In Tumey, which originated this line of cases, the personal interest was financial and immediate: The compensation of the adjudicating officer (a mayor) included the costs assessed against those defendants whom he found guilty. An equally direct financial gain from the fines of convicted offenders was involved in Ward, with the significant difference that the income went to village operations for which the mayor was responsible rather than to himself. All questions of judicial qualification may not involve constitutional validity. Thus matters of kinship, personal bias, state policy, remoteness of interest, would seem generally to be matters merely of legislative discretion. Wheeling v. Black, 25 W. Va. 266, 270. But it certainly violates the Fourteenth Amendment, and deprives a defendant in a criminal case of due process of law, to subject his liberty or property to the judgment of a court the judge of which has a direct, personal, substantial, pecuniary interest in reaching a conclusion against him in his case. PAGE 523 Tumey v. Ohio 273 U.S. 510 (1927)
“Upholding in a prosecution for receiving smuggled cattle an instruction that a witness with a direct and personal interest in the result of a suit could be tempted to color, pervert, or withhold facts, and that the deep, personal interest of the testifying defendant should be considered by the jury in weighing his testimony and determining how far, or to what extent, if at all, it was worthy of credit because the defendant’s interest was a matter properly brought to the jury’s attention, the court first stated a general rule applicable to all circumstances and then called attention to the defendant’s deep personal interest, and there was no intimation that the defendant had been untruthful in his testimony. A second objection is that the court gave this instruction: “You should especially look to the interest which the respective witnesses have in the suit or in its result. Where the witness has a direct personal interest in the result of the suit the temptation is strong to color, pervert, or withhold the facts. The law permits the defendant, at his own request, to testify in his own behalf. The defendant here has availed himself of this privilege. His testimony is before you and you must determine how far it is credible. The deep personal interest which he may have in the result of the suit should be considered by the jury in weighing his evidence and in determining how far or to what extent, if at all, it is worthy of credit.” Reagan v. United States 157 U.S. 301 (1895)
Holding it necessary that a “plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit in some personal interest” Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization 426 U.S. 26 (1976)
Stating that a prosecutor’s personal interest in a case could raise constitutional questions but declining to define the limits “there may be on a financial or personal interest of one who performs a prosecutorial function”. We do not suggest, and appellants do not contend, that the Due Process Clause imposes no limits on the partisanship of administrative prosecutors. Prosecutors are also public officials; they too must serve the public interest. Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935). In appropriate circumstances the Court has made clear that traditions of prosecutorial discretion do not immunize from judicial scrutiny cases in which the enforcement decisions of an administrator were motivated by improper factors or were otherwise contrary to law. See Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U.S. 560, 567, n. 7, 568-574 (1975); Rochester Telephone Corp. v. United States, 307 U.S. 125 (1939). Moreover, the decision to enforce — or not to enforce — may itself result in significant burdens on a defendant or a statutory beneficiary, even if he is ultimately vindicated in an adjudication. Cf. 2 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise 215-256 (2d ed. 1979). A scheme injecting a personal interest, financial or otherwise, into the enforcement process may bring irrelevant or impermissible factors into the prosecutorial decision and in some contexts raise serious constitutional questions. See Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 365 (1978); cf. 28 U.S.C. § 528 (1976 ed., Supp. III) (disqualifying federal prosecutor from participating in litigation in which he has a personal interest). But the strict requirements of neutrality cannot be the same for administrative prosecutors as for judges, whose duty it is to make the final decision and whose impartiality serves as the ultimate guarantee of a fair and meaningful proceeding in our constitutional regime. Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc. 446 U.S. 238 (1980)
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