The OPR also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps.
Some legal experts say there is an impression that the Justice Department is hiding something.
Publishing the summaries "reassures the public that [the Department of Justice] takes its self-regulatory responsibilities seriously and puts prosecutors on notice that they face public embarrassment if they are caught engaging in wrongdoing," said Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor and a professor at Fordham Law School in New York.
Associate Deputy Atty. Gen. David Margolis said it was his decision to excuse the OPR from preparing summaries of cases that might be released to the public. He said the decision reflected a lack of resources, as well as concern about balancing public interests with the privacy rights of individual attorneys facing accusations.
"My goal is to get fair and speedy dispositions of allegations against our attorneys," he said, "and, to the extent possible, let the public know what we did and why we did it without unnecessarily or gratuitously . . . publicly humiliating our line attorneys as individuals."
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rick.schmitt@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Back story: Office of Professional Responsibility
The Office of Professional Responsibility was created in 1975 in response to the Justice Department's role in the Watergate scandal.
For years it was the department's lone watchdog. It survived even after Congress decided in 1989 that Justice needed an independent inspector general. The OPR's mission was narrowed to focus only on the activities of department lawyers in performing their duties. But there is constant overlap, and the much larger inspector general's office has proposed for years to take over operation of the OPR.
Unlike the inspector general, the OPR reports to the attorney general, creating what many see as inevitable conflicts of interest. When then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales last year sought to quell concern over his handling of the firing of several U.S. attorneys, he chose the OPR for the job. The inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, objected, and the OPR agreed to a joint probe that will eventually become public.
Today the office has 25 lawyers, including three on temporary assignment. They are responsible for the conduct of about 10,000 attorneys.
H. Marshall Jarrett, the chief counsel and head of the OPR, says the office gets hundreds of complaints every year. It opens formal investigations in about 80 cases a year and closes about the same number. He says the office finds misconduct in about 25% of the cases -- 20 or so a year, on average. Half the time, the office finds that the attorneys acted appropriately. In the remaining cases, they are found to have exercised poor judgment or made mistakes, which generally do not qualify as misconduct.
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Source: Times research
