felony to a Class A misdemeanor. It also simplified the communication channels between prosecutors and arresting officers.
Application:
1. Summarize the findings of the studies discussed.
2. List those that favor cooperation and those that don’t.
3. What would you recommend as a wise public policy regarding cooperation. Why? Why not? Support your answer with information you have acquired.
good working relationships with the other criminal justice agencies, particularly courts, police, and defense counsel.