Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland described
a federal prosecutor’s job in Berger v. United States (1935):
“The United States
Attorney is the representative
not of an ordinary party to a controversy,
but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern
impartially
is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all,
and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution
is not that it shall win a case,
but that justice shall be done.
As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the
servant of the law,
the two-fold aim
of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.
He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor
— indeed, he should do so.
But, while he may strike hard blows,
he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.
It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods
calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as
it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just
one.”
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