Selective prosecution

In jurisprudence, selective prosecution is a procedural defense in which a defendant argues that he should not be held criminally liable for breaking the law, as the criminal justice system discriminated against him by choosing to prosecute. In a claim of selective prosecution, a defendant essentially argues that it is irrelevant whether he is guilty of violating a law, but that the fact of being prosecuted is based upon forbidden reasons. Such a claim might, for example, entail an argument that persons of different age, race, religion, or gender, were engaged in the same illegal actions for which the defendant is being tried and were not prosecuted, and that the defendant is only being prosecuted because of a bias. In the US, this defense is based upon the 14th Amendment, which stipulates, "nor shall any state deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The United States Supreme Court has defined the term as follows: "A selective prosecution claim is not a defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself, but an independent assertion that the prosecutor has brought the charge for reasons forbidden by the Constitution." The defense is rarely successful; some authorities claim, for example, that there are no reported cases in at least the past century in which a court dismissed a criminal prosecution because the defendant had been targeted based on race.

See also

• Equal protection
• Malicious prosecution
• Selective enforcement

Further reading

• David Cole, No Equal Justice (New Press rev. ed. 2008) ISBN 978-1-56584-947-1
• Angela Davis, Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Oxford 2007) ISBN 978-0-19-517736-7
• Cassia Spohn, Samuel Walker & Miriam Delone, The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (2006) ISBN 978-0-534-62446-0