The Justice Department Roach Motel
By Scott HortonThe current issue of the ABA Journal takes a close look at one of the Justice Department’s more embarrassing cesspools, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). We’ve looked at OPR at this site several times before. In theory, OPR exists to uphold the Department’s ethical standards. In fact, OPR seems to have a double function. First, by engaging in infantile games of turf warfare, it effectively blocks the DOJ’s Inspector General from doing his job. Second, when purporting to conduct investigations of wrongdoing, it proceeds at a glacial place, rarely succeeds in uncovering any facts, and, even when it does, usually issues a soft tut-tut, almost never administering any serious disciplinary measures. The DOJ consistently holds its own lawyers to a far lower standard than it holds others. In effect, OPR has become a whitewash organ for DOJ that specializes in whistleblower intimidation and shoring up U.S. attorneys engaged in highly abusive, and sometimes criminal, practices.

“I used to call it the Roach Motel of the Justice Department,” says Fordham University law professor Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor and ethics committee co-chair for the ABA Criminal Justice Section. “Cases check in, but they don’t check out.”

[MORE . . .]