“Crowded court dockets, bureaucracy, budgetary pressures, and careerism,” says Roberts, have “contributed to elevating ambition over justice.” [2] Robert Merkle, Former U.S. Attorney in the Reagan administration, puts it quite frankly: Prosecution is “a result-oriented process today, fairness be damned.” Prosecutors, he tells us, are pressured to justify budgets with convictions, “and that causes them to prosecute absolutely bogus cases to get those statistics.” [3]

The fundamental principles of legal fairness and justice are cynically ignored by almost every prosecutor in the system today in a frenzied chase after gold stars for their performance boards – i.e., more convictions at any cost.

“Withholding exculpatory evidence has become routine,” states Roberts, “and suborned perjury is often the only ‘evidence’ in a case.”