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July 7, 2024
How many US Presidents have been a local prosecutor? Who was last major party candidate with this pedigree?
It is perhaps a bit early to start thinking about the potential criminal justice policies of the various folks who might replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party 2024 nominee for President. (Or is it? is it? is it?) But I got to thinking about how a new candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket might reshape the campaign's engagement with a range of criminal justice issues (as well as many other issues, of course). That thinking, in turn, led me to realize that two oft-suggested potential replacements for Biden have served as local prosecutors: Vice President Kamala Harris served as District Attorney of San Francisco for seven years; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer served as Prosecuting Attorney of Ingham County for five months.
VP Harris also had a lengthy tenure as Attorney General of California, and Pennslyvania Governor Josh Shapiro also served as his state's Attorney General. But service in the role of a local prosecutor strikes me as "different in kind" regarding knowledge of and connections to criminal justice issues. And so it seems notable that VP Harris' professional history probably makes her the person with the most significant criminal justice background being serious discussed as a serious presidential possibility since perhaps Earl Warren in 1952. (Anyone remebder what happened to that guy?)
The quesitions in the title of this post highlight that I am not a presidential historian and have no sense of whether it used to be more common for Presidents and presidential aspirants to have significant criminal justice experience. This webpage reviewing the "The Long History of America’s Lawyer Presidents," notes that Presidents James Knox Polk and William McKinley served as county prosecutors. (Side note about lawyer presidents: I believe that since 1984, Democrats have nominated a lawyer for President every cycle except in 2000; over that time, the the GOP nominated a lawyer only in 1996 and 2012.)
Given that the last president with history as a state Attorney General was fined and disbarred due to his behavior while in office, I do not think there is a sound basis to assert or suggest that a President with notable criminal justice service is sure to be particularly attentive to legal rules or norms. Still, there is something of a movie-script quality to the possibility that the 2024 presidential election could involve one candidate with historic experiences as a prosecutor and another candidate with historic experience as a criminal defendant. Interesting times.
July 7, 2024 at 03:49 PM | Permalink
Comments
Although he never ran for President, long-serving U.S. Senator Strom Thurman (R.-S.C.) served as a local prosecutor early in his political career. The current Governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear (D.-Ky.) served as Attorney General before winning as Governor (he is now in his second term), but his law firm experience is large firm corporate and government work. The most significant place to find a newly prominent politician with serious criminal law experience is the new British Prime Minister, Kier Stratham. He spent years on the defense side of cases, including defending death penalty cases from former British possessions [England has not had a death penalty for many years]. He was also a human rights lawyer, monitoring conditions in jails and prisons. Eventually, he switched sides and was appointed the Director of the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales. There, he prosecuted Members of Parliament, who had lied on their expense reimbursement forms, among others. His highest profile case was a racially based homicide of a promising 21-year-old black college student, stabbed to death by a small group of young white men at a bus stop. Initially, there were no witnesses with sufficiently detailed information to pursue any charges, although the police had a good idea who had committed the crime. Under the British system, the death man's family pursued a privately funded criminal homicide case against the two main suspects, but the jury returned a defense verdict. An internal investigation revealed that the initial police investigation had been incompetent. Stratham devoted substantial resources to reinvestigating the case and developed substantial new evidence against the suspect, who were then protected by the Double Jeopardy clause. At Stratham's instigation, Parliament changed the absolute rule against Double Jeopardy in homicide cases only, and there is now a provision that if substantial new evidence is discovered, the acquitted murder defendants can be retried! In the re-trial of the two acquitted suspects from the young black college student's homicide were convicted. So, while not many American Presidential candidates have much criminal prosecution experience, the newly appointed Labour Prime Minister of England does have a substantial criminal law background.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jul 7, 2024 7:43:55 PM
Let's run this guy for Prez.
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/didnt-know-greek-statues-could-jizz-interior-department-comms-staffer-spends-his-workdays-posting-sexual-comments-online/
Posted by: federalist | Jul 8, 2024 2:50:54 PM
Not sure what your link has to do with any sentencing matters, federalist. But I do wonder about the persons who were sentenced by the federal district judge who just resigned for seemingly worse professional misconduct: https://media.alaskapublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/22-90121-News-Release-Order-and-Certification.pdf
I especially wonder about anyone who was sentenced between the time of the misconduct order (on May 23, 2024) and the official resignation (on July 8, 2024). Not sure if there would be a viable legal argument to demand resentencing, but I would certainly be thinking about seeking some reconsideration effort is I represented someone sentenced by this guy when he was under scrutiny and lying to those investigating.
Posted by: Doug B | Jul 8, 2024 9:30:31 PM
Doug B.: What you are suggesting about defendants seeking re-sentencing after a U.S. District Judge resigns following misconduct happened in 2010 and 2011, when I practiced law in Atlanta. U. S. District Senior Judge Jack Camp was arrested by the F.B.I. for crimes committed while he was having an affair with a stripper who was also a convicted felon. The Judge had been supplying her with many kinds of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana and oxycodone. He had also given her his laptop work computer, which really belonged to the Government. The Judge was charged with the same gun crime as Hunter Biden has recently faced, 922(g)(3). The prosecutors gave the Judge a pass on the charges that could have resulted in a mandatory consecutive sentence of 5 years, for using or carrying a firearm in connection with a drug crime. the stripper was working as an informant for the F.B.I. and wore a wire on Judge Camp. He drove her to a drug buy, where he was recorded saying that he had brought his two pistols with him to ensure that there would be no problems. A District Judge from Maryland was brought in to handle Judge Camp's case, since every Judge in the Eleventh Circuit recused himself or herself. Ultimately, Judge Camp pleaded guilty to a few of the minor crimes, including aiding and abetting a drug addict in obtaining narcotics and giving her his government-issued computer. The Government asked for a 15-day jail sentence, but the Judge imposed a 30-dy sentence. It has never been clear where Judge Camp served that sentence. As part of his plea, he also retired as a Judge, but was permitted to keep his lifetime pension, which is now more than $250,000 per year. Judge Camp's defense lawyers blamed his aberrant behavior on a neurological injury he supposedly suffered a year or two earlier when he had a bicycling accident. Given this claim, it is not surprising that many defendants who had been sentenced by Judge Camp between 2008 and 2010 sought to be re-sentenced by a different Judge; but only a handful succeeded in actually obtaining re-sentencing, since most of their sentences had been within the Guidelines Range suggested in their plea agreements. What happened with Judge Camp shocked the Georgia bar, as he had always had a great reputation as a practicing attorney and as a U. S. District Judge. Yesterday, I read the Ninth Circuit Judicial Counsel's Report on the recently resigned Judge from Alaska. It appears to me that he is emotionally immature and needy for a man of his age and intellect. But you should know that we have a U. S. District Judge here in the Eastern District of Kentucky who ended up marrying a woman who had been his first law clerk after he assumed the bench. It's not clear whether they were romantic while she worked for him, or whether their dating and romantic relationship began after she stopped working for him.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jul 9, 2024 9:01:34 AM
Doug: The closer analogy to the U. S. District Judge who just resigned in Alaska is the case of Judge Samuel B. Kent from Galveston, Texas. Judge Kent's case has a tragic element to it. During the 5 years that Judge Kent's wife fought brain cancer, before dying, Judge Kent developed a drinking problem that compromised his judgment. Between 2003 and 2007, he sexually harassed and had sex with his secretary and a case manager in the Clerk's Office of the Courthouse he ran. Eventually, the two women filed complaints with the Fifth Circuit Judicial Counsel, and Judge Kent got caught lying to the investigators, as appears to have happened with this Alaska Judge. Judge Kent pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice, and admitted to the 2 sexual assaults. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison, a $1,000 fine and $6,500 in restitution. The BOP transferred Judge Kent to the Florida Department of Corrections, where he taught G.E.D. classes. He served the last 6 months of his sentence on home confinement with electronic monitoring at his hunting cabin in West Texas. Judge Kent had refused to resign his judgeship until the House of Representatives commenced impeachment proceedings.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jul 9, 2024 9:23:47 AM
What a scumbag that judge is. Good riddance. Not as bad as Manuel Real.
Posted by: federalist | Jul 9, 2024 9:46:24 AM
Doug, perhaps not on point, but you got a flavor for the rot in the federal government, and hopefully some of your readers did as well.
Posted by: federalist | Jul 9, 2024 12:05:53 PM
