October 19, 2021
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District attorneys refuse to prosecute some GOP-led laws - Yahoo News

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2019, file photo, Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk speaks in Nashville, Tenn. Progressive prosecutors around the country are increasingly declaring they just won't enforce some GOP-backed state laws, a strategy at work in response to some of the most controversial new changes in recent years. Funk has made a habit of resisting GOP-passed laws. He says enforcing them would "do little to promote public health, and even less to promote public safety." (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When Republican lawmakers in Tennessee blocked a policy to ease up on low-level marijuana cases, Nashville's top prosecutor decided on a workaround: He just didn't charge anyone with the crime.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Gwinnett County solicitor vowed not to punish anyone for the crime of distributing food or water to voters in line. Tampa’s chief prosecutor says a law that allows law enforcement to detain protesters until their court date is “an assault on our democracy.” And a district attorney in Douglas County, Kansas, promised not to enforce a new state law that makes it harder for nonpartisan groups and neighbors and candidates to collect and return absentee ballots for voters.

Progressive prosecutors around the country are increasingly declaring they just won’t enforce some GOP-backed state laws, a strategy at work in response to some of the most controversial new changes in recent years — near-total abortion bans, voting restrictions, limits on certain protest activity, laws aimed at LGBTQ people, and restrictions on mask requirements.

The elected law enforcement leaders say they’re just doing what is right as support has grown for changing a system they believe has relied too heavily on locking people up, particularly for low-level, nonviolent offenses.

But politics is also at play here. These lawyers live in deep blue districts where their decisions are popular with voters, and they have to be reelected.

“The real limit on this is political,” said William & Mary Law School professor Jeffrey Bellin. “These prosecutors have to stand for election almost everywhere in the country. Ultimately, the limit on this is popularity.”

Prosecutors wield wide discretion over whom to charge with crimes, and they can hold off based on factors that include the strength of an individual case, the severity of the offense and, sometimes, the prosecutor’s views on a law’s constitutionality.

Last October, more than 70 prosecutors from blue districts around the country publicized that they won’t bring charges under increasingly stringent laws that states have passed against abortion because they “should not and will not criminalize healthcare decisions,” even if the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade is eroded or overturned.



source: https://news.yahoo.com/district-attorneys-refuse-prosecute-gop-042920290.html

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