"Your Job Is...To Do The Right Thing"
Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday warned federal prosecutors of increased scrutiny in the wake of mistakes in the corruption case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
Holder told assistant U.S. attorneys for the District of Columbia that they must respond to negative perceptions of federal prosecutors by doing "the right thing."
"Your job as assistant U.S. attorneys is not to convict people," Holder said. "Your job is not to win cases. Your job is to do justice.
Your job is in every case, every decision that you make, to do the right thing.
Anybody who asks you to do something other than that is to be ignored."
Holder spoke in the same courthouse where Stevens was freed from criminal charges a day earlier. A jury had convicted the Republican who had served 40 years in the Senate of corruption charges last fall, but Holder decided the case should be dropped because federal prosecutors withheld key evidence from Stevens' defense team.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan threw out the conviction Tuesday and took the extraordinary step of ordering an investigation into whether prosecutors violated the law. Sullivan said he had never seen such misconduct and mishandling of a case during 25 years of the bench.
Holder: "You are expected to do nothing more than the right thing. Anything other than that is unacceptable."
Holder told assistant U.S. attorneys for the District of Columbia that they must respond to negative perceptions of federal prosecutors by doing "the right thing."
"Your job as assistant U.S. attorneys is not to convict people," Holder said. "Your job is not to win cases. Your job is to do justice.
Your job is in every case, every decision that you make, to do the right thing.
Anybody who asks you to do something other than that is to be ignored."
Holder spoke in the same courthouse where Stevens was freed from criminal charges a day earlier. A jury had convicted the Republican who had served 40 years in the Senate of corruption charges last fall, but Holder decided the case should be dropped because federal prosecutors withheld key evidence from Stevens' defense team.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan threw out the conviction Tuesday and took the extraordinary step of ordering an investigation into whether prosecutors violated the law. Sullivan said he had never seen such misconduct and mishandling of a case during 25 years of the bench.
Holder: "You are expected to do nothing more than the right thing. Anything other than that is unacceptable."
Comments