In Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 268-69, 125 L. Ed. 2d 209, 113 S. Ct. 2606 (1993), the Supreme Court conceded that it had accorded immunity to some officials whose "special functions" were similar to functions that were immune in 1871. But, to determine whether particular conduct fits either under the common law absolute immunity or qualified immunity, the Court applied a "functional approach" based on "the nature of the function performed." Id. at 269 The Court found no absolute immunity for a prosecutor when he acted as an investigator or administrator. Id. at 273-74. Therefore, the existence of a particular position or task in 1871 is not determinative; rather, a court examines the function performed by the government officer in light of the public policy behind immunity. In any event, judicial immunity predates 1871 and immunity for probation officers in this case is an extension of that immunity. The United States Supreme Court held that Fitzsimmons, a prosecutor who allegedly made defamatory statements in a pretrial press conference, was not entitled to absolute immunity. The Court noted that while "the speech of a counsel is privileged by the occasion on which it is spoken," "[comments to the media have no functional tie to the judicial process just because they are made by a prosecutor." Although the Court never discusses an excessive publication exception to the judicial proceeding privilege, it appears that, in Buckley, the Court was of the view that, at the very least, statements made by counsel to the press concerning a case are not per se covered by an absolute privilege. And while Buckley arose in a criminal context and concerned state officials, the Court stated that "prosecutors, like all attorneys, were entitled to absolute immunity from defamation liability for statements made during the course of judicial proceedings and relevant to them, while most statements made out of court received only good-faith immunity." It appears that the Court was unwilling to provide the privilege to statements made to people or in places that have no functional or legal tie to the judicial proceedings. Further, the Court added in a footnote that: "[absolute immunity does not apply to or include any publication of defamatory matter before the commencement, or after the termination of the judicial proceeding (unless such publication is an act incidental to the proper initiation thereof, or giving legal effect thereto); nor does it apply to or include any publication of defamatory matter to any person other than those to whom, or in any place other than that in which, such publication is required or authorized by law to be made for the proper conduct of the judicial proceedings." Id. The Court gave direction as to when the activities of a prosecutor prior to his presentation of the case to the grand jury come under the construct of "advocate": The question, then, is whether the prosecutors have carried their burden of establishing that they were functioning as "advocates" when they were endeavoring to determine whether the bootprint at the scene of the crime had been made by petitioner's foot. A careful examination of the allegations concerning the conduct of the prosecutors during the period before they convened a special grand jury to investigate the crime provides the answer. See supra, 113 S. Ct. at 2610, n. 1. The prosecutors do not contend that they had probable cause to arrest petitioner or to initiate judicial proceedings during that period. Their mission at that time was entirely investigative in character. A prosecutor neither is, nor should consider himself to be, an advocate before he has probable cause to have anyone arrested. After Burns, it would be anomalous, to say the least, to grant prosecutors only qualified immunity when offering legal advice to police about an unarrested suspect, but then to endow them with absolute immunity when conducting investigative work themselves in order to decide whether a suspect may be arrested. That the prosecutors later called a grand jury to consider the evidence this work produced does not retroactively transform that work from the administrative into the prosecutorial. A prosecutor may not shield his investigative work with the aegis of absolute immunity merely because, after a suspect is eventually arrested, indicted, and tried, that work may be retrospectively described as "preparation" for a possible trial; every prosecutor might then shield himself from liability for any constitutional wrong against innocent citizens by ensuring that they go to trial. When the functions of prosecutors and detectives are the same, as they were here, the immunity that protects them is also the same. (509 U.S. at 274-76, 113 S. Ct. 2616-17.) Regarding a prosecutor's participation at a press conference, the Buckley Court came to the firm conclusion that this act was protected by qualified immunity only: The functional approach of Imbler, which conforms to the common-law theory, leads us to the same conclusion. Comments to the media have no functional tie to the judicial process just because they are made by a prosecutor. At the press conference, Fitzsimmons did not act in "'his role as advocate for the State,'" Burns v. Reed, 500 U.S. at 491, 111 S. Ct. at 1941, quoting Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. at 431, n. 33, 96 S. Ct. at 995, n. 33. The conduct of a press conference does not involve the initiation of a prosecution, the presentation of the state's case in court, or actions preparatory for these functions. Statements to the press may be an integral part of a prosecutor's job, see National District Attorneys Assn., National Prosecution Standards 107, 110 (2d ed. 1991), and they may serve a vital public function. But in these respects, a prosecutor is in no different position than other executive officials who deal with the press, and, as noted above, supra, 113 S. Ct. at 2612-2613, 2617, qualified immunity is the norm for them. (509 U.S. at 277-78, 113 S. Ct. at 2618.)