Destroying Our Criminal Justice System

With the election season heating up, there’s a lot of talk about reforming our criminal justice system and the role police and qualified immunity play within that system. But perhaps the biggest problem facing our criminal justice system is out-of-control prosecutors. With little accountability and no limits in place to prevent oversteps, criminal prosecutors are free to abuse the justice system without facing consequences.

While neither side of the political divide seems interested in solving this problem, only the left expresses concern about it and receives accolades from the media for its supposed efforts. The media consistently portrays left-wing prosecutors as well-intentioned reformers fighting a broken system. (READ MORE: Even Portland Is Fed Up with Progressive Policies )

Last year, the Los Angeles Times editorial board went so far as to say that the Republican opposition to Democrats’ “reforms” presented a threat to democracy. In October, ProPublica published a piece labeling one such prosecutor a “voice for change.”

Any resistance to these narratives is chalked up to right-wing obstruction. But make no mistake, these so-called progressives have no intention of reining in government abuse. Instead, they’ve prioritized ideology over criminal justice. You don’t have to look far to see that if a prosecution fits their narrative and ideology, they’re willing to break every rule in the book to see it through.

Take Andrew Weismann, an ultra-partisan Democrat who served as a federal prosecutor on the case of United States v. Brown in 2004. There, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that prosecutors brought an indictment for conduct that was not even a crime and, in the process, withheld evidence. And that’s not to mention the witness intimidation that occurred. Now, Weismann is a media darling of the left and an MSNBC contributor. NYU even hired him as a professor.

In addition to protecting their own, progressives have always used the criminal justice system to harass their political opponents. In 2022, FBI agents with guns drawn raided and terrorized Mark Houck and his family. Why? Because he shoved a Planned Parenthood volunteer who was harassing Mr. Houck’s eleven-year-old son.

A civil suit brought by the supposed victim had already been summarily dismissed. Even the far-left Philadelphia DA declined to prosecute. Not so with this politically minded Justice Department. They brought charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a statute that protects abortion clinics from harassment.

The Biden DOJ tried to send this man to prison for years because of a harmless shove in protection of his son. Thankfully, a jury found Houck not guilty of all counts.

Meanwhile, during this same period, Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to take action against those criminally harassing and attempting to intimidate the families of U.S. Supreme Court justices, something that 18 U.S. Code § 1507 expressly prohibits.

A few months ago, the Biden DOJ targeted and threatened a surgeon who blew the whistle on a hospital covertly performing transgender procedures. Now, the Biden administration has charged him with privacy violations under HIPAA, even though there is still no indication that he actually revealed information identifying any patient.

That’s just at the federal level. We see progressive local DAs targeting innocent people all the time when it suits their ideology and political objectives. Back in 2013, Wisconsin prosecutors went after the political supporters of Governor Scott Walker with no evidence, raiding their homes and seizing their phones and computers.

Time and time again left-wing prosecutors like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg will prosecute people using force to defend themselves while at the same time covering for the criminal attackers.

The powers to be on the left are not actually concerned with prosecutorial abuse per se. Instead, when it comes to using prosecutorial power, they prioritize rectifying perceived power imbalances in society at large and securing their political fortunes. We have a government abuse problem, not a social justice problem. (READ MORE: A Modest Proposal for Police Reform)

The ails of our criminal justice system center on the failure to check this government abuse. Real reform requires passing actual legislation and creating accountability for prosecutors. That means mandatory reporting laws, creating oversight offices, reforming ethics rules, creating new penalties, and so forth. The powers that be on both the right and the left have no real interest in such reforms. Instead, they ask you to put your trust in their prosecutors. The days of blindly trusting prosecutors must end.

Alex Xenos is an attorney and Young Voices contributor. His writing has appeared in Boston Herald, DC Journal, and NH Journal, among other publications. Follow him on Twitter: @AMXenos.