present staff would be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic 
laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is 
practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is 
the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain. 
… A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of 
power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks 
truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with 
humility” 
1 
State Prosecuting Attorneys  
Prosecutors represent the citizens of the state, not necessarily a particular victim of a crime. States vary 
in how they organize the groups of attorneys hired to represent the state’s interest. Ordinarily, the official 
with the primary responsibility for prosecuting state violations is the local prosecutor who is referred to 
as the “district attorney”, “county attorney”, or “state’s attorney”. Local prosecutors are usually elected 
from a single county or a group of counties combined into a prosecutorial district. In many states, the 
state attorney general’s office has the authority that trumps over the local prosecutors’ authority, but in 
practice, the state attorney general rarely intervenes in local matters. The state attorney general’s office 
will intervene, for example, if there is a conflict of interest or when requested by the district attorney. It is 
not uncommon for a small local prosecutor’s office faced with the prosecution of a major, complex, time-
consuming trial, to request the aid of the attorney general’s office. In these smaller offices, there may be 
insufficient resources to handle complicated prosecutions and still keep up with the day-to-day filings and 
cases. 
The prosecuting attorney and the attorney general ordinarily are the only officials with authority to 
prosecute violations of state law. City attorneys may be hired to prosecute city ordinances, but these 
attorneys primarily specialize in civil matters. When city attorneys and prosecuting attorneys have different 
policies for treating minor offenses, the result may be disparate, or different, treatment of similarly situated 
offenders. This raises a concern of inconsistent application of the law. Additionally, different county 
prosecutors may follow different policies on which matters they will charge, the use of diversion programs, 
the use of plea bargaining, and the use of certain trial tactics. To limit some of these differences, some states 
have used statewide training, and district attorneys’ conferences. Still, the policies and practices are far from 
uniform. 
Generally, assistant prosecutors, called deputy district attorneys, are hired as “at will” employees by the 
elected district attorney. Historically, the political party of the applicant was a key criterion, and newly 
elected prosecutors would make a virtual clean sweep of the office and hire outsiders from the former office. 
Now, most offices hire on a non-partisan, merit-oriented, basis. 
Most states require that the prosecutor be a member of the state bar. Some states also require that he or 
1. 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 
ALISON S. BURKE, DAVID CARTER, BRIAN FEDOREK, TIFFANY MOREY, LORE RUTZ-BURRI, AND SHANELL
SANCHEZ
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