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"Unfair coverage eroding trust"
Another View: Robert Barton
| Thursday, Oct 19 2006 2:34 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Oct 19 2006 2:34 PM
This item was originally published on Jan. 28, 2003.
As president of the Kern County Prosecutor's Association, I feel a responsibility to write this letter. District Attorney Ed Jagels, the late Stephen Tauzer and the two chief deputies in our office are not members of our association. This letter is not being written in defense of Jagels. He is capable of doing so himself.
I am writing on behalf of all the hardworking, ethical, public servants who work daily as Kern County prosecutors, living up to our motto: "Seeking justice for all."
Your articles and editorial erode the community's confidence in their prosecutors and, in your words, "discredit Kern County's justice system." That is tragic and unfair. The suggestions in your stories of unequal justice have no basis in fact or credible evidence. There is absolutely no connection, except your unsupported assertions, to link earlier cases to Tauzer's murder.
Except for a few prosecutors, the vast majority of us, including myself, were not even working here 20 years ago. In addition, there are now so many checks in the system the investigating officers, follow-up detectives, police administration, prosecutors who file cases, their supervisors, the grand jury, the attorney general, the media and the public at large that no district attorney could get away with protecting someone from prosecution.
In fact, the judiciary, probation officers, the deputy attorney general and the media were involved in the Lance Hillis case.
You are unfair and misinformed about our current office morale. Are we happy about your articles disparaging a prosecutor who was a vital part of our office? Of course not! Sadly, he is not here to defend himself. Your paper need only look at the coverage of his funeral to find the many accolades for the service he provided this county and the state from prosecuting Mexican Mafia murderers to revamping the child support system.
Our attorneys are not only colleagues, but friends. Within a period of about nine months, we lost one deputy district attorney to cancer, a second had a near-death experience in childbirth, a third had a very serious biking accident and, most devastating, Steve Tauzer was murdered. Forgive us if the mood in our office has not been all smiles. We care about one another.
Yet we carry on with the mission of seeking justice for Kern County. We come to work every day knowing that we will be dealing with the tragedy of broken lives, victims, witnesses, family members and the accused.
We know that as prosecutors, we have the power to greatly affect people's lives. We are fully aware of the responsibility that goes along with that power. We carry out our assignments knowing that someone on one side or the other is going to be unhappy with us.
We do this for the same reason Steve Tauzer did because we believe we can make our community a safer, better place to live. If you want to take him to task for assisting Lance Hillis, that may be newsworthy. In fact, it may be the motive for his murder.
However, to sully his reputation by associating his name with criminals and those of sordid reputation is shameful, especially when you do it simply by saying "like Tauzer" before paragraphs and then making no actual connection.
Even worse, your editorial called into the question the integrity of all the prosecutors in our office. That is simply unjust. A defendant has the right to ask for a change of location for trial if publicity may affect the outcome. Prosecutors and victims do not have that right.
When the only paper in town makes a statement implying we are not trustworthy, that erodes public confidence. There is nothing we can do about it. We only hope that a victim or his family does not have to pay the price for this unfounded accusation because a reader who becomes a juror acquits a guilty party based on a lack of trust in the prosecutor.
Robert Barton is a deputy district attorney and president of the Kern County Prosecutor's Association. Another View is a critical response to a Californian editorial or story. The Californian reserves the right to reprint contributed commentaries in all formats, including on its Web page.