United States Attorneys - Further, Probably Much More Serious, Trouble
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (09/13/07)
For some time the media and many United States Senators and Representatives, especially those minded further to embarrass the George W. Bush Administration, have criticized - some would say, "exposed" - real and imagined inadequacies in the Department of Justice ("DOJ"). Far too late for practical political expediency and also for various substantive reasons, former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales finally has resigned. As this Commentary is written it remains to be seen who will have the courage and sense of duty to accept the President's invitation for nomination as Attorney General.
The Nation’s 92 United States Attorneys, and their thousands of subordinate Assistant United States Attorneys, are the prosecutors for all Federal criminal cases. These range from minor or peculiarly State offenses which a federalist, as this writer, would say ought not to be Federal crimes, to major crimes involving narcotics, violence, tax evasion, antitrust and other serious offenses - and, in recent years, a plethora of immigration cases and a smaller number of terrorist cases. It matters not how many attorneys are employed in the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Criminal, Tax or any other DOJ Division; nor how many Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and Secret Service agents are on the job although it is arguable their numbers are inadequate. A prosecution cannot take place unless there is at least one available Assistant United States Attorney, often several, to handle it, however convincing FBI or Secret Service investigative work may have been.
Meanwhile a very serious deficiency is exposed. It has little, probably nothing, to do with the brouhaha about the forced resignations of United States Attorneys.
According to figures published in the most recent United States Attorneys’ Annual Statistical Report, consider the following reductions 2002 through 2006, the last year figures are available. Yes, reductions, notwithstanding a population and crime increase: Narcotics prosecutions, down about 11%; violent-crime prosecutions, up slightly 2003 over 2002, then down 8.5% through 2006; white-collar crimes (lovely euphemism), down 8% from 2002. The totality of Federal criminal cases peaked in 2004 and then dropped 4.5% through 2006. Only immigration prosecutions rose and that rise did not hold: up 33% 2005 over 2002, then dropping 1% in 2006.
The DOJ civil calendar also has suffered. The work of the US Attorneys handling civil cases may not be so dramatic as criminal work but it is civil litigation which helps taxpayers - e.g., in 2006 DOJ civil cases produced $ 4.3 billion owed to the Federal Government.
DOJ morale, in Washington and evidently in all or most US Attorneys Offices across the country, not surprisingly is down. Budgets have not increased with inflation, much less with prosecutorial need. Salaries, particularly in affluent metropolitan areas, are not commensurate with private-practitioner earnings (although often the experience ultimately is valuable). It goes without saying that the DOJ miasma in Washington, D. C., whatever the combination of causes, is a further negative.
There may be a few beneficiaries of reduced or delayed DOJ criminal prosecutions or both. Hearsay - seemingly credible on its face - says that Representative Charles (Jerry) Lewis (R-CA), until recently Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and apparently under extensive Federal criminal investigation, is among them. There may be others, considering there is at least one United States Senator and several Members of the House who are under Federal criminal investigation.
Personalities aside, the Attorney General for the past five or more years should have been zealously pursuing an enhanced budget for the essential work of the US Attorneys; the President and the Office of Management and Budget should have been treating the need as a priority; Congress, perhaps even upon its own initiative, should have been appropriating (although it did appropriate a bit more in a supplemental act for Fiscal Year 2007, which runs until September 30, 2007).
If we are to have law and order of the real, not merely TV, type, DOJ and the 92 US Attorneys must be well financed. Perhaps this is a “should have been” that yet could be.
Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
(Printer friendly version) 
Send Feedback
