A Practicing Trial Lawyer's Perspective: Why GonzalesGate is so Imporant

I'm not the world's most prolific or experienced trial lawyer. But after ten years of practice, I've been around a few courtrooms and various types of cases.

And in that experience, I have and currently am opposing assistant U.S. Attorneys for the District of South Dakota. I've had both criminal and civil cases before the U.S. Attorney's Office.

While most of the commentary about the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys and the plan to fire many more by the White House has been analyzed from a political perspective, let me lend a little legal perspective as to why this scandal is so troubling.

It boils down to this: As an attorney, I want to know that the U.S. Attorney is:

1. Upholding the law.
2. Acting ethically.
3. Acting professionally.
4. Working not for convictions in criminal cases or wins in civil cases but justice.
5. That their choice of cases and prosecutions is based not on raw politics but on the public interest

My limited experience here in South Dakota-under U.S. Attorneys appointed by both Democrat and Republican Presidents-is that the U.S. Attorney's Office acts professionally, ethically, and for the proper motives. I might not like what an assistant U.S. Attorney might do in one of my cases, but it's because it is part of the war of litigation, not that the AUSA is acting out of political spite.

The USA office is primarily a law enforcement agency. And law enforcement is not a function of politics but of justice.

I completely understand that a President and an Attorney General may have their "agenda" for prosecutions-i.e., they might believe that prosecuting terrorists is more important than pornographers which is more important than drug dealers. Put those items (and others) in whatever order. I understand that the USA has limited resources and that a President and AG may view one legal issue or type of crime as more important than another.

No problem.

But that is NOT what was going on in GonzalesGate.

Politicians were intruding on the independence of the USA. The White House wanted Democrats targeted over Republicans in prosecutions for political scandal. There's the whole issue of voter rights.

Like everything else, Karl Rove viewed the Department of Justice as not an instrument of government and the people but of pure politics.

That's what's different about this scandal.

And as a lawyer, that is not acceptable and places my colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's Office-who I believe work for justice in a professional and ethical manner-in a terrible bind. The USAs and AUSAs are the public's servants to bring about justice, not the politicians' servants to bring about patronage and politically motivated prosecutions.

The DOJ, the USAs, and the AUSA are not Rove's, Gonzalezs', and Bush's SA brownshirts-a political police force used to terrorize their political opponents and ensure political ideology purity. Their calling is much higher.

That is what's at stake.