Public Prosecution in the United States

"A fearless and earnest prosecuting attorney, within the limits of his powers and perogatives, is a bulwark to the peace, safety and happiness of the people". 42 AmJur,"Prosecuting Attorneys", sec. 20, p. 255.

"The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility". Robert H. Jackson, April, 1940.

"[T]he prosecuting officer occupies a semi-judicial position: that he is charged with a large discretion, and that, while it is his duty to bring to justice those whom he believed to be guilty, it is equally his duty to protect the innocent and to refrain from prosecuting those against whom no sufficient or reasonable proofs can be found. In the course of his duty he sometimes has to stand between an incensed public sentiment, voiced by a clamorous press, and suspected persons against whom no proofs of crime can be found". Joseph Hodges Choate, May, 1909, New York Times.

"The selection of a District-Attorney is not so much a question of one party against another as it is of all honest people against all the crooks of every kind." Elihu Root, United States Secretary of State, November, 1905, New York The World, page 3.

"The district attorney, on any given day, is part lawyer, part policeman, part accountant, part investigator, part prosecutor, part defender of the innocent, part youth counselor and part community adviser". Frank Hogan, former New York County District Attorney. "Frank Hogan Keeping Things Decent and Proper", Patrice O'Shaugnessy, NY Daily News, 11/2/1999.