Because we can...

Some days I really dislike my job.  Overall it's a great job, but there are times where I can't stand it.

For a little background, I work with our Treatment Courts: Mental Health Court, Drug Court, and Recovery Court.  All three are great programs and after working in my office for about 3 years (both as an intern and full time), I don't believe I would want to work in my office if I wasn't doing the Treatment Courts.  The reason is that our office seems to have the mentality of "lets do something because we can, not because we should."  However, I have the ability to do what's 'right' working in the Treatment Courts.

And frankly, I'm offended by that philosophy.  We have a lot of power as prosecutors: power to charge/not charge, power to decide what (if any) offer to make in a given case, power of a sentence to ask the judge to impose.  And merely because a sentence is available doesn't mean we should ask for it.  Merely because the elements of a crime could technically be proven, doesn't mean we should charge someone with a crime.

But my office thinks otherwise.  They have the mentality that we should do something "because we can, not necessarily because we should."

Case in point.  There is a case where a 18 year old man was charged (hereafter the "defendant").  He lives with his mother and they were staying the house of the mother's friends.  Police were called after the homeowner noticed a bottle of alcohol was empty and two bottles of her own son's 800mg Ibuprofen pills (a prescription) was empty.  None of the three bottles had been empty earlier in the evening.  When police arrived, they found the defendant lying on a bed with a 'suicide note' beside him.  They noticed that he appeared to be under the influence of something.  Based on what they saw, police got an order to involuntarily commit defendant to a psychiatric hospital.  While he was being prepared for transport, the homeowner found another empty pill bottle of a muscle relaxer (a controlled substance under PA law).  Instead of being taken to the psychiatric hospital, defendant ended up being admitted to intensive care and had to be put on a ventilator (the hospital reported that had defendant been allowed to fall asleep, it is unlikely he would have woken up based on what he took).

So far it sounds fine.  Police got an order to involuntary commit defendant to a psychiatric hospital. That's what they should have done...the guy defnitaly needed help.  However, the police didn't stop there.  They also charged him with underage drinking and two counts of possession of a controlled substance.

Really?  A guy tries to commit suicide and is now getting involved with the mental health system to get treatment, and we're going to prosecute him as a criminal?  I'm not saying that any suicide attempt should entitle someone to get out of prosecution.  But in this case, I see no reason to prosecute the defendant.  Absolutely none at all.

So I went to my supervisor in an attempt to get approval to withdraw the charges.  He disagreed with me.  Told me that we should prosecute this guy and that maybe he'd be eligible for diversion in Mental Health Court (he's not, becuase while he has some sort of mental illness, it doesn't qualify as a serious mental illness).  So we're going to prosecute this guy, not becuase we should, but because we can.

Fucking ridiculous.  An abuse of our discretion as district attorneys.