7.9. Courtroom Players: Prosecutors 
LORE RUTZ-BURRI 
Prosecutors play a pivotal role in the criminal justice and work closely with: law enforcement officials, 
judges, defense attorneys, probation and parole officers, victims services, human services, and to a lesser 
extent, with jail and other corrections officers. The authority to prosecute is divided among various city, state 
and federal officials. City and state officials are responsible for prosecutions under local and state laws, and 
federal officials for prosecutions under federal law. Associate Justice Robert Jackson, while he was the U.S. 
Attorney General addressed the Conference of United States Attorneys (federal prosecutors) in Washington, 
D.C. on April 1, 1940 and stated, 
“The qualities of a good prosecutor are . . . [elusive and . . .  impossible to define]. … 
The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. 
His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can 
have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations. Or the prosecutor 
may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor 
can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided 
presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the 
case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard. Or he may go on with a 
public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, 
as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as 
to whether he is a fit subject for parole. While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent 
forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst. … 
Nothing better can come out of this meeting of law enforcement officers than a rededication to the 
spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor. Your positions are of such 
independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement 
you can also afford to be just. Although the government technically loses its case, it has really won if 
justice has been done.  . . . 
There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached 
and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. 
One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases because no 
prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the department of 
justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its 
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