Overview of Prosecutors:

The prosecutor is an administrator of justice, a zealous advocate, and an officer of the court. Namely, prosecutors are government officials charged with bringing defendants in criminal cases to justice. More broadly, prosecutors are just one piece of the criminal justice puzzle. However, they might be the most powerful figures in our country’s criminal justice system.

Federal Court of Appeals Judge Gerard E Lynch states that "a prosecutor is the essential arbitrator of facts in a trial; they assess the defense's accuracy/persuasiveness, presenting it to a judge+jury and deciding the defendant’s charge." To learn more about the role of the prosecutor, scroll down!

The prosecutor's role in the Criminal Justice system is larger than most people think! Although prosecutors are often associated with the drama of trial, their influence and responsibilities are far broader than just the courtroom. Not only do they perform a multitude of tasks that determine specific case outcomes but the system-wide responses to the problems of criminal justice.

More specifically, they decide what crimes to prosecute, whom to charge, what to charge, what sentence to propose, the severity and length of a prison sentence, how aggressively to seek a conviction, and whether to offer concessions, plea-bargain, or divert a case. This, however, is just the beginning of it. Prosecutors provide the link between police investigations and courtroom adjudication, with the power to impact every decision along the way.

Origins

During the 1830s and 1860s, a lot of states in the union (starting with Mississippi in 1832 and then Ohio in 1833), transitioned to electing prosecutors. Prior to 1832, prosecutors were appointed by governors, judges, or legislators. However, after the Mississippi constitutional convention in September 1832 that met to discuss the population's discontent with the state's classist franchisement laws, states started to adopt new constitutions, statutes, or amendments that made prosecutors elected officials. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1865, nearly three-quarters of the states in the Union elected their prosecutors.

Reasons

The era of new prosecutorial elections happened during the same time in which the American government became more democratic. Two specific structural trends, however, set the stage for the newly elected prosecutors. Firstly, voters became dissatisfied with the appointment process after they realized that appointed prosecutors gave either governors more unchecked power or an opportunity for legislatures to biasedly appoint their political allies. Additionally, prosecutors gained new discretionary powers over prosecutions and began to assume an overall larger role in the criminal justice system so citizens wanted to use their vote to pick their own representative. Politicians and supporters of elected prosecutors thus argued that a popular election would give the citizens more control over their government and increase the responsiveness of prosecutors to the communities they served.

Early Corruption

Many commentators in the nineteenth century have observed that these new elections subject prosecutors to focus their attention on high-profile investigations to win over the media and people. This resulted in prosecutors seeking higher conviction rates during these elections.

In addition to prosecutors directly contributing to grander sentencing rates, party politics soon began to influence criminal prosecutions. For example, in New York, A. Oakey Hall was elected district attorney for New York County in 1853. Hall was affiliated with the Tammany Hall political machine, allowing him to win reelection four times. Many of his contemporaries noticed how Mr. Hall made, "politics a business." Hall's political deceit was even used as evidence for many Pennsylvanians who opposed electing district attorneys.