Candidates forum for the Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney Democratic Primary

The first principle of justice is to ensure that all those who engage in criminal acts must be held accountable for their conduct.  The first principle of a just system is to ensure those who exact justice in the name of the community must be held accountable for the manner in which they seek that justice.

We will measure success in our office by the extent to which our actions, policies, and decisions have reduced crime in our community and we will also expect to be measured by the extent to which our citizens believe that our office reflects the values of independence, fairness, and integrity we should all expect.

Yes, this necessarily means that the Prosecutor’s Office must become unambiguously non-political. The office must deploy and assign its personnel in new ways that allow prosecutors to take ownership of cases from investigation to resolution and must be organized around relevant specialized units: public corruption, sex crimes, elder victims, child victims. High priority and commitment must be made to ongoing training and support and diversity must be embraced throughout the organization from recruitment to supervision.  The juvenile justice system must be given a top priority and prosecution and enforcement strategies must be focused and intelligence driven.

This race is more than simply putting forward new ideas. I am the candidate in this race with the experience, passion, and management and leadership skills necessary to implement these and other reforms in the office.  Throughout my career, as a lawyer, as an active and engaged citizen, as a Judge, and as Cleveland’s Law Director and Chief Prosecutor, I developed a reputation for working thoughtfully, creatively and collaboratively.  I know how to act decisively and am widely respected for the manner in which I exercise discretion and judgment.  Above all, I have consistently created and nurtured a diverse work environment where my colleagues thrived having a common mission with established values and high expectations.  I have a keen understanding of the issues and challenges that exist, the insight and the vision to create new approaches, and most of all, the unrivaled experience and skills to lead a team of dedicated lawyers and public servants to get the job done correctly and effectively. 

Posted Jan 24, 2012

My vision for the Prosecutor's Office is the most comprehensive of any of the candidates in this race.  Not only will I focus on the small percentage of criminals who are responsible for the majority of the crimes in our County, but I intend to fix the broken criminal justice system that has allowed unnecessary crimes, shattered public confidence, and wasted taxpayer dollars.  I will lead a cultural transformation of the entire criminal justice system from one that has been secretive to one that is transparent, performance-measured, data-driven, goal-oriented and an accountable business-like operation.

I am proposing being smarter about how we prosecute cases and I have the experience to execute on this proposal.  As Prosecutor, I will front-load the process and review cases as they first come in through a 24/7 Central Booking operation so that we can immediately assign an attorney and plea or dispose of most low-level cases rapidly so that we can focus on the most dangerous, habitual criminals.  These individuals constitute less than ten percent of the cases, but are responsible for the majority of the serious crimes in our County.  The majority of cases can be dealt with quickly rather than delayed months and months - these are cases where the defendant may have a substance abuse problem or struggle with a developmental disability or mental health challenge.  Directing these defendants toward an early disposition program or drug court allows them to enter rehabilitation immediately and gives the police, prosecutors, attorneys and the court more opportunity to focus on the high-level and contested cases.  This will make our criminal justice system more efficient and our community safer by taking the most dangerous criminals off the streets and assisting in the rehabilitation of those who may have found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

More details of my reform plan can be found at mcgintyforprosecutor.com/reform.php.

You can see my platform on my campaign site at www.jamesjmcdonnell.com.  

What sets me apart from the field is that in addition to working for 14 years as a prosecutor, I've worked extensively as a defense attorney.  It's important to citizens and voters that the next prosecutor take a balanced approach to prosecution.  As the question states, every candidate who runs for this race will talk tough when it comes to crime and you can see from my platform and experience that I am committed to this.  However, balance and fairness are also important and my experience prepares me to be tough while still working to ensure that citizens are completely protected from unfair prosecutions.

Another thing that will set me apart is my hands-on approach.  I've stated at debates that each year, I will take on a few cases, myself, to set the tone for the office and to demonstrate how cases related to certain types of crime should be handled. Opponents have said that this is impossible, but the goal is to hire the best people and run the office efficiently enough that my role can be not just to talk about the right way to do things, but also to teach and lead by example, showing the right way.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

Everyone claims that they are going to be tough on crime (or, if they are trying to appeal to progressives, "tough but fair.") It’s the first, banal crutch of way too many elected officials, including some of my opponents. None of that usual campaign posturing does our community any good at all, because it does not address the abundance of opportunities we have to make the public safer, with a broader, more proactive view of the prosecutor's job.

So of course I will prosecute violent offenders to the fullest extent of the law, to protect those of us who play by the rules, but who wouldn’t?  

Instead of all the talk about how we can be "tough," let’s instead talk about how we can be smart on crime, in ways that save us money, reduce crime—and ensure that we aren’t prosecuting and jailing innocent people. Here are a few examples of specific reforms that I will implement to make real, substantive improvements for our justice system—and our county:

• Sanitize the Prosecutor’s Office of patronage politics. Prosecutors are entrusted with incredible authority that puts people at risk of losing life, liberty, and property. The public deserves to know that that authority is exercised with impartiality and integrity. I will issue a Code of Conduct—based on what the U.S. Department of Justice, where I served, demands of its prosecutors—that prohibits holding a partisan elected office or political-party position, and from fundraising for partisan political candidates. Because this important step should not depend on any one candidate, I have respectfully challenged all the other candidates, in writing, and in public fora and debates, to pledge to issue the Justice Department memo too, but they have thus far responded with silence (with one candidate calling the challenge a "political stunt" but still refusing to make the pledge). So I suppose I may be the only person upon whom you can reliably count to take this important step, and firmly. After all, I was raised under such rules as a federal prosecutor. No other candidate has been.
• Establish a Public-Integrity Unit to address corruption. Feds had to step in to address county corruption because the county did not. I will designate prosecutors to investigate and prosecute public corruption. Some other candidates don't understand how important this is to build public confidence in government, and they say the county prosecutor's office can't address these issues—despite the fact that there are Ohio public-corruption statutes on the books. These candidates seem to think we should let the feds clean up our messes. I could not disagree more strongly.
• Establish a Conviction-Integrity Unit to work with reputable groups like the Innocence Project to correct injustices and to ensure that the true perpetrators are brought to justice. My commitment to this arises out of my experience with addressing Michael Green's wrongful conviction, in which he served 13 years for a rape he did not commit. As law director, I worked with Mr. Green to re-examine over 100 similar cases handled by the same forensic examiner who mishandled Mr. Green's case. We need a prosecutor who wants to seek justice, not bury his head in the sand.
• Protect our community from re-entering ex-offenders by ensuring they are economically productive. Nearly a quarter of Ohio's inmates return to Cuyahoga County, so we need to establish public and private partnerships to ensure that an inmate’s re-entry into the community is a part of a process designed to keep them from re-offending. Otherwise, we are practically inviting criminals to re-offend. We need a prosecutor who leads this effort, engaging the private sector as the former D.A. in San Francisco did. No other candidate talks about this in specifics.
• Reform forensic-scientific practices. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report declaring that most forensic science in America is in serious need for reform and it is clear that the County is a part of that problem.
• Stop politicizing the death penalty. Politicians like to brag about how their death penalty is bigger than the next guy's. I won't do that. The death penalty requires sober-minded prosecutors interested in doing justice and getting it right, not showing off. Right now, comparative statistics show that the office overcharges far too many death-penalty cases, just to improperly "squeeze" pleas out of defendants. I will end this practice.
• Tamp down on truancy and stave off thesupply of future criminals. Studies show truancy leads to criminal activity. I will lead an effort, in partnership with schools, to shut down that criminal pipeline. Elsewhere, efforts led by the Prosecutor slashed elementary-school truancy by over 33%.
• Focus on treatment to reduce the demand for drugs. Our prisons and courthouses are filled with petty, pointless, minor drug crimes. While we should continue to have zero tolerance for hard drugs and their trafficking, treatment is far more often a more effective and less expensive approach for lesser offenses like small possession.

If we do these things, and more we will all be safer, and most importantly, build confidence across our county and across racial lines that there is just one standard of justice that applies to everyone.

What should give you confidence that I will lead on these commitments and make them happen? My track record of reform

1. as the only former federal prosecutor in this race (who won a commendation from FBI director Robert Mueller for "demonstrated excellence"),
2. as the Cleveland Law Director and Prosecuting Attorney who led the reform of that department from dire circumstances, and
3. in private practice representing and winning on behalf of those without a voice—from homeless people and naturalized citizens who challenged Ken Blackwell's efforts to deny them the right to vote, to union retirees who had their promised healthcare benefits taken away by a foreign corporation.

In short, what distinguishes me from the field is that I have both an ambitious agenda for change, and a demonstrated record of making such change. I encourage you to please visit www.ChandraForProsecutor.com for more information. 

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Beyond usinig the county-stat process to regularly review efficiencies within the Prosecutor's Office, the biggest impact we can have would be to work more collaboratively with local law enforcement and municipal systems throughout the County to more quickly, but more effectively, determine appropriate resolutions of cases entering the justice system. Huge sums are unnecessarily spent in early incarceration costs and witness fees due to continuances and system inefficiencies. The Justice System Reform effort has had some success, yet the effort has stalled due to an inability or unwillingness to think more broadly about the role of municipal courts in ably dealing with important but lower-level felony cases. A just and effective system is not one that seeks to eliminate important procedural safeguards, but is one where efficiencies are created without simply speeding up an ineffective revolving door. As a former Municipal Judge, I see great opportunities to provide both a meaningful response to criminal activity through assets already in place, but to also create system-wide efficiecies to drive costs down and expend resources in a more effective manner.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

One of the first things any newly elected officeholder must do, before they even take office, is to form a "transition team" that guides the transition of responsibility for the office from the outgoing officeholder to the new admininstration.   This team should include experts on public finance who are independent of both the outgoing and incoming officeholders and who are capable of a completing a thorough inspection of the office to identify areas for savings.

There are a number of ways to cut costs without reducing the quality of services or eliminating jobs.  One of the biggest is to reform our grand jury system.  In my experience as a City Prosecutor and defense attorney, I have seen a number of cases that have gone to the Prosecutor’s Office that should have been taken care of at the municipal level.  In 2010 there were 12,000 cases brought to the Prosecutor’s Office.  Two thousand of these resulted in plea bargains to misdemeanors.  If these cases are taken care of at the municipal level, we save tax dollars and the County Prosecutor’s Office is better able to focus on more serious crimes.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

Paul, thanks for your question.

In the past, the County Administration has always taken a hands-off approach to the Court, the County Jail, and the operations of the County Prosecutor's Office.  Now that the County Executive oversees the Clerk of Courts, he has a stake in the effective and efficient administration of the criminal justice system in our County.  Half of the County's general revenue fund spending is on criminal justice expenses.  A significant amount of taxpayer dollars could be saved if there was an annual audit of revenues and a best practices review.  Our criminal justice agencies have little interest in the revenue side of the ledger.  As County Prosecutor, I will see that court costs, fines, day fines, bond forfeitures, and assigned attorney fees are tracked and collected and used whenever possible as an alternative sentence to jail time, which will benefit both the offender and our community.  We could easily improve revenue and offset costs by approximately $10 million annually.  That is why I have proposed to the County Council and Executive a Charter Amendment requiring this annual performance audit. 

Further, I believe that by implementing the reforms recommended by the Justice Management Institute, like creating a Central Booking operation to immediately review cases as they come in and quickly assigning an attorney so that defendants are not languishing in jail for months, can help our County save millions of dollars.  Since I first started the criminal justice reform efforts years ago, we have saved millions of dollars and have become more efficient.  We can do much more. 

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Paul, thank you for your question. Here are my thoughts (many condensed from my answer to the first question above to the extent they relate to your question as well):

• All strategies need to be based on the philosophy of being "smart" on crime. If we can stave off the criminal pipeline by addressing truancy and having more volunteers participating a juvenile-diversion program to keep youth from becoming criminals, and stave off the re-offense pipeline with a strong re-entry program through prosecutorial leadership, we won't need to spend as much on criminal justice over the mid to long-term.
• We need to end the patronage politics in the office's hiring and retention. By doing this, we will be able to recruit and retain a world-class office of prosecutors who can and are willing to do more with less.
• We need to leverage and use cutting-edge technology to create efficiencies. I did this in Cleveland, thus reducing the need for support staffing. I have a plan to bring in more resources, computers, personal-digital assistants, etc. from the federal government.
• We need to re-evaluate and reallocate the use of the forfeiture fund that the prosecutor controls.
• The prosecutor needs to run an affirmative civil-enforcement group that collects revenues, taxes that are owed, etc.
• The prosecutor needs to review all the contracts that may be tainted by corruption to be sure we have received all restitution, or determine if county contracts need to be abrogated and re-bid to get a better value.
• When I took over as Cleveland Law Director, the previous year, the City had spent more money on outside counsel than the City of Los Angeles that same year. By the time I left, that figure had been reduced by almost 90%, by ending privatization, and doing work in-house less expensively. I will figure out whether such efficiencies can be created at the county.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Stephanie,

     I really like your plans for invovlment with the community to respond to what is actually happening on the street. I do have concerns however, due to the fact that you do not have much of a history in practicing law.The Prosecutor needs to be both legally astute and politically savvy. Pressures to bend for political expediency will happen, Cases that are legal minefields will occur. How can you convince voters that you are up to the task of addressing these things if and when they should occur? Do you have any expereince as a prosecutor ? How much courtroom experience do you have?

Posted Jan 26, 2012

The Prosecutor's Office must become unambiguously non-political. The integrity of the Prosecutor's office and the decisions and discretion excercised in each and every case is rooted in its independence, both in reality and in perception. Holding party offices and positions will not be permitted. Although assistant prosecutors are not part of the classified service, the same political activity restrictions applicable to civil service employees will be the office standard.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

Posted Jan 24, 2012

To put it simply, the Prosecutor's Office must operate freely of any political considerations in order to achieve its statutorily mandated responsibility to the citizens of Cuyahoga County.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

I feel there is a need to de-politicize the prosecutor's office.  Once I am in office, I will send a memo to all of the assistant prosecutor's and staff making them aware of the conflict of interests holding a political office and working for the prosecutor's office entails.  The memo will give the employees an opportunity to be forthcoming and either immediately resign their political position or leave the office.  I will make it clear that whether or not the political position the employee holds is volunteer or a paid position any leadership position that reflects a conflict with the office and the citizenry we serve will not be allowed. 

Moving forward-new applicants will be put on notice of my position on this issue. I will provide a policy and procedures manual for all employees outlining the rules, regulations and the ramifications for holding a political office while employed as an assistant prosecutor or support staff in the office.  The employees will be required to sign this form as a testament that he or she has been put on notice and will abide by the policy.   

Posted Jan 25, 2012

I have been in leadership positions throughout my career and have been both the Director of a Congressional District Office and the Director of a large municipal law firm as Law Director and Chief Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland. I have found that strong leadership begins with surrounding yourself with good people with great leadership and management skills and who have shared values and believe in a common mission. The first order of business is to build that first-class team.

Among my first year goals would be to implement a vertical prosecution model particularly in sex crimes cases, where individual prosecutors take ownership of a case from its early stages all the way through charging, bond and probable cause hearing, grand jury, pretrial and trial. This will increase support to law enforcement officers and victims and will allow assistant prosecutors a much greater voice in case resolution through trial or plea negotiations.

Second, the office will be organized around various specialized units: public corruption, sex crimes, elder victims, child victims. We will develop a sustained training program for all our prosecutors and establish a supervisory team that possesses not only substantive expertise, but also the necessary leadership skills to support and develop talent within the office. Diversity will be embraced throughout the organization.

Third, there will be a primary focus on juvenile justice by broadly expanding the community based prosecution model to identify and isolate the activities of chronic juvenile offenders. We will also expand mediatgion and diversion opportunities and expand crime prevention initiatives that counter prevailing attitudes toward truancy and predatory and anti-social behavior.

Fourth, we will create an intelligence-driven prosecution/crime strategies unit that specifically targets priority offenders to impact charging decisions, bail application, plea decisions and sentencing recommendations. The focus would be to address the offender's impact on criminal activity across jurisdictional boundaries regardless of the level of offenses and would utilize data based on the offenders affiliations, type of crime, access to weapons and targets of crime.

Fifth, we will initiate a regular county-stat review process to monitor consistencey and outcomes. Conviction rates will not be the defining measure of success. Rather in every process, policy, and decision we will measure its effectiveness at reducing crime in the community.

Posted Jan 24, 2012

Immediately upon taking office, I will commission a strategic plan that will clearly spell out the mission, vision, and values of the agency.  After completing that task, we will create aggressive agency goals, objectives, and performance measures.  Based upon that strategic plan, we will create a comprehensive budget that will do away with the incremental budgeting approach that has long been the practice in Cuyahoga County.  We will measure our performance against our strategic plan and publish the results on a website for the public to review.  If we are falling short of our goals there will be a remediation plan.  In addition to regularly posting our performance results online, we will also publish an annual report on the criminal justice system in Cuyahoga County. 

I have outlined numerous goals on mcgintyforprosecutor.com and would encourage voters to read my reform plan there, but five of the most important goals for my first term are as follows:

1)  Complete the reforms recommended by the Justice Management Institute experts several years ago and make the County Prosecutor's Office and this county's criminal justice system more efficient and effective while improving the quality of the justice we deliver.  Completing these recommended reforms will involve initiatives like creating a Central Booking system to quickly review cases, assign attorneys, and dispose of low-level cases through early disposition programs and the drug court so that our prosecutors, police, attorneys, and the Court can focus on the most dangerous habitual criminals who commit the majority of the serious crimes in Cuyahoga County.

2)  Create a Public Corruption Unit that will aggressively work to protect the citizens of our County from future disgrace and harm from those who would violate the public trust.  We must learn the lessons this county corruption fiasco offers and I will take responsibility to see that it does not occur again - I will start right in the Prosecutor's Office by depoliticizing and making certain that there are no potential conflicts of interest that could compromise our ethics or ability to investigate.  I will not rely on the Federal authorities to handle our responsibility to prosecute crime in Cuyahoga County.  To leave that responsibility solely to the Federal authorities is not good enough for our citizens.

3)  Bring a renewed focus to the foreclosure crisis that is ravaging neighborhoods throughout our community.  Abandoned houses are not only a blight on our neighborhoods and diminish the value of other houses, but they also serve as safe havens for criminal behavior.  I am proposing increasing the staffing and priority of the Foreclosure Unit and stepping up the criminal prosecutions of predatory lenders, mortgage brokers, and appraisers.  I will also form a task force and work with the county, cities, land banks, community groups and the court to tackle this problem head on.  For more details, please go to my website.

4)  Hire an independent professional agency to review the existing office and recommend the most efficient organizational structure, appropriate staffing levels, and qualifications for the staff in the recommended structure, as well as the appropriate level of compensation.  I will also ask the agency to review and recommend changes to the existing policy and procedure manual to reflect the best practices in public administration.  These recommendations will allow us to recruit and train the best people, promote the best people, retain the best people, and bring an end to office patronage.

5)  Place new and higher priority on the Juvenile Division and the issue of gun violence.  Some of the most important work the Prosecutor's Office can perform is at this level where the incidents of violence are high - as are the chances for rehabilitation.  This division will not be a "Siberia" or just a training stop for young prosecutors.  It will be staffed with enthusiastic and talented staff.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

My top five goals for my first term as Prosecutor are as follows-first, as noted above, I will establish a steering committee who will identify the top five most critical practices of the Prosecutor's office that the committee believes has failed the criminal justice system.

Second-I will meet with the current supervisors and staff of all the divisions (civil, criminal, juvenile, children and family services, real estate and tax foreclosure, etc) in the Prosecutor's office and identify areas where the office is strong and areas that need improvement.

Third-I will develop a cohesive relationship with police agenices throughout the county.  I will set up mandatory training every two years where police and assistant prosecutors train together and receive updates on the law both agencies are sworn to uphold.  I am particularly interested in police and assistant prosecutors receiving training on cultural sensitivity and diversity and handling and investigating sexual assaults.

Fourth-I will establish a public information unit to provide information about routine prosecution duties and responsiblities that would enhance the information provided on the Cuyahoga county website.  I will provide a leaflet to the public detailing a step by step approach to navigating the website and information on how to make a public records request.

Fifth-I will establish a complaint review board to promote transparency.  The board will be solicit members from the community to serve for a limited term and offer insight regarding issues that affect their community and the county as a whole.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Please see my response to the first question; it lays out the agenda, post chair-adjustment.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

The first action I take will be to set up a series of meetings:

1) a staffwide meeting to discuss expectations and priorities

2) a meeting with the US Attorneys Office, which has taken charge of the corruption investigation.  The goals will be to offer support and assistance with the investigation, to determine the role of the office with regard to it, and to establish a working relationship with respect to our roles within the criminal justice system as a whole.

3) a meeting of all agencies and stakeholders within the criminal justice system to establish woking relationships and to identify ways we can work together to better fulfill our respective duties.

I discuss my top goals and priorities at length on my website at www.jamesmcdonnell.com.  In order to spare some time to respond to additional questions in this forum, I humbly request that you visit my site. 

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Whether duties and cases brought in the name of the citizens of Cuyahoga County get farmed out to outside lawyers, the legal authority and the resulting accountability rests with the Prosecuting Attorney. This position is not unlike the position I held for nearly six years as Law Director and Chief Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland where I was responsible for multiple areas of representation, both criminal and civil, providing all the legal services for a $1.3 billion municipal corporation. This is a leadership position, not unlike the managing partner of any major law firm in the County and it takes significant legal, management, and people skills to ensure that the interests of the public and the public entity are protected. I have the necessary legal and managerial experience and well established personal skills to be a strong leader in all these areas. Abuse of power does not come from having a full plate. It comes from from an attitude of entitlement and arrogance. I hope you can see from the reputation I have earned over my many years in positions of authority and responsibility, the manner in which I will respect the power of the office. 

We now have the benefit of having a County Law Director and an Inspector General who are both in a position to help provide the County with legal counsel and representation. I plan to work closely with Executive Fitzgerald to develop a collaborative relationship to maximize the talents those two additional offices. My goal is simple. I want to provide the County and its citizens the highest level of legal services offerred anywhere in the country.   

Posted Jan 24, 2012

"Do the candidates believe the system operate[s] well or are these activities so dissimilar that the Prosecutor's Office should be divided?"

These systems have cross-polination potential that is untapped. A lawyer who comes into the office with both complex civil and complex criminal-litigation experience, as I do, as well as the experience of catalyzing creativity in a large public-law firm, can create synergies.

For example, the mortgage and foreclosure crisis, along with the resulting devastation to our neighborhoods, should be addressed not just by criminal prosecutors reactively, but by the foreclosure-docket lawyers, and affirmative civil-enforcement lawyers who are trying to come up with creative strategies to hold lenders and other bad actors accountable. As I did in Cleveland repeatedly as its law director, I would foster for interdisciplinary, and cross-sectional collaboration. Pull smart people together across disciplines and ask them to solve a big problem. It's breathtaking to watch, particularly if you have a diverse office where everyone doesn't think the same or have similar backgrounds.

"Is there a risk of abusing enforcement power?"

There is always that risk when power is concentrated too much. The key is having a Prosecutor (and staff) who are out in the community and always willing to listen to an opposing viewpoint. And a staff that is not beholden to one political machine (see earlier answers about depoliticization).

Should the prosecutor farm out, for instance the civil representation, to outside lawyers as is done in some counties?  

Probably not. My experience in slashing spending on outside counsel by almost 90% in Cleveland, saving millions of dollars, was that most good legal work for most matters can be done in-house by talented lawyers recruited to, and dedicated to, public service. What I found was that for every $1 that we invested in-house, we reaped a $16 reduction in outside counsel fees. We did the entire deal to bring Sysco's 600 jobs in to the City in-house, for example, saving what easily could have cost us $500,000 in fees. (See discussion in attached and uploaded article.)

The outside-counsel policy that I developed said that we would only use outside counsel under narrow circumstances--(1) where there was an ethical conflict, (2) where the area of law was so specialized that we could not competently handle the matter (e.g., immigration, international trade), or (3) where the matter was too big of a matter for our office to handle under present resource constraints. Even when we did use outside counsel, we would typically assign someone in-house to co-counsel it or be the junior lawyer to build-up our in-house expertise.

So I doubt we'll be privatizing much. Let's see what the in-house capabilities are, and build them, first.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

The County Prosecutor currently engages outside counsel for a myriad of issues. The primary reasons are for complex litigation or debt-financing issues that involve a highly specialized area of the law. I agree with this practice and will continue it because the taxpayers’ interests are best served by assigning these cases to qualified, experienced attorneys in those areas. 

The primary role of the County Prosecutor's office is public safety and that will be my main priority. I will hire the best attorneys available that reflect the rich diversity of our community. We will focus on the habitual criminals who are responsible for the majority of the crime in our community, while allowing the lower level cases the option to seek plea agreements to begin their rehabilitation as soon as possible.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Thank you, Nancy, for posting such a great question.  Agreed. Disparity amongst defendants creates disparity amongst sentencing.  Cuyahoga's inequalities have troubled me to the extent of causing me to closely follow this race as a means to the end.  So far, the best attack to these problems from any candidate I have heard to date was found in a list of "Changes" posted way back when by Mr. Subodh Chandra on his campaign website.  His list of "Changes," along with my perception of him being an "outsider" fully capable of implementing said Changes, have prompted me to order a yard sign (just yesterday!) to support him.  Other than waiting on my yard sign to arrive, and a one-time public comment exchange on cleveland.com, I have no ties to Mr. Chandra or the County, but am desperate for an outsider not on anyone's "take" and beholden to none to come in and restore a sense of balance to Cuyahoga County justice.  So far, his list of "Changes" seems to take the bull by the horns in my book. Mandatory Disclosure:  I am a non-criminal (transactional/business/real estate) paralegal working for a small law firm serving small businesses from the outskirts of Cuyahoga County.  (BUT THIS POST IS 100% JUST MY THOUGHTS AND IN NO WAY REPRESENTS OR IS INTENDED TO REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF MY EMPLOYER!) And I compulsively read the news each and every night lol.  As much of it as I can stomach anyway.  :-)   PS--THANKS TO ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS FORUM!!!  It takes great courage to lay it all out in writing.  Typos and all.  Thank you!! And if anyone can convince me they have a better plan than Mr. Chandra I will be happy to promptly cancel my request for that yard sign and get one from you instead!!!  

Posted Jan 25, 2012

We begin by shifting the empahsis away from conviction rates as a measure of success to the impact our work has on reducing crime in the community. This necessarily means the focus in every case becomes getting the facts right and holding the right people accountable in a meaningful way. That it took the County so long to move forward on open discovery was not acceptable. As a Judge of the Cleveland Municpal Court I insisted that open discovery was provided in all cases coming before me. As Chief Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland I ensured that our open discovery policy was followed. No issue was more important to me than getting things right. Only then could we move forward to a meaningful response. As County Prosecutor there will be no backtracking on this issue. 

It is also unacceptable to me that even with the Criminal Justice Reform efforts that lawyers who will represent defendants throughout the case are not assigned at the outset of the case. The longer it takes for defense counsel to be on the job, the harder it is to conduct appropriate investigation, case preparation, and defense. Yes, lawyers are present at all the court hearings, but that is not enough. From the moment of arrest to the scheduling of the Common Pleas arraignment where the actual counsel is assigned, too much valuable time is wasted and in many cases too much money is wasted on pretrial incarceration costs. If we are serious about ensuring that we get things right we cannot be satisfied with the small steps we have taken. 

Also, prosecutorial misconduct will not be tolerated. I will not have anyone working under the authority of my name engaging in misconduct that compromises the integrity of the process. Nor will I tolerate leaks to the media that compromise the integrity of the prosecution in any effort to gain either personal or tactical advantage.

I will also be a vocal advocate for alternative models of justice. I have a long history of innovative work in creating the Greater Cleveland Drug Court, the Cleveland Mental Health Court, and the Cleveland Truancy Docket and vocal supporter of diversion programs and alternative sentencing models. All these initiatives require an investment of resources which in the long run have a direct impact on crime reduction in the coummunity, whichas  I have said, is the appropriate measue of success.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

"What steps would you take to ensure that the criminal convictions obtained by your office are not a consequence of the lack of resources available to those you are prosecuting?"

When I was in college, studying civil-rights law, I had the opportunity to meet New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, who wrote the amazing book, Gideon's Trumpet about the Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, establishing the right to counsel in criminal cases. I still have my autographed copy of the book, which I have read many times.

Regretably, that right, however, has been watered down. As a criminal-defense lawyer, I have watched some so-called assigned counsel in complex economic-crimes cases that could take years to resolve in fully litigated plead even innocent clients out, I believe, in part, because the fee being paid in inadequate to properly conduct discovery and litigate the case. (Interesting, I have watched  assistant public defenders do an amazing job for their clients, even though the public defenders are paid very little in salary.)

We must not sacrifice due process at the altar of efficiency, because we will wind up sacrificing justice as a result. We will wind up convicting innocent people, letting the guilty go free, and overlooking evidence that might suggest we do not need to spend as much on punishment.

As prosecutor, I will view the County Public Defender, Bob Tobik, as my partner in the criminal-justice system and fight to ensure that he has the resources to do his job and do it well. That is one reason I have told AFSCME that I support including public defenders in any disparity studies being done regarding prosecutors' salaries.

I will also pursue strategies (see answers above for details) that are smart on crime and give us more bang for the buck to keep us all safe.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

In 2004 I persuaded the County Commissioners, over strenuous objection, that we needed outside experts to come in and do a best practices review of the criminal justice system in our county. The result was a highly publicized Justice Management Institute (JMI) Report that documented the inefficiencies and injustice that our fragmented, leaderless system produced. The JMI Report made numerous recommendations, including one that recommended the County Prosecutor work with the city prosecutors on creating a 24/7 “central booking” operation in our County.

As County Prosecutor, I will follow through on the JMI recommendations including the creation of a Central Booking operation in our County. Under the proposed model, the city prosecutor will triage the case with the city police and examine the facts of the case and the history of the accused (including mental health or other mitigating factors) before making an initial decision on charging the accused. Since the defense counsel will be assigned early in the case, the rights of the accused will be protected early on, rather than a month or more under the old and slow method.

In other jurisdictions I have studied, the prosecutor agrees in advance that defendants who enter certain early disposition programs, like a drug court, will receive probation with certainty. The prosecutors recognize that these defendants will eventually receive probation, so why not take the time to review the case now and offer the best deal right after arrest instead of delaying the work six months? This allows the defendant to begin rehabilitation immediately and not waste valuable police, prosecutor, attorney and court time that could be better spent on higher-level and contested cases. The attorneys and clients are eager to enter these “guaranteed probation” programs where appropriate and low-level cases are settled expeditiously without time-wasting gamesmanship.  And keep in mind these early disposition opportunities are just options for the defendants - the accused has every right to decline and stay in the system and go to trial.

My plan is to dispose of the low-level cases expeditiously so that we can focus our limited resources on the habitual and dangerous offenders. They compromise less than 10% of the criminals but are responsible for the majority of the crime. 80% of the felony cases dispose as felony 4’s or lower--all are eligible for probation. So it makes sense to assign attorneys early and give them the opportunity to plea these cases rapidly. Very few of these cases will need to go to the Grand Jury and most will be off the docket, on probation, and in rehabilitation within 30-45 days. It makes sense to grant the defendants now, immediately after arrest, what they would be offered in 90-120 days under the old way of doing things.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Thank you for such detailed and thoughtful responses!

You have identified (and in some instances proposed solutions for) many of the weaknesses in our current system:

• Delay in assignment of defense counsel for indigent defendants
• Delay in case triage for appropriate management
• Discrepancy in resources (both potential pay discrepancies, as well as resources to do the discovery legwork, and – although not mentioned – I suspect a discrepancy time resources due to caseloads)
• Inadequate access to information in the possession of the state
• A metric used for measuring success of our criminal justice system which is based on conviction rate, which has a tendency to bias prosecutor's actions toward winning rather than justice and community safety
• Sentencing models which are based on punishment rather than on making our communities safer (which might focus on alternatives to incarceration; re-entry training and support, for example)

I am pleased to so much recognition of core issues of justice and equity, and encourage whoever wins to revisit this conversation (not just your responses to my question) and take advantage of all this rich conversation has to offer to supplement your own really good ideas.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

No type of case impacts and tests the credibility of the criminal justice system more than capital cases. Justice Pfeiffer and former Attorney General Petro's concerns are legitimate and I applaud and support Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor's task force to review and analyse the use of the death penalty in Ohio over these past 30 years. Given the issues raised over racial disparity and income disparity, the review of death penalty cases cannot simply be an every 30 year exercise. It must be an annual review and it must be open and transparent.

This much is certain. I will not continue the current practice of using the death penalty simply as a plea negotiating tool. The number of death penalty cases indicted out of Cuyahoga County is completely out of line with the comparable numbers from across the State and the widely disparate outcomes of those indictments suggest that little thought and effort is made prior to Office seeking the indictment at the outset. The cost to the County is staggering and the integrity of the outcomes become suspect. I was a criminal trial lawyer during my first 10 years in practice and was certified to represent indigent defendants in capital cases. During that time, I was co-counsel in the first death penalty case brought under the then new death penalty law that resulted in a judgment of acquittal at the conclusion of the prosecutor's case. That a case so weak with such dire potential consequences could make its way through indictment to trial was a career-long lesson in the potential for injustice when seeking the death penalty is not given the analysis and review it demands. 

Posted Jan 25, 2012

In the interests of time, I would refer you to my discussion of this subject here.

And I would add this. The dirty little open secret in our county is that the death penalty is overcharged here. The statistics show that the vast majority of death-penalty cases result in punishments far less than that. That means the charges are used to improperly "squeeze" guilty pleas out of people. While reasonable people may disagree about the propriety of the death penalty as a just punishment for certain crimes (although there should be no disagreement at this point that it has no deterrent value), this ultimate punishment requires the ultimate sober-minded prosecutor who refuses to politicize it. And one who will not play games when it is pursued in ensuring that this ultimate punishment requires the ultimate due process if we are to get it right.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

It was the death penalty cases and the issues raised that caused me the most sleepless nights as a prosecutor and a judge. Having been involved in these capital cases, I know it is an enormous responsibility. There is so much at stake and there is absolutely no room for error. Terrible murders take place and there is often an immediate call for the death penalty by the victim’s family, friends, and the community, yet the level of proof, mitigating factors, and the backgrounds of the defendants often predict that a conviction is unlikely and would never be held up on appeal. It was very frustrating as a judge to see cases indicted where you know that a death penalty conviction is never going to and never should happen. Cuyahoga County has had the most capital indictments in Ohio in the 30-year history of the new capital punishment law, yet its rate of total death penalty convictions is reported as under 5%. That tells us that there are far too many capital indictments.

My own experience as a judge for almost 19 years taught me that the majority of the capital cases I received in my courtroom were not worthy of capital indictment, stood little chance of a jury conviction, and had no chance of affirmation on appeal.

In the most recent case I had in my courtroom (State vs Diaz), the wrong brother was charged as the triggerman and the actual shooter wasn’t even one of the named defendants. The witnesses were unreliable and lied to the police repeatedly. The crime scene itself showed an exchange of gunfire with the homicide victim. To the credit of the Homicide Unit and the case prosecutor, they continued their investigation even after the indictment at the urging of the court, were willing to reexamine their case, discovered and reported the exculpatory evidence as they found it to both the court and the defense, and the charges were greatly reduced. This case clearly should never have been brought to court as a capital case.

Besides the important ethical issues, why waste time, money, and energy that should be spent more productively elsewhere? In purely economic terms, the cost to the public in police, prosecutor, and defense hours spent for a case clearly destined to go nowhere are considerable. And in the case mentioned above, we did not even have any of the high-mitigation expert investigation costs since I could see from the start that the capital specifications would not stand. 

As County Prosecutor, I am going to reform the capital punishment process to achieve a balance between public safety, legislative intent, and wise spending of taxpayer dollars. There will be a new and deliberate process employed that will far more carefully screen these aggravated murder cases so that only the most heinous offenses with the strongest factual proof and lack of meaningful mitigation will even be considered. This balance could very well result in  a situation where there would be an 80% reduction in capital indictments and yet the same number (or an increase) in the conviction rate. We will focus our criminal justice system’s limited resources (detectives, prosecutors, defenders, experts) only on those few cases that meet this higher standard. The goal is to ensure better investigations before any capital charge is considered and a higher quality presentation at trial of those far fewer that are brought to trial.

I will not seek any capital indictments unless we are absolutely confident it is a case whose evidence and proof of the aggravating circumstances of the aggravated murder are so strong, the identification so indisputable, and the mitigation so weak, that it will hold up to the enormously high standards necessary during a decade of appeals. Relatively few do, as the last thirty years of appeals have demonstrated. The difference between the number of capital indictments and actual executions is enormous. The appeals cost millions of dollars that could be much better spent elsewhere. 

As a prosecutor in the Major Trial Division, I testified at the Ohio Legislature on behalf of changing the law to include a life-without-parole option. Since that law took effect, and the public’s favorable opinion regarding capital punishment declined, death penalty verdicts have become infrequent both in Cleveland and elsewhere in Ohio. It should truly be reserved for the most heinous of offenses and offenders.

We will not indict capital cases just to create leverage for a plea bargain. If indicted, it will be our intention to go to trial barring some unforeseen weakness in the case or newly-discovered mitigation. 

Posted Jan 27, 2012

As a Judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court I worked with my colleagues to confront this issue directly and with the help of David Dawson from the Legal Aid Society and Bob Tobik from the Public Defender's Office we worked hard to facilitate opportunities for Cleveland residents to file expungement petitions. But you are right. Our experience showed that the eligibility requirements are too restrictive and many people who clearly demonstrated clear rehabilitation and years of exemplary life experience could not take advantage of the opportunity. The legislature must take another look at this and I would be an advocate to provide more judicial flexibility for those who have clearly demonstrated they are worthy of the opportunity for a clean slate.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

I am definitely a proponent of expungements.  In my private practice, I have successfully expunged several of my clients' record. I agree that there is a need to re-examine the statute.  All to often I meet people who are leading upstanding lives but are unable to find employment because of their past indiscretions.  I will be open to discussions regarding the expansion of the statute and any dialog surrounding a broader interpretation.  However, as an elected official within the executive branch of government, I have to remain mindful not to overstep my duties as the chief law enforcement official of Cuyahoga county and respect the Constitutional safequards embedded in the separation of powers. 

I would like to support legislation that would make it a requirement for the court to make a first time offender aware of the expungement statute at the time of sentencing-whereby a first time offender would be put on notice (and it would be on the record) that if the offense for which the defendant is being punished meets the criteria for expungement, the defendant may have his or her record expunged after one year if convicted of a misdemeanor or three years if convicted of a felony.   

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Expungement eligibility should be expanded, but in a balanced and careful way. For example, as a small-business owner, I would like to know whether, six years earlier, someone I am thinking about hiring as a bookkeeper was convicted of embezzlement. (Having, as a federal prosecutor, convicted a bookkeeper who committed the same scheme twice over ten years to two different sets of victims, I would want to know.) So also, I would want to maintain protections against expungement for certain kinds of sex offenders, especially those who could put children at risk.

For most types of offenses, however, this is a non-issue. I have obtained expungements for clients over offenses they commited when much younger, and they lead productive and happy lives. The expungements were key to their success.

There is a deeper question though. Even with expungement, nowadays, the conviction information has been obtained by various third-party vendors, who sell it on the internet. So the information is already "out there." There was a fantastic article in the Cleveland State University Law Review in the last couple of years on this issue, with some proposed solutions, which I would commend to you. If you want the citation, let me know and I can look for it for you.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Thanks for your question, Kevin.

There are many people in our community who find themselves on the wrong side of the law for a variety of reasons. Some defendants commit crimes by specific intent and some by accident or misfortune. The Prosecutor’s Office needs to weigh each request for an expungement with an eye toward giving any non-violent first offender a second chance. The goal should be to allow any first time, non-violent offender who has met all of his/her Court-ordered obligations the opportunity to move on with his/her life without legal restriction. It is the fair thing to do and it is the reason why expungements exist in the first place.

The County Prosecutor should work with the Legislature to expand the number of offenses eligible for expungement. In addition, the County Prosecutor should work to allow those convicted of multiple low-level, non-violent offenses in the distant past to seek an expungement as long as they have refrained from any criminal activity since their last offense and complied with all Court orders resulting from their convictions.

I will propose legislation that would give the Common Pleas Judge the discretion to decide in additional expungement-level categories, after a public hearing where evidence and witnesses could be presented by both the person seeking expungement and the prosecution. The Court will determine if the evidence and history of the individual’s family life, work history, and community involvement convince the Court of the following:

1. The person has led a law-abiding and respectable life in the required 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 years since the offense.

2. The person truly poses no threat to the community.

3. An expungement would truly be in the best interest of the community.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Jim, I have not had the opportunity to read the book, but I did have a conversation recently with Chancellor Petro where we talked briefly about his work. I am aware of his 8 myths about criminal justice and having worked in the center of the criminal justice system for 30 years as a criminal defense lawyer, a trial judge, and chief prosecutor, I can say my experience and world view has mirrored his. As a trial judge I was the decision maker in hundreds of trials. To say that I always got it right would be the height of arrogance. I will say that I was always firmly committed to getting it right and I think the reputation I earned during my tenure on the bench bears that out.  The power of the Prosecutor in the excercise of discretion and judgement is enormous. My team will reflect the seriousness with which I approach this work, the commitment to excellence that I want to achieve, and the respect I have for both the extent and limits of the power that the citizens have placed in me.  

Posted Jan 25, 2012

False Justice is about eight myths that convict the innocent:

• Myth 1: Everyone in prison claims innocence.
• Myth 2: Our system almost never convicts an innocent person.
• Myth 3: Only the guilty confess.
• Myth 4: Wrongful conviction is the result of innocent human error.
• Myth 5: An eyewitness is the best testimony.
• Myth 6: Conviction errors get corrected on appeal.
• Myth 7: It dishonors a victim to question a conviction.
• Myth 8: If the justice system has problems, the pros will fix them.

I wholeheartedly agree that all of these myths affect the system. And it is Myth 8 that I will work tirelessly to ensure becomes a reality, at least in Cuyahoga County.

Mr. and Mrs. Petro wrote the book after Mr. Petro's experience as attorney general with the Michael Green wrongful conviction, which was an important and eye-opening episode in my career as Cleveland Law Director and Prosecuting Attorney as well. (See Connie Schultz article, uploaded and attached.) During the course of discovery in Mr. Green's wrongful-conviction suit against the City Cleveland, it became apparent that the forensic examiner involved in the case had shaded his results and testimony to support the then-prosecutor, Mr. McGinty's, case; it was apparent based on my office's investigation that the examiner had felt some pressure to shade his testimony.

When I discovered this, I agreed with Mr. Green to direct the re-examination of over 100 similar cases in which the forensic examiner was involved. The Innocence Project's Barry Scheck hailed this approach as a national model. (I understand that the post-Green audit has yielded additional cases that may be working their way through the system.) I also ensured that the forensic examiner's services were no longer needed by the citizens of Cleveland.  

There is a very different approach and temperament among the candidates in this race to these issues.

To address these issues going forward, I will establish a Conviction Integrity Unit within the prosecutor's office, as the D.A. in Dallas County, TX has, to work directly with the Innocence Project and other reputable groups in reviewing DNA and other evidence that might exonerate those we have convicted. I will also move aggressively to end the domination of junk science in prosecutions.(The National Academy of Sciences has put our a report saying that most forensic science today is junk science.)

These corrective steps are important not only for moral reasons but for public-safety ones—when we convict the innocent, by definition, the guilty go free. Free to commit more crimes. We must have a county prosecutor who insists that prosecutors be humble before the evidence, and refuses to bury his head in the sand.

We also need a prosecutor who actually knows what steps needs to be taken and is determined to take them in the face of opposition from a "Wrongful-Conviction Complex" that may exist in some quarters, zealous of protecting the status quo and in deep denial about the problems we face. Everyone says they oppose wrongful-convictions, but who has the passion, commitment, experience, and know-how to actually start doing something about it? And who would, and knows how to, create a culture within the office in which every prosecutor understands that the office's mission is to seek justice, not merely to convict? Those are the key questions facing voters on March 6.

Posted Jan 25, 2012

Flase Justice is an excellent book, and so too are "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by William Stuntz, and of course "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. The candidate that procliams they're going to "delcare a war on criminals" frightens me. Everyone wants to be safe in their person, property and homes, but as Nintzsche wrote, "Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is strong."

Posted Jan 26, 2012

I have an enormous amount of respect for Jim Petro and his opinions. Justice in Ohio has come a long way in the three decades since capital punishment was reinstated. His points are fair and worth considering. His concerns, especially as those of a respected former Attorney General of Ohio, regarding error are real and must be appreciated. Once a death sentence is imposed, there is no court reversal that will help. The percentage of reversals of death penalty verdicts that took place would have been unimaginable when the legislation was debated. The fact is that appellate courts have adopted a proof-beyond-almost-all-doubt standard for capital cases. That is the reality that all prosecutors have to deal with. That is not about to change. So it makes little sense to seek death in borderline cases that will not stand the scrutiny of juries and appellate courts.

One reason I believe that identification must be indisputable in death penalty cases is that, like the State vs. Diaz case I referenced in my response to Dan Moulthrop’s question, errors do occur. In most cases they are discovered before trial, but there are notable exceptions. In that particular case, the criminal/witness was lying; but there are also cases where an honest, seemingly reliable witness positively—but wrongly—identifies the wrong person as the perpetrator. 

I personally learned the lesson of eyewitness identification not always being 100% reliable as the prosecutor in the case of Michael Green in 1989.  The rape victim, who was a cancer patient at a local hospital’s attached hotel at the time, positively identified a former employee as the person who raped her in her room. Police arrested this man and had him indicted. I tried the case. The detectives, jury, judge, and myself all believed the victim. The appellate courts upheld the verdict. He was sentenced to prison where parole was denied because he refused to admit his guilt.

Fortunately, DNA testing was eventually discovered, and after 13 years in prison, Mr. Green was finally released thanks to the persistence of his family who insisted the evidence be tested for a DNA match. The actual rapist was identified by that same DNA sample. When Mr. Green was released, I went to see him to apologize on behalf of myself and the entire criminal justice system, which failed to do justice in his case. A very generous and forgiving man, Mr. Green asked only that I remember his case when I look at other eyewitness identification cases in the future.  I have, and always will, use his tragic case as an example to encourage reform that allows for early assignment of defense counsel and liberal access to DNA and other scientific testing for the defense. Mr. Green’s case will always be on my mind when all future cases are reviewed, but especially for capital offenses. 

Posted Jan 27, 2012

With nearly a quarter of Ohio’s inmates annually returning to Cuyahoga County, we have had on our hands what amounts to a major criminal-refugee crisis with thousands of people with no overarching plan to address it. We need a prosecutor to lead on this issue—to establish public-private partnerships to ensure that an inmate’s re-entry into the community is a part of a process designed to keep them from re-establishing criminal patterns of conduct. We need a prosecutor who engages the private and foundation sectors, coordinates existing non-profit efforts, and perhaps redirects some forfeiture money that the Prosecutor controls toward the effort. The former D.A. (now California attorney general) of San Francisco County, CA, a friend of mine, led such an effort and brought the re-offense rate for lower-level drug offenders from 50% to less than 10%. She did it by using her leadership position to engage private employers like Goodwill Industries, Nordstrom Corporation, restaurants, and others to work with the county to train and keep ex-offenders engaged.

This will keep us all safer and I will lead on the issue, making it one of the highest priorities of my office, frankly, not so much for moral reasons but out of an instinct for self-preservation. You simply can't have an annual influx of thousands of potential, indeed often likely, re-offenders enter our county each year and do nothing about it!

Interestingly, this is not just a so-called “liberal” idea. The conservative Buckeye Institute http://buckeyeinstitute.org/uploads/files/buckeye-smart-on-crime(1).pdf and the website www.rightoncrime.com are all, properly, focused on how to protect taxpayers with “smart-on-crime” strategies like effective re-entry programs. I recommend these sites to you; they are chock-full of good ideas.

County Councilman Dale Miller of Lakewood, who is passionate about the re-entry issue and was a leader on it while serving in the Ohio General Assembly, has endorsed my candidacy and plans to work with me on this issue because he understands how important it is to our county.

Our vision for what the Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney can accomplish for us has been too contrained by the boundaries of our limited imaginations. The job is to make us safer and to be a leader in that regard—not just to reactively prosecute cases. By the time we reactively prosecute cases, we have already failed because crimes have already occurred and victims have already been hurt. "Smart-on-crime" strategies like staving off truancy before juveniles become tomorrow's criminals, and keeping yesterday's criminals engaged so they do not re-offend, will keep us all safer, and bring the overall costs of the criminal-justice system down too.

Please join me in my campaign for reform, www.ChandraForProsecutor.com.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Every decision, policy, initiatve or program of my office will be measured by the extent to which it promotes crime reduction in the community. To that end, it is fundamentally the job of the County Prosecutor to engage and be a leader in dealing with ex-offender re-entry into the community. As Law Director and Chief Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland I was proud to support the dedicatated efforts led by Mayor Jackson and my colleagues Natoya Walker and Community Relations Director Blaine Griffin and community leaders like Mike Walker from the Partnership for a Safer Cleveland  and Charles See from Luthern Metropolitan Ministry and many, many others to promote and support re-entry policies and programs in our community. I will give active support to the Greater Cleveland Re-entry Strategy Group and be a vocal advocate at the national, state, and local level for support of their efforts. I will support the County's role in workforce development. I will support efforts to modify the expungement of record laws. I will support law enforcement efforts to monitor high risk offenders and their associates. I will support expansion of the Greater Cleveland Drug Court and Cuyahoga County Mental Health Court. Make no mistake, County Prosecutor is a leadership position and that responsibility extends outside the walls of the Justice Center. I have been an active participant and leader in collaborative community and criminal justice related issues my entire career: juvenile justice, mental health, violence against women and children, workforce development, education, truancy, and fugitive safe surrender. I am grateful my colleagues across disciplines have always valued my insight, passion, and leadership abilities to move ideas forward to achieve meaningful results. I look forward to continuing and enhancing these collaborative relationships as County Prosecutor.  

Posted Jan 26, 2012

The next county prosecutor has to be proactive in attacking the increasing rate of recidivism.  The American Civil Liberities Union published an article last summer 2011, Overcharging, Overspending, Overlooking:  Cuyahoga County's Costly War on Drugs, which compared the percentage of Cuyahoga County residents serving time in state prison to other counties in Ohio.  Cuyachoga County accounts for 10% of the adult population in Ohio and 20% of the adult population in state prison.  African Americans account for 12.2% of the population in the state of Ohio and 47% of state prison population.  In 2010, the ACLU found that 70% of African Americans sent to prison were from Cuyahoga County.  However, African Americans only account for 29.7% of the population in Cuyahoga County.  In essence, Cuyahoga County is not a criminal-refugee camp.  Cuyahoga County is home to many of the convicted felons seeking to return to their families and a life that is familiar to them. 

I am a strong proponent of re-entry programs geared toward helping convicted felons get back on track.  I agree that the effort has to be shared by our communities and business partners. I intend to be an advocate of re-entry programs and first time offender initiatives.  Just recently the City of Cleveland removed from their employment application the question of whether or not the applicant had been convicted of a felony.  Although, the question may be posed during the interview or a felony conviction will be exposed through a background check, applicants can at least get a fair chance at an initial interview to present themselves.  I will also work to ensure the prosecutor's office is expendient in addressing a defendant's motion for expungement.  Thus, if the defendant qualifies and the Prosecutor has no objections, the defendant record would be sealed immediately.  See also my respond to the expungement issue above. 

As an instructor in the Law & Public Safety program at Shaw High School, I feel the best way to start the practice of building a better community is working with high school juniors and seniors.  I intend to have the prosecutor's office more involved in the schools and working collectively with the juvenile population(particularly in areas where the need is greater) to assist in giving them a better outlook for the future.  I will also take a special look at the Juvenile Justice System and make sure diversion programs are being effectively and fairly utilized in lieu of detention. 

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Historically prosecutors have measured their success by the number of individuals they sent to prison, not how well the peace is kept. Cuyahoga County was one of the last large counties in the country to have Reentry or Drug Courts, because the county prosecutor didn't want them ... his goal was to increas his "stats" by sending more people down I-71 since he thought that was the surest way to the Governor's Mansion. It didn't work.

In the current contest all but one of the candidates seem to be on-board with the new way of thinking which is promoted as "smart on crime" and features a strong focus on reentry programs. That one candidate is still stuck in the past, publically declaring "a war on criminals" and touting expertise in making the justice system run smoother and faster ... not more just mind you, just get them into prison in a less costly manner. This is frightening.

The prosecutor's office should take a lad role in advocating for reentry programs that actually work, and not be the lead fear monger advocating for a return to earlier times where the system failed to work.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Laura, the two parts to your question are directly related. In order to recruit and attract talent to the office you must first create and fully support an environment for success in that office. The goal has to be to create a pathway to professional fulfillment for career prosecutors and staff. It necesssarily means providing career-long training. My dedicated Professional Training Unit will be given the same recognition an status as all the other specialized units I intend to create in the office. While there must be no ambiguity over the established values and mission of the office, greater input over discretionary decisions must be provided to assistant prosecutors and a mechanism for guidance and review must be clearly established. Supervisors must be selected, trained, and monitored not only for their substantive expertise, but their leadership, management and people skills. Diversity will be embraced throughout the organization. Individuals must be recognized for their fine work and those who taint the collective reupation of the office through prosecutorial misconduct must be held strictly accountable. I will readily accept the professional development of my entire staff as an integral part of my job description. I will be an advocate for my team in hope that their work will be rewarded in the budget. I will support them in developing collaborative relationships with law enforcement throughout the County. I will listen. I will lead.

By creating an environment for success we will become a place where people will want to come work for all the right reasons - not a political stepping stone, but a place where they can find fulfilment and meaning in their chosen profession. It's been 30 years, but I remember what motivated me coming out of college and law school. I wanted to pusue a career seeking justice, and I have been fortunate that I have been able to follow that path for an entire career. Our recruitment efforts will be extensive. I have well-established relationships with both our Cleveland law schools and I will personally make the pitch to attract talent to our office. We will look beyond Cleveland to attract talent nationally. My goal is to create an office that is at the top of anyone's list to come and serve the public.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Hi Laura and thank you for your question.

How will I attract top, diverse talent to the Prosecutor's office?

The way to attract top, diverse talent to the Prosecutor's office is to be the type of Prosecutor that top, diverse attorneys desire to work with. I am a hard worker.  I am a fair and rational individual.  I love open dialog and treat all people with human dignity.  My personality would be an important aspect to keeping assistant prosecutors motivated to work in the prosecutor's office.   My definition of top, diverse talent would  be a lawyer with a unique background and strong desire to work within the public sector.  A lawyer who may have dealt with adversities in life and was able to successfully complete law school.  A lawyer who is dedicated to equal justice for all.  As a former assistant prosecutor, I know that there is an influx of resumes and cover letters coming to the Prosecutor's office on a monthly basis.  I will dedicate my time and effort to reading through each resume, cover letter and any recommendations received to make sure I choose the applicant that can add diversity and versatility to the office.  I will also take advantage of other recruiting efforts available to new lawyers fresh out of school.

How will I keep assistant prosecutors well-trained? 

Every two years lawyers have to report 24 hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) to the Ohio Supreme Court in order to continuing practicing law in the State of Ohio.  When I was an assistant prosecutor, the prosecutor's office sponosored CLEs which were provided to the assistant prosecutors free of charge and provided updated case law and material in areas practiced by the office.  I would maintain this practice.  I also intend to institute a mandatory training course held every two years where assistant prosecutors and police officer train together.  The course would highlight the following topics:  laws of arrests, search and seizure, sexual assaults, use of force, civil liability, cultural sensitivity and diversity.  The training wil promote more lawful arrests and fair convictions.

How I will provide the opportunity for assistant prosecutors to excel?

I will never interfere with an assistant prosecutor's desire to excel.  If an assistant prosecutor petitions to run for a political office he or she would have to resign from the office.  If a leave of absence can be afforded to that individual, I would also explore that option. 

Posted Jan 26, 2012

When I started as Cleveland Law Director and Prosecuting Attorney in 2002, I was appalled to discover that there were 0% minority prosecutors in our criminal division, for a City that is majority-minority. By the time I left in 2005, the figure was about 55%. I hired talented African-Americans and Latinos, including the son and grandson of migrant farmworkers, who went on to serve as a court magistrate after working with me. (I also gave a start to the prosecutor, Victor Perez, whom Bob Triozzi eventually hired as chief assistant prosecutor, and worked hard to recruit Teresa Metcalf Beasley, who went on to serve as law director, and is now with a major law firm.)

There is a lot of talk about diversity, and much of it is cheap. What matters is our records. I am attaching my record. The first item is a set of charts that will show you the numbers. The second (attached to the next entry due to attachment limitations) is an article I wrote about reforming the law department, which includes a section on our diversity philosophy and achievements. You'll see from the charts, for example, that in my first full year as law director, 2003, 62% of my new hires were African-American. The majority of my new hires were also female. You'll also see that I increased the percentages of both supervisors and line-lawyers of color. These lawyers were recruited to public service not only from out of law school, but also from prestigious law firms and federal judicial clerkships. They were the best and the brightest.

The diversity led to substantial synergy in our decisionmaking. It was a beautiful thing to watch unfold sometimes. (Picture six lawyers, all from different backgrounds, in a room trying to decide the best way to resolve, on the City's behalf, serious discrimination allegations.)

How did I make this happen? Not passively, by just waiting to see résumés that floated in. I actively identified promising lawyers from all diverse backgrounds and personally recruited them, by mail, by phone, and in-person meetings. (I had someone assigned full-time my first summer to help me do just that.) I sat with each person I wanted to bring in and talked with them about their hopes, aspirations, and dreams:

• What kind of lawyers did they want to be?
• What kind of career did they want to have?
• Why did they get into law in the first place?
• Wouldn't they rather have hands-on trial and transactional experience rather than just be doing research and third chairing matters at best?

As the first small group of talented minority lawyers came in and tested the waters, the ball really began rolling as the department's reputation among minorities improved. Unfortunately, many of the wonderful lawyers I recruited have left in recent years due to low morale; I know because I had to provide them with references. They told me they just didn't feel the same enthusiasm because their leadership never fought for them, nurtured them, or even engaged them; they had not even received performance evaluations in years. This has been a huge personal disappointment to me.

As you probably know from personal experience, and I know from personal experience as well as my experience as co-chair for several years of the Cleveland Bar Association's Diversity Action Committee, one of the biggest challenges in diversity for law firms is not recruitment, but retention. Anyone can promise the sun and moon. But can you deliver a professionally satisfying experience and liberate people to live up to their full potential? That's what makes the difference.

I hope you'll review the charts attached. We created the most diverse public law firm in Ohio and I was proud to work there. That's what I'll do for the Prosecutor's Office and this community will benefit greatly as a result, both in terms of the quality of decisions that will be made, and the future leadership that will be nurtured.

Here is a way you may measure my success. If, eight to twelve years from now, there are not at least two (preferably more) highly talented minority lawyers whom I mentored credibly running countywide to replace me, then I have failed.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Here is the other attachment I referenced in my previous post. It is the article about the Cleveland Law Department reform experience that I led, which includes a discussion about my philosophy and strategy regarding diversity.

Laura, thank you for your question. It is a critical one to the success of the next prosecutor.

Posted Jan 27, 2012

Ms. Polster, I would respectfully refer you to my answer to Dan Moulthrop's death-penalty question above. I believe that the next prosecutor must end the political chest-beating approach to the death penalty and insist on a higher standard of evidence before contemplating pursuing such cases. The prosecutor is not a legislator, however, and must enforce the law. There is an enormous amount of discretion in between and I will exercise it wisely, not to show off or make the public feel good when the evidence does not warrant it.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

Your question is a powerful one. I eagerly await the Chief Justice's Task Force review and analysis directly on the points you have made as they go to the heart of the issues Justice Pfeifer has made. Even as I eliminate the over-indictment that has been prevalent in this County, I will keep your observations and question directly in front of me. The decisions I make will be honest and transparent and will be made with the contemplation and gravity your comments suggest are due.

Posted Jan 26, 2012

GCC County Prosecutor Candidate Accountability Action
02.20.12 | Monday | 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Fairmount Temple
23737 Fairmount Blvd.
Beachwood 44122

Prosecutors hold the lives of so many in their hands.

It’s the prosecutor who decides when a child should be tried as an adult, and it’s the prosecutor who decides when to seek the death penalty.

The prosecutor is also charged with fighting the misconduct, corruption and systemic inequality that has plagued Cuyahoga County government for decades.

This year five Cuyahoga County Democrats are vying for this powerful position. Since there is no challenger from another party, the candidate who wins the March 6 primary election will almost certainly be the next prosecutor.

Join Greater Cleveland Congregations for a Candidates’ Forum at the Fairmount Temple in Beachwood. Bring your questions. Bring your concerns.

Learn more about the candidates who want to be the next Cuyahoga County prosecutor.

Free and open to the public. The ACLU of Ohio is a supporter of this event.

 

 

 

Your Voice, Your Power!
Mark your calendar and come to the 2012 ACLU of Ohio Statewide Membership Conference on July 28 in Columbus. For more information, visit www.acluohio.org/conference2012.

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Posted Feb 07, 2012