c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The pundits have completely missed the point of case of former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy.

They see Espy’s acquittal on 32 charges by a jury of his peers as proof the independent counsel law is a monstrosity. They fail to see that the headhunting in contemporary Washington is but the logical exaggeration of what Kenneth Starr called in a rare moment of truth”ordinary prosecutorial practice.” The fundamental moral evil was not the frivolous indictment of Espy. Rather it is the propensity of many prosecuting attorneys in this country to destroy people in order to enhance their political influence.

Prosecutors, with their unlimited budgets, their de facto alliances with the media, their storm troop investigators, are out of control. They are the greatest threat to freedom in the United States today. They are fascists whose specialty and delight is the destruction of other human beings.

And the independent counsel is nothing more than a prosecutor who is given special license to destroy the person he is supposed to investigate.

But a prosecutor doesn’t have to be”independent”to ride to political power over the bodies of his victims. James Thompson did in then Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner on technical charges and himself became governor. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani acquired fame and power by doing in prominent Wall Street people, though appellate courts later revived many of them.

It is difficult to determine how justice was served in any of these cases, much less common decency. For prosecutors it is all a game: the more lives you can destroy, the better lawyer you are and the more likely you are to move on to more important jobs.

Not all prosecutors are fascists, you say? Of course not, yet there are no built-in mechanisms in the American legal system to prevent the abuse of prosecutors’ power, especially when it is supported by incompetent judges, such as Judge Norma Holloway Johnson who helped do in Daniel Rostenkowski before her more recent involvement in the impeachment scandal.

The media have criticized the man who ruined Michael Espy’s life for saying an indictment is often as effective as a conviction. But he spoke absolute truth. If a special counsel is appointed _ even on the most flimsy grounds _ the cost of your defense is $2 million in addition to the harm done to your reputation and your family life. The costs go even higher when you are indicted. As former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan said when he was acquitted in the 1980s,”where do I go to get my reputation back.” The Espy prosecutor scored zero on 32 counts. The taxpayers of America would be justified in demanding their money back on such a shabby performance.

It is a safe bet that none of those in Washington the political prosecutors are currently pursuing will be convicted in a court of law, including President Clinton.

Most Americans, I fear, do not see out-of-control prosecutors as a terrible moral evil or a threat to their own personal freedom. Perhaps they have seen too many TV courtroom programs in which the good guys always win. Alas for our country, the bad guys often represent the law and they do win.

Moreover, it is an axiom of freedom that when one person is treated unjustly everyone else suffers a loss of freedom. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you. You, too, can be the target of an ambitious prosecuting attorney.

As Anthony Lewis has pointed out in a brilliant article in the current issue of The American Prospect, the criminalization of politics is a catastrophe for the American polity. When the media and ambitious lawyers invade your private life and tear you apart because you’ve won an election or been appointed to public office, no one will want to enter public service.

I suspect Governor George W. Bush is faking when he says that he hesitates to expose his family to the risks of national office. But he ought to consider the risks very carefully. If he is elected, he could face the possibility of impeachment, according to the constitutional law as seen by Henry Hyde, for collecting a speeding ticket. Who is to say that it could not be defined as a”high crime and misdemeanor?” DEA END GREELEY