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The Prosecutors by Gary Delsohn Essay The Prosecutors by Gary Delsohn, depicts American justice at its best and worst, It reveals the secrets of the current legal system with information that are more awful and realistic than any small screen show or any thriller. The Prosecutors gives an insight into the real-life lawful dramas that are seen daily in our courtrooms. It informs, alerts, amuses, and even makes us angry at times about the miscarriages of justice, but eventually shows in harsh detail the particulars that go into the working of our legal system. Gary Delsohn, was for the first time allowed access to spend a year in a metropolitan prosecutors office. The author presents a fascinating; secret look at how Americas more overstrained legal system really operates. Perceived by John OMara, a hard-hitting, cynical homicide chief, and Jan Scully, a proficient District Attorney, The Prosecutors’, illustrates these committed civic servants at work. The cases that these two people come across in this one-year are unforgettable, a simple robbery that goes bad breaks down a family forever, an acclaimed doctor is charged for the murder of his own daughter. A twenty-five-year-old bitter case blows up and brings terrible pressure and inquiry to the D.A.s office, which involves Patty Hearst and the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army). A top-ranking state prosecutor’s son faces a possible death sentence for abduct, rape, and slaughter.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The most intriguing cases of all these were definitely the 1975 robbery and murder case at the Sacramento-area bank. It’s this SLA bank robbery case that clearly stands out in â€Å"The Prosecutors,† and understandably so. For almost twenty-five years, the family of the victim, a 42-year-old mother of four children, who was fired at and killed during the robbery, had tried hard to bring the killers to justice, the family members had always suspected the killers to be associates of some puzzled terrorists who abducted the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. But Myrna Opsahl’s family members never got any respite from the case, because the office of the district attorney couldn’t get adequate proof to try the case, even after Hearst’s 1982 journal revealed, what had actually taken place at the Crocker National Bank in April 1975.   Ã¢â‚¬Å"For the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and the Sacramento district attorney’s office, the Carmichael bank robbery is one of those hideous failures that just won’t seem to go away,† (Gary Delsohn).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   For John O’Mara, the homicide chief in the district attorney’s office, the case is terrifying, with no proper proof and unsatisfied family members of the victim, particularly one of Myrna Opshal’s sons, Jon Opsahl.   He wouldn’t let the case pass on and frequently disapprove of the Sacramento prosecutors for messing up the case. O’Mara is one of the important and most vibrant character in the book, although in the beginning the book port ray’s him as a picture of a graying prosecutor. But Delsohn supports his portrayal of O’Mara, presenting why a person with so much knowledge was so apprehensive of taking the SLA robbery case. In the end, it’s Delsohn’s access to the district attorney’s office, which gives us much information about this case and how the law operated during that time. Taking the case of the Bread Store trial, a failed theft that twisted into a murder when the accused, Rick Brewer, an ex-convict who had formerly stalled the same setting, fired from a shotgun into the store’s manager Jason Frost, after finding out that the whole amount from the days proceeds had been put down in a floor safe. The Bread Store case is symbolic of the vulnerabilities that prosecutors must go through when they take the trial of murders anywhere in the country, considering this lawbreaking murder where the person who drives the car in which the accused escapes is as guilty as the person who committed the crime. Taking the case of Nikolay Soltys, the security guard who was an immigrant from Ukraine who stabbed six of his relatives to death, which included his three-year-old son and pregnant wife. Prosecutors had a tough time when Nikolay killed himself to avoid trial. An average day in a city District Attorney’s office is tough, where work can take its toll on the people who do it. Most of the cases coming into the DA’s office are slaughter; children inflicted to child abuse, rape, robberies, drug deals, and fake currency rackets. It is a never-ending process of new crimes coming in day to day. This type of work cannot even be taken home and shared with your family. The prosecutors think about crimes, while sitting, standing, eating and drinking, these people are not even spared during their lunchtime, passing on shocking snaps of the crime scene. A prosecutor’s job is a tough nut to crack, as their relationship with they families get soured, because of their spending long hours in the office almost on a daily basis. During the course of his stay at District Attorney’s office, Delsohn reminds us that trials have become very rare these days. More than eighty five percent of the 36,000 crimes and misbehaviors charged every year by the Sacramento DAs office ended up with a plea agreement before the trial, as settlement. In the DA’s office at Sacramento, it mostly differs depending on who the in charge people are, but sometimes there is a strong and rarely insignificant competition between the sheriff, the FBI, the local police and the district attorneys office. But comparing the state attorney general and U.S. Attorneys office, the enmities and self-esteem battles can be unpredictable. Particularly the district attorneys office should do proper investigation before impulsively accepting what the police and feds say, about who should be detained and charged. Prosecutors have to keep the police under control to see that the case is prosecutable and concrete. Bad things can happed if prosecutors lose their independence and doubts. Gary Delsohn feels that the most important part of being an insider in the DA’s office for a year was that, he had the advantage of seeing the prosecutors’ working procedures in a manner that the media and an average outsider could not. The District Attorney’s office has been a witness to innumerable heartbreaking stories over the years, but theres hardly anything to compare with the moving release that comes after a long, stress filled murder trial, when the murder victim’s family finally speaks. The DA’s office is always humming with people, people who are related to horrible crimes, people who are innocent, but mistakenly accused of crimes, real criminals and their families etc. Works Cited Gary Delsohn, Inside the DA’s Office, Jurist, 22 February 2007. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew126.php.    Critic Reviews, Redding Book Club, 22 February 2007. http://bookclub.redding.com/reviews.cfm. The Prosecutor, Traveling Sounds.com, 22 February 2007. http://www.travelingsounds.com/Title.aspx?titleId=3212. Court tales make an arresting read, Rocky Mountain News, 22 February 2007. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/books/article/0,1299, DRMN_63_2164233,00.html.