It Pays Not To Be An Average Joe

Trey Smith

Prosecutors are elected and paid to put away criminals and many are quite effective in their mandates. If you happen to be an Average Joe and the prosecutor believes you are guilty of a crime, there will be hell to pay. You can expect a trial or, at the very least, a plea bargain. You can expect the prosecutor to direct the police to turn your life upside down. And you can also expect the prosecutor to grandstand AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY in front of the media.

If you are not an average Joe -- a well-respected member of the elite -- you don't have much to worry about! You can brazenly commit one white collar crime after another and, as Matt Taibbi wrote this week, you will not be charged with a crime unless the prosecutor believes that he/she has been handed an "absolute slam-dunk" case.

Of course, there is the rub. Most white collar crime is complicated. It involves shady methods for getting around sometimes intricate and confusing laws and regulations. Because of its complex nature, few such cases would be considered slam-dunks. So, today's prosecutors tend to skip focusing on white collar crime to go after the far easier blue collar variety.

This is one of the factors that has led to our two-tiered justice system. Prosecutors often get elected based on their winning percentage. Why pursue complex white collar cases that you may or may not win when you can pad your record with the far easier to prosecute cases against the working class?