Attempted murder by jury

If you go after someone you know beyond a reasonable doubt is innocent of a crime, and try to charge them with it anyway, you clearly have a black heart. This seems to be a serious problem with prosecutors today, many of whom see their position as prosecutor as a gateway to a bigger and better political career, and not as one of the keystones of the legal system. Take a look at this, and you'll see why as bad as many police departments are, they are not guilty of the sort of cold-blooded evil that infects many prosecutors:

An Ingham County prosecutor and a detective knew before trial that video evidence showed Claude McCollum was in another building when a Lansing Community College professor was killed, according to a state police report obtained by the Lansing State Journal.

Still, prosecutors went ahead with the case, and McCollum was tried and convicted of murder.

McCollum, whose conviction was thrown out last year, is suing multiple agencies for damages. County prosecutors have always maintained they did not know of a 2005 report that described exonerating video evidence until after the trial began.

I'll be blunt and say that in a more just system, this prosecutor would be sentenced to execution for attempted homicide. There is no room for splitting hairs here. Even if the prosecutor does not seek the death penalty, it is such an egregious violation of every human right and basic human dignity, that society cannot afford to forgive even the most penitent perpetrator of this sort of thing. As they used to say in the Old Testament, "You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you."

TheAgitator has a post up about this right now about two doctors who have a long legacy of aiding and abetting injustice that has wrecked havoc on the legal system in Mississippi.

When things like this happen, let's be clear about the impact that these people have. They ruin as many lives as any criminal. In fact, there is absolutely no moral difference whatsoever between a prosecutor who is too proud to stop prosecuting a murder defendant he knows is innocent, and someone who commits cold-blooded murder. In a just system, both of them would be swinging from the gallows.