Unlike Mashable or Techdirt, WBUR did actual reporting, talking to multiple defense attorneys that handled Ortiz-managed prosecutions, tracking down judges admonishing Ortiz, even finding people who had recommended Ortiz for the post who have since backed away. The WBUR investigation is packed full of details.
They don't paint a pretty picture! There is good reason to be concerned about Ortiz. There are concerns about the way she manages her office, sets up incentives for AUSAs, oversees cases, and handles transparency. The story they build is of a US Attorney appointment that is simply not working out. It's damning enough that I actually started to reconsider whether Heymann was really the root of the problem; if he'd been reporting to a different US Attorney, things might have worked out differently.
The most disquieting thing Ortiz says in the WBUR show is an offhand comment. "It's an adversarial system" she says, defending her aggressive handling of prosecutions. But while that's true at one level (prosecutors are technically & mechanically adversaries of defense attorneys), it's deeply untrue at the level she seems to mean it on. She comes off as believing that her job is to present the most aggressive possible case for conviction and let the judge & jury sort out the truth. But that's not the prosecutor's role in the US! Prosecutors have discretion over what cases they bring and are required to use it. It's very worrying when a US Attorney implies that it's not their job to deploy that discretion.
I hate to be the devil's advocate in this case, but how else would an adversarial system work? If you want to see an opposite situation, where the prosecutors have full discretion to the point that courts basically always side with them, look no further than Japan and its 99% conviction rate.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwple/9907001.html
Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.
In addition to being a Supreme Court justice, Robert Jackson was also Attorney General and also the chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials.
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
The same piece dismisses explicitly the idea that ambition and careerism played a part in these problems. The issue here seems to be one of competence, not of motivation or integrity.
I don't know, I don't think it comes down too hard on that point. I read it as some people think she's a weak manager, but it also describes weak cases that were charged whole-hog. I think it's probably a matter of interpretation and context whether the things in the article are a form of soft-pedaling for career's sake, bad lawyering, or misplaced priorities within the DOJ, or etc. It may have been a bit better of a study of her landscape if they had included Stephen Heymann in their reportage.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200
Unlike Mashable or Techdirt, WBUR did actual reporting, talking to multiple defense attorneys that handled Ortiz-managed prosecutions, tracking down judges admonishing Ortiz, even finding people who had recommended Ortiz for the post who have since backed away. The WBUR investigation is packed full of details.
They don't paint a pretty picture! There is good reason to be concerned about Ortiz. There are concerns about the way she manages her office, sets up incentives for AUSAs, oversees cases, and handles transparency. The story they build is of a US Attorney appointment that is simply not working out. It's damning enough that I actually started to reconsider whether Heymann was really the root of the problem; if he'd been reporting to a different US Attorney, things might have worked out differently.
The most disquieting thing Ortiz says in the WBUR show is an offhand comment. "It's an adversarial system" she says, defending her aggressive handling of prosecutions. But while that's true at one level (prosecutors are technically & mechanically adversaries of defense attorneys), it's deeply untrue at the level she seems to mean it on. She comes off as believing that her job is to present the most aggressive possible case for conviction and let the judge & jury sort out the truth. But that's not the prosecutor's role in the US! Prosecutors have discretion over what cases they bring and are required to use it. It's very worrying when a US Attorney implies that it's not their job to deploy that discretion.