Prosecutor Needs Civil Rights Lawyer
July 05, 2005
Lance Salyers was a Montgomery County, Ohio prosecutor. After his boss refused to file what he viewed as a righteous case, he wrote on his blog:
I am so angry that I can't sleep. My anger is leftover from an incident at work that, for work-related reasons, I can't get into here. Suffice to say, I have never been so incensed and angry at work before today. My sleepless angst comes down to one word: cowardice. It makes me want to be ill to see Evil win battles large and small because the people who are in a position to fight Evil retreat out of fear of failure. At least people who give in to cowardice and run from physical danger are doing so out of a fear of death, a most permanent of conditions. But failure? Ugh, I can't stomach the thought.
Nowhere in the post does he identify the context of his outrage. Nowhere does he name names. Yet the next day, an incensed colleague
dropped a printout of his blog entry in his lap, saying, "So you think I'm a coward now? You've got a lot of ----s!"
The next day, the first assistant prosecutor and the chief of the criminal division called in Salyers, who is married with a 5-month-old daughter, and fired him, he said.
"I was told in no uncertain terms that if I had not written what I wrote [on my blog] 'We wouldn't even be having this conversation,' " he argued.
Sounds like Mr. Salyers has a case. I hope he sues. For the good of his daughter, he ought to.
(Hat tip: Commonwealth Conservative via CrimLaw)