CHC 1979-01-30 - Laserfiche WebLink

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ments which the court really does not look at and does not have anything to do with, so to speak. MR. SCHUTTE: But that little walk from your office to courtroom may suddenly change your mind as to whether this is really a necessary act to do. All I am saying is this, that what you are suggesting here may very well help you in your work towards crime, etc. , etc. , the type of crime that you may read about today. However, we also have to think about that there are other individuals that must be dealt with under the same provisions of this Charter and what we are doing is not specifically tailoring this for the everyday criminal. This is open for everybody, whether he is an everyday criminal or just a citizen of this state or this county. The power is tremendous , I would say, because you even have the power to punish. MR. ONO: No, that is incorrect, the court would have the power to punish. We do not have that power. There is a very big difference. MR. SCHUTTE: Yes , but I am just reading what you have suggested here. What I am reading here, is that correct, or incorrect? MR. ONO: The proper court has the power to punish as a contempt of the court any refusal to comply. Our office would not have that power. So you still have the: judicial buffer inbetween. We are not trying to usurp anybodys rights. In fact, I think our office has always defended the rights of people. MR. SCHUTTE: I understand that. All I 'm trying to say is that this is a very broad thing here and all you are asking us to believe is that the Prosecutor' s office is straight down the line and does not move from side to side. . .and it is kind of hard to believe, you know, everybody being human this is not going to happen. MR. ONO: I 'm not asking you to believe that because I am not naive in the sense that I believe that all Prosecutors in the world are straight-arrow. I would like to hope so. . . that we all are. . . that we all believe in the Constitu- tion. . .that we all believe that we have to toe-the-line. I think this is the way it should be but there are safeguards. Constitu- tional safeguards that still would be available to any citizen of the county or of the state, for that matter, that could still override this particular Sectionand among those safeguards , of course, as I said is the motion to quash the subpoena. He can also file a civil suit against our office for malicious prose- cution. We can be turned in to the disciplinary council , again, for malicious prosecution or =prosecutorial misconduct which would mean that our license would be lifted or suspended or even revoked completely. There are a lot of safeguards involved here. It is not a power that is completely without any checks or balance. -12-