ABSTRACT
The power of the prosecutor in the United States has been well documented. According to former U.S. attorney general and Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, "The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America." 1 Yale criminologist Albert Reiss asserts that the prosecutor exercises "the greatest discretion in the formally organized criminal justice network." 2 Wall Street investment bankers indicted for securities trading violations in the 1980s will attest to the might of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. 3 Many citizens claimed that the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia abused his discretionary authority by his "selective prosecution" of the mayor of the district in the highly publicized cocaine case of The United States v. Marion Barry.
