> > I have a good friend who moved from working in the public defenders office
>(as a PD) to working in the DA's office (as an ASA). She felt she could do
>more good there. She held to the belief that hundreds of innocent people
>were being prosecuted and not getting proper defense council so she went to
>work as a PD. After three years she realized that an innocent person being
>prosecuted is rare.
>
>Took her three years -- a real idealist! Most of my (left and liberal)
>friends in LS learned in in a summer interning with the PD or doing
>crimianl defense work. I have encountered --maybe -- three probably
>actually innocent defendants in my own work as a judicial law clerk and a
>lawyer.
She was very idealistic and not just a little naive. She's at lot more jaded now. Many people told her early on that thousands of innocent people are not being prosecuted for crimes that they didn't commit as that would take much needed resources but she clung to the idea until she was no longer able to.
> > It seems that if you are a
>prosecutor trying to screw people this is a pretty powerful position from
>which to do it very effectively. These seem to be the people most often
>rewarded in the DA's office.
>
>Well, convictions are rewarded. But not screwing people per se.
She complains that it isn't just convictions but also how long the convictions are that matter. Getting an 8 year conviction "counts" for more than a 3 year conviction. That certainly would encourage screwing people for personal gain.
> > Salary for an entry level position as an ASA in Cook County Illinois is
>$43,XXX. My friend makes about that, (after a few years on the job) but she
>isn't in Illinois. She also said the entry level pay was identical for
>either position where she lives, something that did surprise me.
>
>Better than I thought. Still, that's a public interest salary -- I could
>have had a job at the ACLU for that a few years ago.
>
>Why does it surprise you that PDs are paid the same as ASAs?
>
>jks
I can only assume that I thought PD's make less because you do hear in the mass media from time to time that under paying PD's is part of the problem. It discourages good attorneys from staying in the job, over fills their case loads and is part of what is responsible for poor defendants getting a lower grade of legal care than wealthy ones. I've never heard that under paying ASA's can cause pretty much the same thing. Encourage them to go after defendants who are less able to defend themselves in order to get higher conviction rates. Since convictions are generally more important than exonerating defendants that, in all truth, the state already feels are guilty why pay as much to defend them as to convict? Put your funds where your priorities lie. Until I was informed otherwise these ideas seemed quite plausible and I've certainly heard this repeated by others many times so I think the idea might be quite commonly held.
John Thornton