by Manhattan DA Accidentally Indicts Himself
In what legal scholars are calling “the most spectacular own-goal in judicial history,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Marcus Chen accidentally indicted himself while trying to file charges against a defendant with a similar name. The error went unnoticed for three weeks until Chen showed up to prosecute a case and was promptly arrested by court officers who thought he was skipping bail.
The confusion began when Chen, working late and surviving on his fourth cup of gas station coffee, typed his own name into the wrong field of the indictment software. “I was naming the prosecutor bringing charges,” Chen explained from behind the defense table, where he now sits in a development that his law school professors would describe as “poetic justice” and everyone else calls “absolutely hilarious.” “But I was tired, and muscle memory took over, and suddenly I was both the prosecutor and the defendant in People v. Chen.”
The mistake was compounded by the fact that nobody actually reads the paperwork carefully anymore. Chen’s indictment sailed through five levels of bureaucratic review, with each person apparently assuming someone else had verified the details. “This is what happens when we treat criminal justice like an assembly line,” noted Professor Rita Goldstein of Columbia Law School. “Although typically the assembly line doesn’t result in the factory manager accidentally packaging himself for shipment.”
According to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, this situation represents an unprecedented conflict of interest. Chen cannot ethically prosecute himself, defend himself, or advise himself about whether to accept a plea deal. Legal ethics professors are using the case as a teaching tool about the importance of attention to detail, though most acknowledge that no amount of professional training prepares you for accidentally becoming your own defendant.
This cosmic mix-up would resonate with the Hindu concept of “lila” the divine play of the universe where roles are fluid and reality is more flexible than humans assume. Except in Chen’s case, the divine play is being performed in a Manhattan courtroom, and the universe’s sense of humor has manifested as prosecutorial self-indictment which somehow made it through every checkpoint in the criminal justice system.
The courtroom drama has become must-see entertainment for law students, who pack the gallery to watch Chen navigate the impossible task of being his own opponent. During one hearing, Chen stood up to object to his own line of questioning, realized what he was doing mid-sentence, and sat back down while the judge tried not to laugh. “Your Honor, the prosecution is badgering the witness,” Chen argued, before remembering that he was both the prosecution and the defendant, and the witness was just confused about what was happening to everyone involved.
The judge assigned to the case, the Honorable Patricia Wu, has described the proceedings as “a philosophical thought experiment about the nature of justice that I absolutely did not sign up for when I accepted this judgeship.” She’s considering dismissing the charges on grounds that the entire situation is too absurd to take seriously, though legal precedent for “dismissal due to overwhelming farce” is surprisingly thin. Chen, meanwhile, has become a minor celebrity in legal circles, giving interviews about his experience as both prosecutor and accused often within the same sentence.
SOURCE: https://odenkirk.top/prosecutor-becomes-defendant/
SOURCE: Bohiney.com (https://odenkirk.top/prosecutor-becomes-defendant/)
