Case Against Former Judge
Re “L.A. County’s Dual Standard of Justice Marches On,” Opinion, Jan. 11: Charles Lindner has done a disservice to public prosecutors and the county’s citizens by suggesting that the district attorney’s office should have ignored its legal and ethical obligations when considering charges against former Judge George W. Trammell III. As public prosecutors, we are legally and ethically obligated to evaluate each case on its individual merits to determine if there is sufficient admissible evidence that would warrant a conviction. The subject of each inquiry is treated equally, no matter his or her social stature.
After an exhaustive review, we concluded that filing such charges would violate our obligations as public prosecutors because we did not believe that we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed.
We in no way approve of former Judge Trammell’s conduct; we simply concluded that filing criminal charges against him would violate the standards against which we evaluate allegations of criminal conduct in each case that we review. In this case, as in the thousands of cases reviewed annually by deputy district attorneys, we conscientiously applied our filing standards without regard to the profession or social stature of the subject of the inquiry.
RONALD H. CARROLL
Director, Central Operations
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Office
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