Good Sentences: Prosecutors (September 2024)
Several of my law students spent time over the summer working in organizations full of helpful, hardworking prosecutors. So we thought we’d put together a collection of prosecutor-themed materials. (In a future edition, we’ll balance things out by assembling materials related to public defenders.)
Enjoy!
—The Good Sentences Team
1. Fiction: Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (1986)
Favorite Sentence: “Now, like ore deposits, the harder stuff of duty and obligation has settled in the veins where those softer feelings moved.”
—Picked by Ryan Distaso, Class of 2026 (Summer Internship: Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office)
2. Essay: A Reporter Gives His Account of the Year He Spent Inside Sacramento’s District Attorney’s Office by Steve Weinberg (2003) [Book Review of The Prosecutors by Gary Delshon]
Favorite Sentence: “The American justice system is designed to err on the side of allowing the guilty to go free rather than incarcerate the innocent.”
—Picked by Eric Shalloway, Class of 2025 (Summer Internship: United States Department of Justice)
3. Poetry: The Forewoman Speaks by Kathleen McClung (2020)
Favorite Lines:
“We’re stiff and silent in these rows, our faces stony though we ache to cry”
—Picked by Zoë Bowers, Class of 2025 (Summer Internship: United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan)
Michigan Sentences: Here’s an article by Professor Barb McQuade, who served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010-2017, before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School.
Diddy’s Alleged Sex Crimes Were Hiding in Plain Sight (2024)
Sample: “Most often, witnesses stay silent because they don’t realize what they are seeing. They may know that something is amiss, but write it off as a private argument. And when the offender is someone of wealth, fame, and power, the reluctance to believe what they are seeing is even more pronounced.”
Syllabus Sentences: Here’s a chapter from Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting that I used to design the materials for a training on public speaking I recently led for a group of state prosecutors. The key idea was that “poise can be planned.”
“Poise” (Chapter 1)
Sample:
“Speak as if your ideas were punctuated by verbal periods, given that run-on sentences can be just as difficult to listen to as they are to read. A thought that never ends is a thought that never persuades. Impatience sets in. Confusion rises. Comprehension plummets. Concision and separation are much better options.”
“The phrase ‘the virtue of clarity’ comes from a compliment the Australian writer Clive James paid one of his literary heroes: the American novelist and essayist Edmund Wilson. Wilson’s ‘great virtue was clarity,’ according to James, by which he meant that Wilson had the restraint and wisdom to space out his ideas. Wilson didn’t overpack his thoughts. He didn’t insist on saying everything at once. Instead, he demonstrated a wonderful combination of discipline and courtesy. Before he started a second point, he completely finished the first. We should all follow Wilson’s model—not only when writing but also when speaking, and particularly when speaking about material that is unusually dense or sensitive. Few audiences like a motormouth.”
Book Recommendations
For good sentences about the prosecution of a set of cryptocurrency criminals
Tracers in the Dark by Andy Greenberg (2023)
Sample: “The two prosecutors could hardly believe it. The man they had come to Bangkok to arrest had, entirely by chance, arrived at a meeting at the exact hotel where they were staying and sat down at the table next to them. He still had no idea they were on his trail.”
For good sentences about the prosecution of the mastermind behind a series of murders in Osage County, Oklahoma
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (2017)
Sample: “The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.”
For good sentences about the (fictional) prosecution of a 1980s bond trader
The Bonfire of Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
Sample: “He had the gaunt and haunted athletic look of those who stare daily down the bony gullet of the great god Aerobics.”
Quick Tip
Here’s a quick tip on something that can help prosecutors (and other advocates) end their paragraphs in a punchy, persuasive way.
