2019 Highlights

Chesa Boudin (San Francisco, CA)

After a campaign focused on ending mass incarceration, reducing racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and increasing police accountability, Chesa Boudin, a former public defender, defeated the acting District Attorney of San Francisco, who had been appointed by the mayor only a month before the election. Almost immediately upon assuming office, Boudin began implementing his promised reforms, including: 

• Ending cash bail and reducing the San Francisco jail population by 50%; 
• Creating an innovative Economic Crimes Unit to protect workers’ rights;
• Establishing a diversion program for primary caregivers aimed to reduce family separation caused by criminal legal system involvement;
• Ending the use of gang and status enhancements; 
• Creating new policies to limit charges resulting from racist, pretextual police stops;
• Launching a Post-Conviction Unit to review excessive sentences and an independent Innocence Commission to review cases of possible wrongful conviction;
• Creating a Do Not Call Policy to not charge or prosecute cases in which allegations rely on an uncorroborated word of an officer with prior known misconduct;
• Creating an internal policy to require prosecutors to review all available evidence—including body camera footage—before filing charges in cases of resisting arrest/battery on an officer to ensure that the charges are not fabricated to cover up police misconduct;
• Adopting an internal policy to compensate victims of police violence just like any other victim and co sponsoring AB 767 to call on the California Victim Compensation Board to provide compensation for police violence victims;
• Announcing prosecutions of on-duty police officers for homicide, a first ever in San Francisco, and on-duty felony use of force; 

Declining to prosecute peaceful protestors engaged in demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd.

Jody Owens (Hinds County, MS)

In 2019, Jody Owens, former managing attorney at the Mississippi office of the Southern Poverty Law Center, defeated two opponents in the Democratic primary to become the District Attorney in Mississippi’s largest county and home to Jackson, the state capitol. Years of incompetent management had led criminal cases to languish for years before indictment or resolution, causing those who were incarcerated pretrial to regularly spend shocking periods of time simply waiting for their cases to move through the system. 

In the short time he has held the office, Owens has been able to reduce pretrial incarceration, increase the efficiency of the criminal legal system, and hold the powerful accountable.  He has: 

• Cleared a significant backlog of criminal cases, and streamlined the process so that felony cases are indicted within 60 to 90 days (the average time to case resolution under the previous administration was 585 days);
• Reduced the jail population by 25%;
• Pursued accountability for police violence and misconduct by committing to present all cases involving deaths at the hands of police to the grand jury;
• Charged 3 Jackson police officers with the murder of a 62 year old man during a traffic stop; 

Indicted numerous former staffers of the Mississippi state welfare agency, including its former director, for stealing over $4 million of federal welfare funds.

Steve Descano (Fairfax County, VA)

During the same election cycle, Steve Descano defeated incumbent and career prosecutor Ray Morrogh in the Fairfax county Democratic primary. Morrogh, who had served as a prosecutor for 35 years, campaigned primarily on his experience, and took the position that criminal justice reform was unnecessary in Fairfax county. Descano took a different view, and promised to reduce jail and prison sentences, increase pretrial release, and expand alternatives to incarceration. 

Since taking office, Steve has: 

• Declined to prosecute personal use of marijuana cases and probation violations based upon personal possession or positive marijuana screens;
• Implemented an internal policy raising the monetary threshold for felony theft above the statutory minimum in Virginia so that a greater proportion of cases would be charged as misdemeanors rather than felonies;
• To reinforce police oversight, required his line prosecutors to review cases for use of force, forcible vehicle stops by police, or evidence of improper conduct or discrimination, document it, and report any incidents to supervisors.
• Entirely eliminated prosecutor requests for cash bail;
• Implemented a sentencing policy that avoids the use of mandatory minimum sentences, limits probation terms to 12 months in most cases and requires probation to be tied to a specific goal;
• Prohibited line attorneys from either charging crimes that carry mandatory life sentences or seeking a life sentence at sentencing without first obtaining prior written approval from an executive team member;
• Disallowed the threat or imposition of any adverse consequence on a defendant solely because he or she elected to have a preliminary hearing, argue a motion, or exercise a statutory or constitutional right;
• Severely limited the discretion of line prosecutors to unilaterally transfer children to adult court;

Prohibited any prosecutor from assisting federal agents with civil immigration enforcement. 

Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (Arlington County, VA)

Dehghani-Tafti, a former public defender and innocence protection attorney, defeated incumbent Theo Stamos in Arlington County’s 2019 Democratic primary.  Stamos, a career prosecutor, had asserted that there was no need for criminal justice reform in Arlington and that mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline were not a concern there. Stamos favored prosecution of drug possession charges, the use of cash bail, and balked at declining to prosecute any offense that was on the books in Virginia.   

In her first year in office, Parisa: 

• Announced that the office would decline misdemeanor marijuana possession charges, prompting a clash with Arlington County judges who attempted to interfere with the implementation of the policy;
• Stopped seeking cash bail and instead instructed prosecutors to explicitly request release on conditions for all individuals who do not pose a flight risk or danger to the community;
• Provides full discovery to defense counsel in electronic form, instead of requiring defense attorneys to spend hours taking handwritten notes while reviewing police reports in the prosecutor’s office, a practice favored by her predecessor; 
• Expanded diversion and restorative justice opportunities for young people and adults; 
• Recruited researchers to identify the causes of racial disparities in incarceration and to propose solutions for the office;

Enacted a policy restricting the ability of line attorneys to strike jurors without cause, a practice that has traditionally led to the disproportionate exclusion of people of color from juries nationwide. 

2018 Highlights

Joe Gonzales (Bexar County, TX)

In 2018, Joe Gonzales, a criminal defense attorney dedicated to a humane and equitable criminal legal system, took on Nicholas “Nico” LaHood, Bexar County’s infamous and volatile District Attorney, in the Democratic primary. LaHood, whose tenure was characterized by corruption and impropriety, promoted “tough-on-crime” positions, including enthusiastically seeking the death penalty, increasing the incarceration of people charged with low-level offenses, and failing to implement any sort of reform. LaHood also pledged loyalty to conservative values, publicly made Islamophobic remarks, and famously threatened to destroy the lives of two defense attorneys (one of whom was Gonzales) for simply doing what their oaths required — advocating for their client. Gonzales, originally seen as an underdog, defeated LaHood with nearly 60 percent of the vote. 

Since taking office in 2019, Gonzales has: 

• Declined to prosecute personal possession of small amounts of controlled substances;
• Expanded cite-and-release programs, so that individuals accused of low-level misdemeanors are never taken into custody;
• Limited the impact of money bail by instituting a presumption that the office will recommend that all persons charged with misdemeanors or state jail felonies be released pretrial on a personal recognizance (PR) bond (which does not require any payment up front);
• Reduced the number of people held pretrial by 34% before COVID-19 brought the court system to a standstill; 
• Widened eligibility for pretrial diversion programming and eliminated the requirement that participants plead guilty in order to enroll. Participation in the program increased four-fold in the first 100 days of Gonzales’ administration;

Founded a Civil Rights Unit tasked with reviewing police use-of-force cases that result in deaths or injuries. The unit presents every referred case to the grand jury, and information about the outcome of the investigation will be provided to the public whenever the proceedings do not result in an indictment.

Diana Becton (Contra Costa County, CA)

Diana Becton, the first woman and the first Black District Attorney of Contra Costa County, was appointed by the county Board of Supervisors in 2017, following the resignation of her predecessor. The following year, Becton, a former Superior Court Judge, was reelected with broad support from the organizer and activist communities, including Real Justice PAC.  During her tenure, Becton has: 

• Established the first formal diversion program for youth in the county, a restorative justice program in which young people arrested for crimes such as robbery, burglary, or assault are referred to a youth center. At the center, a team of family members or guardians, crime victims, and professional counselors work together to find a way for the person charged to make amends;
• Declined to prosecute personal possession of all drugs;
• Formed a conviction integrity unit to review past cases with claims of innocence;
• Assembled a “Reimagine Youth Justice Task Force,” which will study and make recommendations on ways to invest in justice-involved youth through restorative, community-based solutions, while focusing on developing an action plan to close Juvenile Hall;  

Joined with DAs Tori Verber Salazar (San Joaquin County), Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), and George Gascon (Los Angeles) to form a new organization for progressive prosecutors, the Prosecutors Alliance of California.

Rachael Rollins (Suffolk County, MA)

In 2018, Rachael Rollins defeated a crowded field of candidates vying to replace outgoing Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley. Rollins’ campaign stressed the need for a new perspective in the criminal legal system, one informed by her experiences as a woman of color that recognized the District Attorney’s office is a service industry that must treat victims, suspects, and their families with respect and care. Rollins also made a bold pledge to decline prosecution of 15 low-level offenses, which criminalized poverty, substance use, and mental illness and disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities.  Rollins, the first woman of color ever elected to be a District Attorney in Massachusetts, has assumed center stage in the fight to reimagine justice.  She has: 

• Released and implemented the “Rollins Memo,” a detailed document setting forth several transformative policies, including the declination or diversion of 15 charges, ending reliance on cash bail and presuming release without conditions for the majority of individuals charged, and robust data collection and information sharing practices to promote transparency and accountability;

• Created an external “Discharge Integrity Team” to review officer-involved shootings and allegations of excessive force, instead of having prosecutors, who work with police on a daily basis, investigate these events. The team is the first of its kind in the country;
• Publicly released a list of 136 officers who have been accused of lying, corruption, or misconduct, and whose credibility may be undermined in court. Her predecessor’s list contained fewer than 20 names;
• Established an Integrity Review Bureau, which not only examines past convictions but also conducts broader reviews of office policies, practices, and outcomes to increase reliability in convictions, ensure sentences imposed are just, and protect against police misconduct or dishonesty. The unit has, among other accomplishments, facilitated the release of 8 wrongfully convicted individuals who had served over 240 years combined;
• Responded to the COVID-19 crisis by joining with the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to ask the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to release certain low-risk inmates from prison in the interest of public health;

Created PUSH (Project for Unsolved Suffolk Homicides), an office-wide initiative that focuses on the 1300+ unsolved homicides in Suffolk county, homicides that are predominantly of Black and brown victims. The office has, to date, reviewed over 175 cases that might have otherwise remained untouched, bringing charges in several.

Wesley Bell (St. Louis County, MO)

Four years after protests rocked Ferguson following the death of Michael Brown, local activists and organizers were able harness a groundswell of support around Prosecuting Attorney candidate Wesley Bell, a Ferguson city councilman. After a campaign that criticized the use of cash bail, vowed to increase diversion programs, and promised to transform the manner in which the office handled investigations into police violence, Bell, the county’s first Black elected prosecutor, defeated a 7-time incumbent who had presided over the county’s criminal legal system with a tough-on-crime, pro-police, approach for over two decades.  Since taking office, Bell has radically changed criminal prosecution in St. Louis county: 

• Within a month of taking office, Bell issued directives requiring his attorneys, among other things, to decline prosecution of less than 100 grams of marijuana and failure to pay child support; stop overcharging defendants to pressure them into pleas; and disclose the entirety of their files to defense counsel;
• Bell’s office’s bail policy favored issuing summonses, rather than warrants, for all misdemeanors and low-level felonies, stopped seeking cash bail for misdemeanor offenses, and declined to incarcerate those who weren’t a flight risk if they failed to appear in court on a single occasion; 
• Since Bell took office, the St. Louis County jail population has decreased by 35%, from an average daily population of 1295 to one of 840 individuals; 
• He has established treatment and diversion programs, in partnership with local health organizations, to address rather than criminalize addiction and mental illness; 

He has kept his commitment never to seek the death penalty, and has urged President Biden to commute the sentences of all the individuals on federal death row.

2017 Highlights

Larry Krasner (Philadelphia, PA)

Following a campaign that demonstrated he would likely be the most progressive District Attorney in the country, Larry Krasner’s 2017 election to the top law enforcement post in Philadelphia surprised many, but energized and inspired even more.  The election of a former public defender and civil rights attorney to serve as Philadelphia’s chief prosecutor was a testament to the power of local organizing and activism, and the pressing need for a true transformation of our nation’s criminal legal system.  Since taking office, Krasner has dramatically decreased incarceration, supervision, and the intrusiveness of the criminal legal system in marginalized communities.  The office has: 

• Decreased the county jail population by 40%;
• As compared to the prior administration, reduced the amount of prison time imposed by over 18,000 years; 
• Decreased years of probation and parole supervision by 57%; 
• Kept 98% of children in the juvenile court system, implemented restorative justice and expanded diversion programs for juveniles, and reduced out-of-home placement of children by over 80%; 
• Established a conviction integrity unit that has exonerated 17 individuals (in 18 cases) in just three years;  
• Taken a public health approach to drug use, by declining to prosecute or diverting all simple drug possession cases, advocated for harm reduction centers where those grappling with addiction can be supervised and kept safe, and sued Big Pharma for its role in the opioid epidemic; 
• Held police accountable by fearlessly prosecuting police officers for abusing their power, including a Chief Inspector for sexual abuse against women officers, two on-duty officers for the killings of men who were unarmed when they were shot, and police personnel who have assaulted peaceful protesters.

Stephanie Morales (Portsmouth, VA)

Stephanie Morales is the first woman, and first woman of color, to serve as Commonwealth Attorney in Portsmouth, Virginia.  She was originally elected in 2015, and Real Justice PAC supported her reelection campaign in 2017.  Morales has been a leader both in Virginia and nationwide on the urgent need to reimagine our criminal legal system.  Morales has: 

• Spoken on the national stage about the systemic racism at work in our criminal legal system;
• Spearheaded the effort to form an alternative Commonwealth Attorney Association that advocated for legislative changes, including an end to mandatory minimum sentences, the death penalty, cash bail, and “three-strikes”-type sentencing enhancement for property crimes;
• Established the “Ctrl + Alt + Del Program” through which line prosecutors directly engage with those who have been convicted of crimes. The program provides information on reentry resources, conducts job preparedness seminars, encourages rights restoration and discusses potential pitfalls the participants may face;
• Ensured police are held accountable for acts of violence, including securing a conviction in 2016 against a former Portsmouth police officer who killed an unarmed, 18-year-old Black man;  

Worked to restore the voting rights of formerly incarcerated persons and allowed the criminal records of some to be automatically expunged.