"Prosecutors decide whether to bring a case before a grand jury, how hard to press for an indictment, what charges to request and how punitive a sentence to recommend. Grand juries almost never refuse to file the charges prosecutors request. And mandatory sentencing laws often allow prosecutors to determine the penalty by picking the charges.
Moreover, the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States end in plea bargains, not in trials. So the discretion exercised in our justice system is mostly not by judges but by prosecutors, and typically not by elected district attorneys but by the legions of far less visible lawyers they employ.
Who are they? How representative are assistant district attorneys and deputy district attorneys of the communities they serve? For the most part, the answer is “we don't know.” Race and gender statistics for police officers have been publicly available for decades, but nothing similar has existed for prosecutors."http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0729-sklanskymukamal-diversity-prosecutors-california-20150729-story.html
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