By Rory Fleming
Laura Mapes graduated from Thomas Cooley Law School, which, in its current iteration, is ranked in the almost-universally accepted US News and World Report rankings as one of the worst law schools in the country. Before the school’s fusion with Western Michigan University in 2014, it reported similarly dismal numbers on all fronts, including university GPA, LSAT score, and post-graduation employment numbers. Prior students have even sued before, alleging that the school inflated those numbers and essentially that they paid out the wazoo for a cursed education. 
But good test scores on admissions exams developed to test proficiency in logic and reasoning is not all Laura Mapes lacks. Thanks to her current job, it also appears she lost any empathy for other humans she might once have had.
According to screenshots obtained by the Vanguard, Mapes recently answered a question in a post from viral Facebook influencer Ryan Engel, which compelled other users to “poorly explain what you do for a living.” Mapes thought it appropriate to write “Put kids in cages,” then to follow that morbid line up with laughing emojis.
Information from her LinkedIn profile shows that she is is a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the Franklin County, Washington, Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. That county, which has just under 100,000 residents, is located in the conservative eastern part of the state. Its voters selected Donald Trump for President in both 2016 and 2020.
I guess this is the kind of thing that passes for prosecutor “humor.” Bar complaint anyone? pic.twitter.com/w41WzUAAA0
— Meathead, Esq. (@Meathead_Esq) April 24, 2022
Prosecutors have often been championed as heroes in the US, but things are changing as everyday people think beyond the narratives they have been fed. Much of what prosecutors, especially younger ones in entry-level roles, do is borderline sociopathic, such as prosecuting homeless people with mental illness for daring to exist in public spaces.
Even Kamala Harris, in many ways a liberal bastion, was slapped down in the 2020 Presidential primaries, in part for showing too much of her “prosecutor side” in videos where she belittled activists for saying they preferred more schools to more incarceration.
But national media attention tends to focus on the nation’s major cities. While many urban prosecutors in more liberal areas have done terrible things — prosecutors in both Houston and New Orleans have jailed rape victims for getting raped — this focus gives a still-distorted view of the profession.
Someone like Mayes is an example of what famous philosopher Hannah Arendt meant by the “banality of evil,” when she sought to describe what she witnessed when she watched the Nazi war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, one of Hitler’s top operatives. She found that, instead of being visibly sick or evil, Eichmann was a boring, everyday bureaucrat who acted out of a desire for career advancement. He separated himself from the evil of his actions in order to do great evil.
Jail is inherently traumatizing, as Orlando’s top prosecutor, Monique Worrell, recently said to me. The reality of Mayes’ job and others like it is grim and horrible: juvenile prosecutors traumatize, and thus harm children, when they do their jobs. In the best of cases, it’s a morally dirty job someone has to do; unfortunately, an infinitesimally small number of kids rape or kill people, with no desire to stop without concrete deterrence. But jailing them is still committing objective harm to society’s most vulnerable in order to prevent other, greater harm.
The fact that someone who traumatizes children for a living, only occasionally in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary, would turn that into a joke could only be called “evil.” But it is a boring evil, perhaps the product of working in a criminal legal system that refuses to recognize the existence of basic human rights.
Mayes isn’t The Joker; no one will want to see a movie about her life, which constitutes a lot of shuffling papers in bland government office. That isn’t an exculpation, however. Her words prove that she is still a villain.
Rory Fleming is a writer and an attorney
