Rogue Prosecutors and the Rise of Crime

Summary

Imprimis Podcast Summary: "Rogue Prosecutors and the Rise of Crime"

Podcast Information

• Title: Imprimis
• Host/Author: Hillsdale College
• Episode Title: Rogue Prosecutors and the Rise of Crime
• Release Date: May 9, 2024
• Description: Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College, dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political, and educational issues. It is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over six million subscribers.

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Introduction

In the May 2024 episode of Imprimis, titled "Rogue Prosecutors and the Rise of Crime," Cully Stimson of the Heritage Foundation presents a critical analysis of the burgeoning movement of rogue prosecutors in the United States. Delivered at Hillsdale College's Washington, D.C. campus, the talk delves into how these prosecutors are reshaping the criminal justice landscape, often leading to increased crime rates in major American cities.

Overview of the Criminal Justice System and District Attorneys

Jacob introduces the foundational role of district attorneys (DAs) within the U.S. criminal justice system, highlighting that approximately 90% of criminal cases are handled by over 2,300 elected district attorneys across 3,143 counties (00:40). Historically, these DAs upheld their responsibilities by enforcing state criminal laws impartially, contributing significantly to the decline in crime rates since their peak in 1992 by targeting violent criminals and establishing alternatives to incarceration, such as drug courts and mental health courts (01:07).

The Emergence of the Rogue Prosecutor Movement

The narrative shifts in 2015 with the advent of the "Progressive Prosecutor" movement, heavily funded by billionaire George Soros (01:52). Cully Stimson refers to this movement more accurately as the "rogue prosecutor" movement, emphasizing its roots in Marxist ideology aiming to dismantle the American criminal justice system. Stimson asserts that this movement posits that the U.S. and its institutions, including capitalism, are inherently racist (01:58).

Key Figures and Influences in the Movement

Prominent figures such as Angela Davis, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Alicia Garza are identified as intellectual leaders influencing this movement (02:48). Davis's 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete? equates prisons to modern-day slavery, while Garza and Cullors of Black Lives Matter advocate for the abolition of the carceral state, intertwining anti-racist and anti-capitalist sentiments (02:48).

Tactics and Policies of Rogue Prosecutors

The movement employs strategic financial backing and ideological campaigns to elect prosecutors who align with their agenda of reducing or eliminating traditional law enforcement practices. Jacob explains that Soros and his affiliates have invested over $40 million over the past decade and potentially up to $1 billion when considering all forms of support (05:10). These prosecutors prioritize non-traditional approaches, such as refusing to prosecute certain misdemeanors and reducing felonies to misdemeanors, under the guise of prosecutorial discretion (06:26).

Notable directives from rogue prosecutors include:

• Rachel Rawlins of Suffolk County, Boston, listed 15 misdemeanors her office would not prosecute, including trespassing and shoplifting (07:43).
• George Gascon of Los Angeles County instructed his prosecutors to decline numerous misdemeanors and refrain from adding sentencing enhancements or special circumstances that warrant harsher penalties like life without parole (08:09).

Impact on Crime Rates and Communities

The implementation of these policies has coincided with significant increases in crime rates in cities governed by rogue prosecutors. For instance:

• Philadelphia experienced an increase in homicides from an average of 271 per year before 2018 to 457 per year thereafter, with 83% of victims being Black (11:17).
• Chicago saw its annual homicide rate rise from an average of 510 per year before 2017 to 666 per year by 2022, with over 75% of victims being Black (11:56).

Jacob emphasizes that such increases surpass those seen in major military engagements, stating, "Chicago's annual murder rate dwarfs these figures" (11:56).

Electoral Responses and Current State of the Movement

Despite substantial funding and organization, the rogue prosecutor movement faces electoral challenges as voters in affected cities begin to recognize the adverse effects of rising crime rates. Examples include:

• Baltimore and San Francisco voters ousting rogue prosecutors Marilyn Mosby and Chesa Boudin respectively (12:54).
• George Gascon of Los Angeles narrowly surviving recall efforts and garnering only 25% of the primary vote in a crowded field (13:18).

Conclusions and Lessons for Voters

Cully Stimson and Jacob conclude by urging voters to pay closer attention to low-profile local races, such as district attorney elections, due to their direct impact on public safety. The episode underscores the importance of electing prosecutors who uphold the rule of law to prevent the societal decay witnessed in several major cities (13:18).

Notable Quotes

• Cully Stimson: "Our Constitution places their faith not in specific guarantees of rights. Those came later, but in a system of checks on government power." (00:33)

• Jacob: "It is no exaggeration to say that parts of Chicago on any given weekend have become domestic war zones." (11:53)

• Jacob: "This well-funded and organized movement is not about liberal versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican, or black versus White. It is about power." (06:15)

Final Thoughts

The episode "Rogue Prosecutors and the Rise of Crime" serves as a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of political movements within the criminal justice system. By electing prosecutors with agendas that deviate from traditional law enforcement, some cities have experienced alarming increases in crime, challenging the effectiveness and intentions of the rogue prosecutor movement.

For more insights and detailed analyses, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to Imprimis through Hillsdale College's website.

Transcript

[Jacob]

Hi, I'm Jacob, a sophomore studying sport management at Hillsdale College, and this is Imprimis. Here is the March 2024 issue Rogue prosecutors and the Rise of Crime by Cully Stimson of the Heritage Foundation. The following is adapted from a Talk delivered on March 11, 2024 at the Alan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on a Hillsdale's Washington, D.C. campus as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture series the writers of.

[Cully Stimson]

Our Constitution place their faith not in specific guarantees of rights. Those came later, but in a system of checks on government power.

[Jacob]

Foremost is the separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government, as well as between the federal government and the states. For this system to work as designed, people in each branch of the federal government and in the state governments must do their jobs and stay in their respective lanes. But what happens when district attorneys, members of their state's executive branches, refuse to execute the laws of the land? We are witnessing the results today in blue cities across America.

[Cully Stimson]

Approximately 90% of criminal cases in the US are handled by the 2,300 elected district attorneys spread across 3,143 counties.

[Jacob]

The rest are prosecuted by US attorneys operating under the Department of Justice. Until recently, elected county district attorneys upheld their end of the social contract by firmly and fairly enforcing state criminal laws and protecting citizens rights regardless of party affiliation. These gatekeepers of the criminal justice system did their job over the last 30 years. They played a critical role in driving down crime rates, which peaked in 1992 by prosecuting violent criminals while at the same time creating thousands of alternatives to incarceration such as drug courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts and other highly successful programs.

[Cully Stimson]

That changed in 2015 with the launching of the George Soros funded Progressive Prosecutor movement.

[Jacob]

This movement is animated by two beliefs. The first is that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist. The second is that the only way to fix the system is to dismantle it by replacing law and order district attorneys with pro criminal and anti police district attorneys. The sick irony of this movement is that in the areas where it has prevailed, the most harm has been done to the racial minorities whose interests it purports to represent. The progressive prosecutor movement, more accurately called the rogue prosecutor movement, is the predictable outgrowth of efforts by earlier Marxist radicals to alter or destroy the American way of life. At its root is the belief that our country and its institutions, including capitalism, are racist. One of the early leaders of the movement to abolish prisons is the infamous Angela Davis, now in her 80s who in her 2003 book are prisons Obsolete? Equated prisons to modern day slavery. The prison, she wrote, has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Throwing people into prison, she continued, relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. Patrisse Khan Cullors and Alicia Garza, AKA Alicia Schwartz, co founders of Black Lives Matter, have also had an enormous influence. Cullors, a militant radical and convicted felon, is a protege of the director of the Labor Community Strategy center whose purpose is to build an anti racist, anti imperialist, anti fascist united front. Garza said at an international gathering of Marxists in 2015, it's not possible for a world to emerge where Black Lives Matter if it's under capitalism, and it's not possible to abolish capitalism without a struggle against national oppression and gender oppression. During a 2017 PBS interview, Garza heaped praise on Angela Davis for her work exposing the carceral state I. E. A state in which people are incarcerated in prisons, and called for its dismantling.

[Cully Stimson]

The involvement in this movement of billionaire George Soros, who had been funding liberal causes for years, can be traced to his hiring of attorney Whitney Timus in 2015.

[Jacob]

Timus, who had worked as a public defender and prosecutor, was connected to the Vera Institute of Justice, where she focused on the role of prosecutors in perpetuating racial disparity. There she met the ACLU's Chloe Cockburn, who was working to end mass incarceration, and they discussed the role of prosecutors, the low visibility of elections for county district attorneys and the fact that most people don't even know who their local DA is. As opponents of the death penalty, Timus and Cockburn hatched a plan to elect anti death penalty prosecutors and persuaded Soros to give over 1 million to groups that were successful in electing such district attorneys in Louisiana and Mississippi. Eventually, that modest aim to unseat pro death penalty prosecutors grew into a national movement with a more ambitious goal. Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine staff writer and Soros media fellow, summed up the goal in terms of making the system operate differently by electing prosecutors who will open the locks of prisons. Rachel Barkow, a law professor and former member of the US Sentencing Commission who supports the rogue prosecutor movement, summed up its goal as to reverse engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure. This well funded and organized movement is not about liberal versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican, or black versus White. It is about power. From the start, the movement focused on the fact that prosecutors, not police, are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. District attorneys decide whether to file charges and which charges to file. By replacing traditional prosecutors with attorneys who see defendants as victims, it would be possible to reverse engineer and dismantle the existing criminal justice system. It is no coincidence that Soros, the various political action committees that he controls or funds, and his wealthy far left allies have given huge financial support to rogue prosecutor candidates in deep blue cities. They target these cities because their electorates are not paying close attention to down ballot races and can be misled through a bombardment of often misleading advertisements. Over the past decade, Soros has spent more than 40 million on campaigns to elect rogue prosecutors. One group has estimated that he has donated as much as 1 billion to the cause. If policy, infrastructure, media relations, sponsored academic and think tank papers, lobbying campaigns and grassroots organizing are taken into account.

[Cully Stimson]

Other billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co founder Dustin Moskovitz, and his wife Carrie Tuna, and Patty Quillen, the wife of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, have also generously contributed to the cause.

[Jacob]

One of the hallmarks of the rogue prosecutor movement has been its usurpation of the constitutional role of state legislatures. Once elected, rogue prosecutors refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes that are on the books in their states, justifying their refusal by claiming prosecutorial discretion. But in fact, their refusal to prosecute crimes violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government and distorts the entire legal system. Prosecutorial discretion is not limitless. The principle behind it requires the enforcement of laws, except in cases when prosecutors believe in good faith that an applicable law is unconstitutional.

[Cully Stimson]

It does not give prosecutors the power to redefine crime and punishment.

[Jacob]

By refusing to prosecute entire categories of crime, they are in effect repealing criminal statutes acting in place of the legislature. This is prosecutorial nullification, not discretion. Valid prosecutorial discretion takes many forms. But when we allow for the chronic violation of law, we erode the foundation of our cities and civilization and respect for the rule of law evaporates. Today there are more than 70 rogue prosecutors across the country. They represent more than 72 million people, or 1 in 5Americans, and they proudly refuse to prosecute most misdemeanors, claiming that these are essentially harmless quality of life crimes that divert scarce resources.

[Cully Stimson]

To take one example, Rachel Rawlins, the former district attorney of Suffolk County, Boston.

[Jacob]

Posted a list of 15 misdemeanors her office would not prosecute, including trespassing, shoplifting, larceny under $250, disturbing the peace, receiving stolen property, operating a vehicle with a suspended or revoked license, wanton or malicious destruction of property and possession with intent to distribute illegal drugs. Other rogue prosecutors have followed suit.

[Cully Stimson]

George Gascon, the district attorney of Los Angeles county, issued a written directive to.

[Jacob]

His 1,000 prosecutors detailing the 13 misdemeanors that shall be declined or dismissed before arraignment and without conditions unless certain exceptions or other factors exist. In the same directive, he said it is not an exhaustive list and that each prosecutor has the discretion to decline any of the hundreds of other misdemeanors in the California penal code that fall within the spirit of his directive. Two weeks into the job, Kim Fox of Chicago, the first big city Soros funded rogue prosecutor unilaterally raised the bar for Prosecuting felony shoplifting from 300 per incident to 1,000 per incident, essentially declaring.

[Cully Stimson]

Open season on retail stores. Philadelphia's Larry Krasner, San Francisco's former district attorney Cheza Boudin, New York City's Alvin Bragg and others have acted similarly, contributing.

[Jacob]

To the tsunami of shoplifting and organized theft from retail stores and pharmacies to national chains and family run stores.

[Cully Stimson]

Not surprisingly, many stores in these cities have closed. Krasner was elected to office in Philadelphia in 2018 with the help of $1.7 million from Soros funded groups.

[Jacob]

He celebrated on election night by calling himself a public defender with power. The first day in office, he fired 31 experienced violent crimes prosecutors, referring to them as ticks.

[Cully Stimson]

This is common practice among the rogue.

[Jacob]

Prosecutors who replace career prosecutors with public.

[Cully Stimson]

Defenders or law students who sympathize with defendants and view the police suspiciously.

[Jacob]

In addition to not prosecuting misdemeanors, rogue prosecutors often reduce felonies to misdemeanors and and limit the number of charges a prosecutor can bring in a case to one, even though a suspect may have committed multiple offenses.

[Cully Stimson]

One of Gascon's most controversial directives in.

[Jacob]

Los Angeles prohibits prosecutors from adding sentencing enhancements or allegations that would support such enhancements to an indictment, even though in some circumstances California law requires prosecutors to do so.

[Cully Stimson]

Prosecutors working in Gascon's office cannot allege any three or five year priors, add.

[Jacob]

Gang enhancements, file three strikes allegations or.

[Cully Stimson]

Allege special circumstances that would result in a sentence of life without parole or the death penalty.

[Jacob]

In many cities, young gang recruits commit violent felonies to prove their street cred. Yet most rogue prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent teenagers as adults, instead sending them to juvenile court, where the worst punishment they can get is juvenile detention until they turn 21. One of the most pernicious policies to come out of the rogue prosecutor movement is the refusal to ask for cash bail, which represents a guarantee by a defendant or by a person acting on behalf of a defendant that that the defendant will show up for trial. The amount required for bail varies by jurisdiction and by crime. Those who cannot afford to post bail remain in custody pending trial.

[Cully Stimson]

But district attorneys, including Fox, Gascon and.

[Jacob]

Boudin, have directed their prosecutors not to ask for cash bail in many cases, and they do not seem bothered by the fact that this has led to additional crimes, including murder. Crime rates have exploded in the cities that have elected rogue prosecutors. In the five years before 2018, when Larry Krasner was elected in Philadelphia, there.

[Cully Stimson]

Was an average of 271 homicides per year.

[Jacob]

Since 2018, there has been an average of 457 per year, of which 83% of the victims were black. Non fatal shootings have risen from an average of 1,047 per year to 1,588 per year. Aggravated assault while armed with a handgun went from 2,209 per year to 3,116 per year. Retail thefts went from 7,412 per year to 9,084 per year and auto theft went from 5,691 to 8,665 per year. In Chicago, in the six years before Kim Fox became State's attorney for Cook county in 2017, there was an average.

[Cully Stimson]

Of 510 homicides per year.

[Jacob]

That number rose to 660 in her first year, and through 2022 it averaged 666 per year, with over 75% of the victims being black. To put this carnage into perspective, between 2003 and 2010 there were 3,481Americans killed in action in Iraq, an average of 435 per year in the war in Afghanistan. Between 2001 and 2014, there were 1,833Americans killed in action, an average of 141 per year. Chicago's annual murder rate dwarfs these figures. It is not an exaggeration to say that parts of Chicago on any given weekend have become domestic war zones. Although the rogue prosecutor movement is incredibly well funded, it is showing signs of electoral vulnerability. Voters in blue cities who were initially persuaded to vote for reform minded candidates who talked about reimagining the criminal justice system and eliminating so called mass incarceration are increasingly coming to their senses given the harsh reality of rising crime rates.

[Cully Stimson]

Voters in Baltimore and San Francisco have ousted rogue prosecutors Marilyn Mosby and Chesa Boudin, respectively. Ethically challenged rogue prosecutors Kim Gardner of St. Louis and Rachel Rawlins of Boston have had to resign from their posts. George Gascon has barely survived two recall petitions in Los Angeles and most recently received only 25% of the primary vote in a field of 11 candidates.

[Jacob]

The lesson for voters across America is to pay close attention to low visibility local races, such as district attorney races, which directly impact public safety to protect their communities against the kind of devastation we see in so many of America's once great cities. To sign up for a free lifetime subscription to Imprimis, delivered to your mailbox or your inbox, go to hillsdale. Edu Lifetime.

[Scott Bertram]

Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, we talk with Dr. Kevin Porteous from Hillsdale's politics department about a recent essay he wrote on the history and political theory of American immigration policy. Titus Tekkeira from the American Cinema foundation explains to us how Hollywood lost touch with the American people and reflects on the life and career of Gene Hackman. And Stephen Gattaprow, a recent graduate of Hillsdale's Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship, outlines the intellectual foundations of global justice theory. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio ra.