Mixing politics and the power to prosecute is the fast road to tyranny. That is one reason I have been unstinting in my criticism both of Eric Holder's politicization of DOJ and of the reckless grandstanding by Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby in the Freddie Gray case, see
here,
here, and
here.
Even Ms. Mosby, however, looks good by comparison to the federal prosecutors whose jaw-dropping unethical behavior resulted in well deserved judicial rebukes from both the federal district court and, now, the Fifth Circuit (opinion
here).
It's impossible to summarize in a single sentence the extent or the sleaze of the prosecutors' stunts, but let me start by saying that they essentially tried a prominent federal case against seven New Orleans police officers -- four of them black or Hispanic -- by tweet, then repeatedly lied about it.
Sal Perricone, a high-ranking prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office, using a fake name, posted commentary on Nola.com, the website of the Times-Picayune, that (in the words of the Court of Appeals) "castigated the defendants and their lawyers and repeatedly chastised the New Orleans Police Department as a fish 'rotten from the head down.'"
Perricone was joined in this outrageous misconduct by Jan Mann, the first assistant to the U.S. attorney.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Karla Dobinski, a veteran of Holder's Civil Rights Division, also posted inflammatory commentary under at least one assumed name. Ironically -- appallingly -- Dobinsky was part of the DOJ "taint team" in this case. As such, she was assigned to protect the civil rights of the indicted defendants.
The whole appalling story is here.
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