T A B L E+T A L K Should prostitution be legalized? Join the debate in the Social Issues area of Table Talk T O D A Y Starr chamber Prosecuting -- or persecuting? -- the prosecutors - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Q U O T E--O F--T H E--D A Y Justice Jackson, meet Kenneth Starr “If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him.” -- The late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in a 1940 address to Justice Department lawyers. Quoted by former Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh in an article in the March 5 New York Review of Books. SALON | Feb. 24, 1998