POLICING PONTIUS PILATE: POLICE VIOLENCE, LOCAL PROSECUTORS, AND LEGITIMACY

As America faces a crisis in the public faith in the criminal justice system's ability to hold police officers accountable under the law, the focus has turned to the role of prosecutors. Many reformers believe that they have found the current system's weak point: the close relationship between local police and prosecutors. This relationship can lead to favoritism and lax enforcement exemplified by the use of the opaque grand jury procedure. The proposed solutions therefore have focused on cutting out local prosecutors from police accountability efforts, and replacing them with special, independent-either federal, or at least politically insulated-prosecutors. But an examination of the actual effects of the disempowennent of local pi-osecutors cautions strongly against such steps. The crisis of faith in the criminal justice system is real, as is the inherent tension between cooperating with local police one day and prosecuting them the next. Completely removing that tension, however, would needlessly sacrifice the experience and ability of the local prosecutors who could most decisively enforce accountability, and cripple the political measures that local communities are beginning to use to force them to do so. Instead, a multi-tier system of checks could use independent layers of review to augment, rather than replace, local prosecutors, while still maintaining local political control over the officials who hold officers of the law accountable.