Alex Acosta was sworn in today as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Great turnout in the Central Courtroom. Justice Alito -- who Acosta clerked for when he was on the Third Circuit -- spoke and administered the oath. When they were standing next to each other, they actually looked liked brothers. Striking similarity...
The program for the event had a quote that I often cite:
"The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he in a peculiar way and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer."
-- Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 88 (1935) (Sutherland, J.).
The AP already has coverage of it here.
Does this mean we have to start calling him "Aclito"?
ReplyDeleteOne day as US Attorney and his office lost its first jury trial. A Not Guilty for a client of Federal Defenders Jan Smith and Tony Natale. When given the inaugural news, Acosta was heard to say, "What, me worry?"
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