Prosecutors Are at Risk, but Security Is Limited

By JOHN SCHWARTZ, NYT

The defendant had accosted the prosecutor before, shouting death threats at him on a Washington street. Then one day in court, he caught the eye of the prosecutor, Roger Canaff, and slowly drew his finger across his throat.

Today, Mr. Canaff is out of the prosecutor’s role and serving as a legal consultant in New York. But he remembers the fear that went along with the threat from a man he was prosecuting for a misdemeanor charge in what he considered a “relatively minor domestic violence case.” He asked his supervisor what to do; the boss told him to report the threat to a homicide detective, which he did. And for whatever reason, the man stopped bothering him. But, Mr. Canaff recalled, “for a little time, it was frightening.”

Making people angry is an occupational hazard of being a prosecutor, said Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association in Alexandria, Va., and it is impossible to know who might follow through with deadly intent.

But the killings of two prosecutors in Kaufman County, Tex., in two months have brought attention to the risk of violence that goes with the position.

(More here.)