The Trump justice department acted within its constitutional authority to drop the prosecution of Mayor Adams. The president, through his attorney general, has the power to determine prosecutorial priorities — such as the deportation of illegal aliens over the prosecution of a mayor who he believes could help him implement that policy.
Danielle Sassoon (who once was a student researcher for me and is a friend) had the right to refuse to play a role in dropping the prosecution of Adams, who she understandably believes is guilty of serious crimes that were neutrally investigated for years before Trump assumed office.
She, like any public official, has the prerogative to resign or be fired rather than agree to file a motion she believes is wrong.
In her resignation letter, Sassoon said her decision was a matter of ethics because she believed that the decision to drop the charges was part of a quid pro quo.
But dropping prosecutions or reducing charges on the basis of quid pro quos is common in all prosecutorial offices.
I have represented numerous criminal defendants who were offered quid pro quos by the Southern District and other prosecutors. The most common offer is, “We will drop the charges against you, if you testify or wear a wire against the higher-up in your company or organization.“
Another common quid pro quo is: ”If you are willing to plead guilty, we will reduce the charges.”
Indeed, it is fair to say that quid pro quos in the form of plea bargain offers are essential to the operation of that office, since the vast majority of prosecutions are resolved by quid pro quo plea deals.
Nor are there constitutional differences between the kind of quid pro quo plea allegedly offered Adams and the more traditional quid pro quo plea bargains offered to ordinary criminal defendants.
They both involve personal benefits offered to a criminal in exchange for the defendant helping the government. The fact that the help sought here involved a “quo” that is outside of the specific case — help in enforcing deportation policy — makes no constitutional difference.
There are, of course, good quid pro quos and bad ones, and Sassoon reasonably believed this was a bad one that crossed an ethical line.
Whether the current dispute is more a question of ethics or policy, it probably could have been avoided had the Justice Department in Washington done originally what it finally had to do: namely have the main Justice office in Washington file the motion to drop the charges, rather than trying to compel a reluctant acting US Attorney to personally ask that the charges be dropped by her.
It is unusual, though not unheard of, for main Justice to take a case over from the local US Attorney’s office. That’s what ultimately happened when the motion to drop the prosecution was submitted by an assistant attorney general in the public integrity unit.
Quid pro quos are, for better or worse, an integral part of our criminal justice system. Some may not be fair, but without them there would be few if any cooperating witnesses or guilty pleas, and the system would come to a grinding halt.
That doesn’t mean Sassoon and the other prosecutors who resigned were wrong in refusing to implement the Adams quid pro quo. This was a case in which both sides acted on what they believed were the best interest of our nation and the rule of law.
Alan Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
