Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.

In situations where accusations of widespread corruption, misconduct, unethical action, etc are made, a phrase that is often trotted out in defense of the accused is <i>&quot;just a few bad apples&quot;</i>. It&#x27;s not WhereEver Police Department that has an issue with racial bias and violent escalation, <i>it&#x27;s just a few bad apples</i>. Our school district does not have a bullying problem, <i>it&#x27;s just a few bad apples</i>. Etc.<p>What is interesting about this cliched defense is that it is actually a malformed statement of the <i>original</i> cliche, &quot;A few bad apples <i>spoil the barrel.</i>&quot;<p>The original cliche refers to a phenomenon where overripe or rotten apples release ethylene gas, which is a ripening agent. This ethylene gas will accelerate the ripening&#x2F;rot of nearby apples. If you are not <i>vigilant</i> in weeding out the bad apples, the rot will rapidly spread and soon there will be <i>no</i> good apples left to rescue.<p>Human &quot;bad apples&quot; don&#x27;t release ethylene gas, but they corrupt their peers nevertheless. When a good cop backs the cover story of his corrupt cop partner, he becomes a bad cop as well. When prosecutors take up arms in defense of their corrupt prosecutor peers, they become no better than the initially targeted. If school administrators allow a bully to have his way for too long, then everybody else sees that they can get away with it too and before long you have daily fistfights behind the school at the end of the day.<p>Institutions that have had widespread unchallenged corruption for decades rarely need keyhole surgery, they need amputations.

I&#x27;m glad someone is finally standing up for the rights of common citizens. I really don&#x27;t want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that. I like this country, and consider myself a patriot. I just also have to recognize that the people who participate in running this country do not always have our best interests at heart.

I applaud this judge. I also feel like I&#x27;m not hearing the full story.

Two things:<p>1. I suspect the genisis of this immunity was to inoculate prosecutors from coercion by politicians - which is probably a good thing. But I would be curious to know about the logic behind it.<p>2. While perhaps it might be worthwhile to have some level of immunity that logic frays somewhat when acts that would generally be considered immoral and perhaps criminal are unaddressable.

One problem with the Judge&#x27;s statement is that it is beyond the scope of an actual case or controversy. A Judge should judge each case individually not make up general rules and policies to prospectively apply to future behaviour, since that is for the legislature and executive in a separation of powers system. If the Judge wants to issue a warning or punishment to a particular prosecutor for a particular inappropriate behavior that would be in bounds; but media statements designed to influence elections are out of bounds for american judicial behavior.

In the interest of hearing both sides of the story, can someone explain what legitimate complaints prosecutors may have about these developments, if any?