According to WCBSTV.COM U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia announced yesterday that Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will not face criminal charges for paying high-profile prostitutes to travel across state lines to “engage in prostitution.”
The Department of Justice determined that campaign funds were not used to pay the prostitutes, which is apparently all the DoJ cares about. That’s right, because Spitzer didn’t violate the sanctity of a campaign, the fact that he had multiple illegal inter-state sex purchases doesn’t matter. Garcia state this was a matter of DoJ policy:
In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this Office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.
This is outrageous, not because I think prostitution is a horrendous crime (maybe it shouldn’t even be illegal), but because I think Spitzer should be held to the same standards as the rest of us. Certainly Spitzer believed that everyone should be held to the letter of the law. For Spitzer, this meant digging up very old laws still on the books to go after corporations he wished to demonize. You can check out just how zealous Spitzer was in his career as a prosecutor in CEI’s report on the nation’s worst Attorneys General from a couple years back.
We should all serve the same prison sentence or pay the same fine for the same crime. Just because Spitzer “took responsibility” by resigning from his office, doesn’t mean that he’s been held responsible, not according to the law at least.
Do our resident legal experts know if Spitzer can be prosecuted by someone other than the DoJ for his offenses? I would hope so. If not, it just shows that the political class really is above the law.
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What's extremely telling here is that they “concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.” The public interest. That's obfuscation: because the DoJ's powers are so broad they get to claim that any action they take is justified because it falls under a value so huge and undefined any decision they make falls with it.
I'll admit, it's tempting to wish for that DoJ had thrownthe book at Spitzer.
But I'm happy they didn't. What laws did he break? As far as I know, only laws prohibiting the solicitation of prostitutes. Most libertarians (including myself) do not believe these laws ought to exist. Sure, Spitzer waged several legal witch-hunts while in office, and he often picked people to “be made an example of.” But that doesn't mean what he did was right.
In addition, if the DoJ doesn't normally prosecute prostitution-related offenses absent evidence of additional illegal conduct, then to claim that “the political class really is above the law” is inaccurate. Had Spitzer been anybody else, the DoJ would have acted the same way, or so it claims.
Unless there is reason to believe the DoJ is lying about its own policies with regard to prosecuting prostitution offenses, then I don't see anything outrageous about the decision not to prosecute Spitzer.
In whos interest do you want them to adminster justice? I'd say making a judgement call about what enforcement actions are and are not in the public interest is exactly what they should be doing.
Exactly my thought. Why in the world would a libertarian think tank advocate prosecuting someone for prostitution? Seems pretty odd. I guess the “full service approach” to public policy requires crossing over to the dark side once in a while.
I don't think prostitution should be a crime, but politicians shouldn't be allowed to make something a crime and then not be prosecuted under their own bad laws. I don't want a political class being exempt from all sorts of liberty-destroying laws–that's what we're seeing with Spitzer being let off the hook. Libertarians have to support laws being applied uniformly or else bad laws will grow in number as politicians will have nothing to worry about when passing them.
So, you're an advocate of the rule of (bad) law. Fair enough, but how many of the other Johns were prosecuted? Or maybe we should PICK on pols. That wouldn't be the rule of law.
So what is this animosity towards Spritzer all about? All I know about him is that he “paid to play” (big deal!) and that he proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. I thought it was way cool to come down on the side of illegal immigrants when all the other pols were competing with each other to see who could be meaner, nastier and more unforgiving.
Seems like a decent guy to me. At least by my standards.