The fact that the Department of Justice is defending these public actions and statements by its own employees is disturbing.
The Executive Branch
Charged with executing the laws, hence its name, the Executive Branch carries the solemn duty to uphold justice with integrity and restraint.
The Department of Justice
The Department of Justice, by both name and purpose, serves as the prosecutorial and constitutional advocate of the Executive Branch. Its mandate is not political victory, but justice itself.
It is therefore wholly inappropriate, and may rise to the level of prosecutorial misconduct, for the DOJ or its representatives to engage in or defend conduct that publicly prejudices a pending case.
As the Supreme Court made clear in Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333 (1966), and Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78 (1935), the government bears a special obligation to preserve the fairness and impartiality of the judicial process.
Comments, whether by the DOJ, the President, or even the defendant, can so taint the public sphere that a fair and impartial jury becomes impossible to secure. Such circumstances can justify a mistrial or render a fair proceeding unattainable.
Principles of American Justice
1.Justice must guarantee the Right to a Fair Trial.
2.When government officials make statements that prejudice that right, justice itself is undermined.
3.Even the guilty are entitled to a fair trial untainted by governmental influence or public condemnation.
4.Our standard, “innocent until proven guilty,” is the foundation of all liberty. Without it, we are not free.
Throughout history, the presumption of innocence has never existed to shield the guilty from consequence; it exists to protect the innocent from the power of a government with ill intent.
If the guilty have no rights, then neither do the innocent.
We must be better than this because the future of Liberty in America depends upon it.