Pubdate: March 16, 1999 
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 1999 Los Angeles Times.
Contact:  (213) 237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
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Author: Samuel Goldfarb

PROSECUTORS

* Your March 7 Opinion article about prosecutorial conduct/misconduct
leads one to reflect.

The mentioned abuses and questionable procedures can probably be
traced to the practice in the past of certain prosecutors, who in
their zeal to convict Mafia members, drug traffickers and other
undesirables, acted, after obtaining the acquiescence of courts with
the same dislike of the undesirables, to bend and obviate the rules of
due process and fair play.  Apparently, once the wall of governmental
protection of due process and fair play for anyone is breached,
inexorably, the breach becomes wider and wider and zealous prosecutors
are then enabled to deny due process and fair play as they choose.

SAMUEL GOLDFARB
Retired Attorney
Sherman Oaks
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