Lawyers Get Theirs Legal System as Extortion Racket

Subtitled “An Unlikely Insider Reckons With Our Legal System” Part II of the book offers insights into how prosecutors and municipal attorneys can subvert the system.

Prosecutors excercise judgment at every stage, but they do so facing genuine constraints – limited resources, institutional expectations about which cases matter, and entrenched patterns of decdision making that can channel their discretion in ways that reproduce inequality without deliberate malice. (page 177)

But another institutional problem casts a shadow over this whole chapter: absolute prosecutorial immunity. This privilege, granted by the Supreme Court, protects prosecutors from civil liability even for deliberate misconduct in their advocacy role. It is a legal shield stronger than Superman’s skin; it fundamentally alters the prosecutorial environment. Immunity shelters the ethical prosecutor who makes a good-faith error. That’s fine. But is also protects the unscrupulous ones who knowingly hide evidence, present false testimony, or pursue charges they know to be baseless. Immunity says they can’;t be sued. Professional rules do not fill this gap. State bar officials – the people tasked with regulating the legal profession have been pusillanimous when facing prosecutorial misconduct. (page 182)

After handcuffs have been applied and booking photos taken, a line prosecutor, sometimes called a intake attorney, reviews the file and determines whether to file a charge or pass on prosecution (called declination)….In the misdemeanor world, declination rates hover around a measly 5 percent, which means prosecutors are mostly rubber-stamping police decisions (pge 187)

Absent conscious resistance, the machinery of prosecution can transform even the most noble intentions into instruments of the status quo. (page 194)

It took me longer to understand that while many lawyers work to advance civil rights issues like access, some municipal attorneys – working for the very cities we move through – have played a steady role in narrowing those guarantees of equality. (page 195)

But when I teach the required professional responsibility course that students take in their second or third year, I have to remind my students that legal ethics rules say that the governmental entity or official is the client of these lawyers, not us. (page 201)

Government attorneys exacerbate social inequalities when they defend certain kinds of police brutality claims involving Section 1983 – a federal law that allows citizen to sue public officials. (page 202)

Settlements can be a byproduct of fear – fear of a trial that reveals cover-ups, patterns of misconduct, and training deficiencies that could expose a city to more legal liability from other plaintiffs. (page 205)

Settlements often serve as a substitute for reform, leaving systemic issues intact. Ultimately, settlements with “no admission of wrongdoing” clauses do even more profound work. They embody discursive power in its rawest form – allowing cities to shape the narrative by framing massive financial payouts as prudent risk management or routing litigation avoidance, rather than acknowledgments of harm. It’s moral erasure, plain and simple. What emerges is a system that treats civil rights violations not as the moral or institutional failures they are, but as operational costs to be managed through legal maneuvering and monetized absolution. (page 207)