[CodeWriter23]

That's the reality of an overwhelmed court system, they make choices to optimize. It's a system of trust, balanced by a Judge reporting abusive attorneys to The Bar, which means most subpoenas are actually what a Judge would sign.

In the case of this Louisiana Prosecutor, it seems like perhaps the courts are so overwhelmed they can't even get stacks of pre-signed subpoenas so they write their own. And the article states that when said Prosecutor has been called on it, a Judge issues a real subpoena. So yeah, meh.

[jacquesm]

That's not 'meh', that's totally upside-down from what it should be and any and all searches and seizures based on those diy subpoenas should be challenged and subsequently thrown out, as well as court cases that went through to conviction of a defendant based on one of those should be vacated.

This is exactly the sort of thing you should always fight against because it is bound to lead to abuses, if the judicial system can't keep up then things should grind to a halt, rather than proceed unchecked.

[TallGuyShort]

So people waive judicial oversight to make things go faster, and when that's not fast enough they just commit fraud, but it's not occurring to them that maybe they should break fewer laws themselves and choose fewer criminals to prosecute?

[mikeash]

Then they end up unemployed.

You see this pattern all over the place. Bosses want to break the rules but don't want to get in trouble for it. The solution is easy: give the workers goals that are impossible to meet without breaking the rules, while simultaneously telling them how important it is to follow the rules. Voila, your workers break the rules on their own initiative, and you're not culpable. Those who refuse to do so can be fired, totally legally, for not meeting their goals.

For example, you want your workers to put in a lot of overtime but you don't want to pay for it. If you tell them to do that, it would be illegal! So instead, you tell them that they need to produce this much output per week, and also tell them that if they clock in more than 40 hours per week they'll be fired. They'll start working off the clock on their own, and since they'll be fired if you find out about it, you'll remain safely ignorant!

It's no surprise that the same sort of thing would happen in prosecutors' offices. If they don't put away enough criminals, they'll be out of a job. They'll break the rules to do so, and keep it quiet so they don't get fired for that. And it's all according to plan, since the people in charge don't really like how the rules protect criminals.

[logfromblammo]

That reminds me of that one time I was an Arstotzkan border crossing agent. The agents got paid by the number of people processed, and the party bosses kept adding new rules and requirements for processing people. So I had to alternate the days my family could eat with the days they could be warm.

It was that or break the rules. And a loyal Arstotzkan citizen would never do that.

(Papers, Please!)

Real-life systems are set up to encourage people to break the rules all the time. Consider it a dark pattern of governance.