I served as U.S. attorney for Utah under President Clinton. My grandfather held the same position under President Truman. During my years in office, I discovered that many people did not know much about my job.
The president appoints U.S. attorneys with the advice and consent of the Senate, and they serve in the Justice Department under the U.S. attorney general.
There are 93 federal court districts in the U.S. Each has a U.S. attorney, who is the chief federal law enforcement officer for the district. Utah constitutes one federal court district. More populated states, such as California with four, have more.
The U.S. attorney is responsible for the prosecution of federal crimes and also represents the United States in civil cases. The criminal cases include bank robbery, drug offenses, environmental crimes, financial fraud and public corruption. Federal prison sentences can be very substantial.
The U.S. attorney works closely with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies as well as state and local police, sheriffs and prosecutors.
U.S. attorneys exercise significant power. They investigate with grand jury subpoenas and testimony, search warrants and wiretaps. They indict, prosecute and recommend sentences. They make hard decisions every day that profoundly affect people's lives.
With great power comes solemn responsibility. Every U.S. attorney knows the eloquent admonition from Justice George Sutherland, Utah's only U.S. Supreme Court justice: "The United States attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done."
Like judges, prosecutors must seek impartial justice. If politics or even the appearance of politics becomes entangled in a prosecutor's work, his or her credibility suffers, the legitimacy of the process suffers and every ensuing decision will be suspect.
Prosecutors - U.S. Attorneys, state attorneys general and district attorneys - are appointed or elected through a political process. But politics must end when prosecution begins. The integrity of the criminal justice system depends on this principle.
Before the U.S. Senate confirmed my nomination to be U.S. attorney, Sen. Orrin Hatch gave me one piece of advice, and that was to be fair. It was good advice, consistent with Justice Sutherland, who also said of the U.S. attorney: "While he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones."
As a presidential appointee, a U.S. attorney serves at the pleasure of the president and may be removed without cause. However, disclosures about the recent removal of eight U.S. attorneys suggest that the separation of prosecution and politics was compromised - not by the prosecutors, but by legislative and administration officials.
As the facts of this episode unfold, the public needs to be assured that prosecutors at all levels are making impartial decisions untainted by politics or other improper considerations.
That assurance requires a commitment not only from prosecutors themselves, but also those who hold other positions of authority in the executive and legislative branches. Such a mutual commitment to the political independence of prosecutors is necessary so that justice shall be done.
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* SCOTT M. MATHESON JR. is a professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He served as U.S. attorney for Utah from 1993 to 1997.
