Review
“Rogue Prosecutors is a thorough and compelling study that lays bare one of the greatest issues facing our country today—the way willful progressive prosecutors are flouting the rule of law, dismantling our criminal justice system, and enabling predators to victimize law-biding citizens with impunity; and how the perverse agenda of these impostors is devastating the lives and livelihood of those in our once-great cities.” -- Bill Barr, Former United States Attorney General
“In America, the prosecutor, often known as the District Attorney or State’s Attorney, is the central figure in the operation of the criminal justice system. It is he or she who determines whether a suspect will be charged with a crime, decides what crime is levied, obtains and presents the evidence for conviction, and is often significant in advising on the ultimate sentence. Prosecutors are governed in their work by their responsibility to make sure that justice is done and the community is protected. Charles Stimson and Zack Smith show in Rogue Prosecutors that when these officials abdicate their responsibilities and substitute their own ideas for what the law actually provides, the result is not only a breakdown of the system, but also massive increases in crime and the destruction, fear, and civic incivility that is now being experienced in many of our largest cities. This is a highly readable book which reveals how renegade billionaires can manipulate elections to place in office insidious zealots who undermine public safety under the false narrative of ‘social justice.’ It is an invaluable contribution and a must-read for anyone interested in the safety of our citizens.” -- Edwin Meese III, Former Attorney General of the United States
“Trading on the fictions of a mass-incarceration crisis driven by systemic racism, American progressives drew from their deep wellsprings of funding to execute a scheme as ingenious as it is destructive: overwhelm the electoral competition to capture district-attorney posts in the nation’s cities, and place law-enforcement power in the hands of radicals committed to non-enforcement. The results, as Zack Smith and Charles Stimson painstakingly document in Rogue Prosecutors, are a windfall for hardened criminals, the savaging of urban communities, and the evisceration of America’s existential commitment to the rule of law.” -- Andrew C. McCarthy, Former federal prosecutor, bestselling author, and Contributing Editor, National Review
“You no longer have to win a majority in the state legislature or the governor’s mansion to significantly impact public safety policy in America. Instead, radical groups only need to win local, county, or city-wide prosecutor elections that typically fly under the radar.
Rogue Prosecutors highlights the benefactors and players across our country that are cherry-picking laws to enforce, ignoring crime, and making our communities less safe. Most importantly, the book provides a voice too often ignored in our debate on criminal justice reform in America: the victims.” -- Jason Miyares, Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia
“Rogue Prosecutors is hard to read—not because it is poorly written, it is in fact lucid—but because it lays out with such unflinching detail the horrific crimes that have resulted from left-wing prosecutors’ refusal to apply the criminal law. These opponents of law and order have enacted elaborate charging and sentencing policies that make it almost impossible to bring justice for victims and to prevent future crimes. The rogue prosecutor movement rests on race-based lies about America’s criminal justice system, lies that the media and academia relentlessly amplify. George Soros funded and provided organizational help to this destructive movement. Rogue Prosecutors is essential reading for anyone who wants to organize and to take back America’s streets.” -- Heather Mac Donald, The Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The War on Cops and When Race Trumps Merit
“An unvarnished and unapologetic takedown of the so-called ‘progressive prosecutor’ movement, Rogue Prosecutors reveals this misguided trend for what it is: an ideological distortion of the prosecutorial role that ignores the separation of powers, decades of thoughtful criminal justice reform, and—most tragically—the very communities it purports to serve.” -- Andrew Lelling, United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts 2017-2021
“The push to capture local prosecutors’ offices by criminal justice reform advocates pursuing decarceration is still an underexplored phenomenon, given the movement’s electoral success. Smith and Stimson deliver an important and timely investigation of this movement, its component parts, and its potential effects on our most important societal commodity: public safety.” -- Rafael A. Mangual, Senior Fellow and Head of Research, Policing & Public Safety Initiative, Contributing Editor, City Journal, The Manhattan Institute; Author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most
About the Author
Zack Smith is a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney and has worked on a variety of criminal and civil matters in public service and private practice. He clerked for the Honorable Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and during law school served as the editor-in-chief of the Florida Law Review.
Charles “Cully” Stimson is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He served as a local, state, federal, and military prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a military trial judge. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs in the George W. Bush administration. After thirty years of active duty and reserve service, Stimson retired as a captain of the United States Navy JAG Corps where he was a two-time commanding officer and deputy chief judge of the Navy-Marine Corps Trial Judiciary.
