Walter: Prosecutors Should Be Held Accountable
A killer is on the loose, and now, for all we know, half-way around the world because the state's attorney of Will County was busy-busy holding an innocent man in jail. A not-uncommon blunder in the city and suburbs of Chicago: a state's attorney arresting and prosecuting an innocent man.
You know why, don't you? Because state's attorneys are elected. They are politicians, like all politicians, in one office, chomping on the bit for another, looking for crooks to put in jail, and then to be interviewed on the 10 o'clock news.
State's attorneys are so into making a splash, so in a hurry to be famous, that some of them sometimes – more often than people know – screw up so much that an innocent man is prosecuted and sentenced to life in jail.
And 20 or 30 years later, when the truth comes out and the innocent man is released, the state's attorney says, "Oops, I'm-sorry," and he takes off on another run for office.
Next time that happens, how about arresting the state's attorney and putting him in jail for 20 or 30 years?
