Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1906 — Duties of Prosecutors. [ARTICLE]

Duties of Prosecutors.

Governor Folk, of Missouri, in interview published in the Indianapolis News, contends that it is the duty of a prosecuting attorney to investigate law violations on his motion and says that the idea that the prosecutor must wait until some one tells him that a crime has been committed “has caused many a prosecuting attorney to sit crosslegged in idle ease while corrn ption raged around him unheeded and unchecked.” Continuing he said: “Public officials do not have to embezzle money in order to be dishonest There is an embezzlement of power as well as an embezzlement of money. The people coner upon prosecutors certain powers which they should exercise for the public good. If the prosecutor fails or declines to enforce the law without just cause, he is the embezzler of the power conferred on him by the people.” Commenting on this the News says: “One who accepts this theory —and it must be accepted—can only conclude that the crime of “embezzlement of power” is widely prevalent in Indiana. As a rule, our prosecuting attorneys “sit cross legged in idle ease” and do only that which they can not well avoid doing.