Augusta District Attorney Jared Williams does not want to be accountable to anyone, and it shows.
Buoyed by his landslide re-election earlier this year, Williams and several of his Democrat colleagues have filed suit to prevent the formation of a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission; in essence, they are suing the very taxpayers that elected them.
Thankfully, the courts have consistently ruled against the plaintiffs.
The beauty of the American government structure is that there are supposed to be checks and balances on power at each level. Only the supreme courts across the nation can invalidate laws that they feel are unconstitutional.
District attorneys already have broad power when it comes to prosecuting criminals.
In 2019, District Attorney Natalie Paine decided not to seek the death penalty against Ryan Jones, a man who killed his parents and younger brother and then dismembered the bodies and set them on fire.
In that instance, there was no public outrage.
Jones had agreed to plead guilty and be sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. Paine made this bargain, not because she is sympathetic to criminals, but because the family of the victims wanted to be spared the emotional toll of a trial and the deal did put Jones behind bars until he eventually dies.
However, an unscrupulous prosecutor could have cited the fact that Jones suffered from schizophrenia and either reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter or just simply declined to prosecute the case based on those grounds.
Had that scenario happened, the district attorney should have been investigated and tossed out of office for knowingly releasing a triple murderer back on the streets.
Jared Williams has already done something similar by declining to prosecute Antoine Redfield for a gang shooting that killed two men. Even though it was clear the felon fired a gun that evening, Williams claimed that he couldn’t determine who shot first.
Upon release, Redfield was involved in another gang shooting, this time killing 8-year-old Arbrie Leigh Anthony in broad daylight while the child was petting a horse.
We respect the fact that voters decided to give Williams a second chance, but we all need to get behind the state-wide push to place a modicum of oversight when it comes to prosecutors who believe they can pick and choose which laws to enforce.
