Digging up crimes

Glad he set everyone straight. The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina is not, repeat not, soft on crime.

Even if it involves fishing for unprosecuted 35-year-old offenses that conceivably could be called federal crimes, and prosecuting them now as if they'd happened yesterday, George Holding is stepping up -- all in the service of not having to free 20 state prison inmates due to be released later this month. Released, news reports note, after serving out their sentences, as determined by North Carolina's appellate courts (and their not-soft-on-crime-either judges), under the laws that governed the convicts' imprisonment.

Well, did anyone doubt Holding's anti-crime credentials? He's been an active U.S. attorney, focusing particularly on corruption, and this editorial page has supported keeping him on in the post (he's a Republican) even well into a Democratic presidential administration. But regarding the soon-to-be-set-free lifers, who have served more than 30 years for crimes that include murder and rape, Holding appears to have slighted about half of a prosecutor's duty.

That's the half that says he must strive to do justice. Instead of talking up what an "outrage" all this is and assigning staffers to a "long shot" federal-crime hunt in the files, Holding might have stressed respect for the rule of law and for the judgment of the relevant state courts. In the test case successfully brought by one of the inmates, the question of whether they're legally entitled to their freedom doesn't seem to have been a close call.

Today, when a life sentence means just that (no parole or "good time"), it may be hard to accept that in the past life sentences were issued for a greater variety of crimes than at present, and with more provisions for eventual release. But that's basically the situation we have here.

No one wants to see these convicts do any more harm. Everyone feels for their victims. Yet if the law stretches too far for ways to prosecute them again -- statutes of limitations and the difficulty of providing fair trials so long after the fact notwithstanding -- it certainly overreaches. And that would be an outrage.