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NC DA has "no law enforcement authority"; so why the delay with the suits?
Topic Started: Mar 13 2010, 09:09 AM (296 Views)
Quasimodo

Thought this deserved a thread of its own:

Quote:
 
http://www.roxboro-courier.com/articles/2010/03/13/news/doc4b9aeb69c92cc009783334.txt

Brewer had ‘no law enforcement authority’
Badge of former DA was not issued by Administrative Office of the Courts
By TIM CHANDLER
Courier-Times Editor
tchandler@roxboro-courier.com
Published: Saturday, March 13, 2010 5:15 AM CST
“…We do not issue any kind of badge to anyone.”

Dick Ellis, public information officer for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), spoke those words Friday when quizzed about a badge recently seized from former District Attorney Joel H. Brewer. Ellis was also questioned about any possible law enforcement authority held by Brewer while he was district attorney in District 9A, which serves Person and Caswell counties.

“Let me first say that we are not an overseeing authority of the court system in North Carolina,” Ellis said. “That being said, I can tell you that we do not issue any kind of badge to anyone.”

“According to state statutes, the district attorney has no law enforcement authority,” Ellis added. “He is to advise the officers of justice within his district. He is their lawyer, literally.”

(snip)

Following is an excerpt from North Carolina law pertaining to the duties of a district attorney: “The district attorney shall prepare the trial dockets, prosecute in a timely manner in the name of the State all criminal actions and infractions requiring prosecution in the superior and district courts of his prosecutorial district, advise the officers of justice in his district, and perform such duties related to appeals to the Appellate Division from his district as the Attorney General may require.”


If a DA in NC does not have law enforcement authority, then certainly when a DA takes over the supervision of DPD officers, giving them orders in an investigation and taking reports from them, entirely replacing and supplanting their chain of command (so that their own officers cannot contradict his instructions or give them orders)

then that DA surely has stepped outside of his role as a DA and assumed law enforcement duties...

which both pierces his immunity as DA

and which actions were illegal in NC (meaning that both his role, and the role of the DPD command staff which acquiesced in his take-over, need to be investigated).

It's been nearly 900 days now since the plaintiffs first filed a suit in this matter, and it was blatant at that time that there were sufficient grounds to proceed with their suit:

“According to state statutes, the district attorney has no law enforcement authority.”

Yet they have had to wait (and are still having to wait) for the court to rule that they do indeed have such grounds.

Nearly 900 days.

Whatever is a man without means supposed to do if he is expected to wait 900 days before getting even to the discovery phase of his suit against government?

Is justice in the federal system so administered that people without means cannot even get their cases before a jury?
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Companion civil lawsuits need to be filed in North Carolina state court. The more the merrier.

And it keeps the story alive and keeps pressure on Potted Plant II.
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 

“According to state statutes, the district attorney has no law enforcement authority,” Ellis added



Dick Ellis, public information officer for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC).



I guess he ought to know.

Ergo, I hope the attorneys for the Plaintiffs take note.

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