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Common Dreams reports
Reviled Florida State Attorney Angela Corey lost her reelection bid on [August 30], prompting widespread celebration as the woman The Nation once suggested was "the cruelest prosecutor in America" was ousted.
"Corey's loss is an encouraging sign that the public will no longer tolerate overzealous and unprincipled criminal prosecutions, including women and children", University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks said in a statement.
Corey, whose eight-year tenure in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit Court saw her charge 77 children as adults in 2016 alone and sentence more people to death than any other Florida prosecutor, gained widespread notoriety for her inadequate prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, and for seeking a 60-year sentence for Marissa Alexander, a domestic violence survivor with three children, for firing a warning shot in the direction of her abusive husband. (Alexander spent three years in prison.)
[...] Corey was defeated by unknown opponent and corporate lawyer Melissa Nelson, who will now face off with write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election--although Jacksonville media noted that no write-in candidate has ever been elected to the state attorney position in Florida, and that Leigh has yet to make a single campaign appearance.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @05:38PM
Modded +1 Insightful. You are absolutely correct.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 03 2016, @10:37AM
Even the most primitive systems of justice had a sense of proportionality (eg, "eye for an eye" justice among other things restricted how much punishment could be inflicted by making it equal to the original harm, at least how the lawgiver in question (such as Hammurabi) perceived the harm).
And law in democratic societies has been in large part about protecting the weak from the strong (again such as Hammurabi's code of law). What we see here is someone in a trusted position of power doing the exactly opposite of justice, preying on the weak and pursuing shameful punishments for minor crime, for personal gain and status. This prosecutor and the people who supported her have betrayed us and have hurt many people in our society for frivolous and often mercenary reasons.
I doubt we've heard the last of Corey. And I doubt the people who voted for her in the first place have learned any sort of lesson. But maybe the US (and the world in general) can curb the abuses of both law enforcement and of a public which is disinterested in the consequences of voting for such evil.