Time is running out for the state Senate to advance a bill repealing the death penalty. Two influential Democratic senators also work as prosecutors, and the state’s DA association is fighting the reform.
Gascón is battling a lawsuit, filed by his own line prosecutors and backed by the state DA association, against his criminal justice reforms.
New York’s association of state DAs has fought measures such as bail reform, but three candidates in Manhattan’s DA election say they would not join it.
Prosecutors across the country are rethinking their membership in professional organizations that oppose a meaningful reform agenda.
Their move breaches expectations of a monolithic law enforcement perspective, which in the past has helped DA associations push a punitive agenda.
Matt Toporowski, up against the former head of the DA’s association, says he would “walk down the halls with advocates and lobby for progressive reform.”
California’s DA association responded to a critic in a letter signed by nearly all prosecutors. But this may only exacerbate worries about DAs’ tendency to talk in a single political voice.
As a growing number of reformers run as prosecutors, the PDAA’s public role and rhetoric don’t bear significant traces of these changes.
“Ninety percent of my campaign was actually an education about what a DA is, what a DA does,” said one candidate.