There has been a rise in the number of reform-minded prosecutors elected into office on promises to change what they see as a broken criminal justice system that overincarcerates and metes out punishments unfairly.But with that rise has come another: opposition to their agendas. In particular, a group of Black women prosecutors—after being elected across the nation on progressive platforms that included getting rid of money bail, declining to prosecute low-level crimes and marijuana cases, and exposing police misconduct—have faced resistance from law enforcement, judges, and even governors.
In 2019, the pushback has been strong and public. In September, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan directed state Attorney General Brian Frosh to independently prosecute violent crimes in Baltimore, noting in a letter that “far too often in Baltimore City, violent offenders get a slap on the wrist and are released back onto the streets to commit yet another violent offense.”(Frosh, who pointed out that his office is not designed or staffed to prosecute these cases, responded with a request for 30 new staff members—and Hogan found room for 25 in his proposed budget.)
Hogan was taking aim at Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby.Mosby, who drew ire in 2015 for prosecuting the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, had made headlines earlier in 2019 for announcing that she wouldn’t prosecute marijuana possession cases.Throughout her tenure, Mosby has been committed to exonerating people—often Black men—who have been wrongfully convicted, and in 2019, she testified in support of legislation that expands pre- and post-conviction review options for prosecutors.
In Cook County, Illinois, prosecutor Kim Foxx has been under the microscope since shortly after she was elected in 2016, when she announced she would not prosecute shoplifting as a felony unless the items stolen totaled more than $1,000 or the person charged with shoplifting had at least 10 prior felony convictions.She also vowed to bring more accountability to shootings by police, has declined to prosecute low-level drug offenses, and has encouraged prosecutors in her office not to seek money bail for people accused of low-level, nonviolent offenses.
In 2019, Foxx faced backlash from police unions for her handling of the Jussie Smollett case. After her office dropped charges against Smollett, who was accused of staging his own hate-crime attack to draw media attention, a special prosecutor was tapped to investigate possible wrongdoing by Foxx’s office.In April, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police demanded Foxx’s resignation, citing her policies that, the union said, allow people back on the streets to commit new crimes.The union also criticized Foxx for how her office deals with cases of officer misconduct—Foxx has exonerated more than 60 people, saying that her office had “[lost] confidence in the initial arrests and validity of these convictions” after the arresting officers were convicted of bribery in a separate case.
In July, Foxx joined Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson at a national summit in Washington, DC, where big-city police chiefs and progressive prosecutors from 10 jurisdictions tried to work through their differences.The summit produced a statement of key principles, including this: police and prosecutors should collaborate in advance of enacting criminal justice reforms.But the accusations that under Foxx the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office is lax in prosecuting crimes have been rising back into the media since Foxx announced plans in November to seek reelection.
In Florida, prosecutor Aramis Ayala announced in May that she would not run for reelection.Ayala, the first Black state attorney in Florida history, was elected on a progressive platform and, shortly after taking office in 2017, announced that she would not seek the death penalty in cases handled by her office.Then-Governor Rick Scott swiftly reacted, reassigning 29 capital cases from Ayala’s office.Ayala sued Scott, challenging the governor’s power to reassign cases to a different judicial district, but lost in the state’s Supreme Court.
But some of the most extreme backlash has been directed toward St. Louis, Missouri, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, the city’s first Black top prosecutor, who has been scrutinized in a manner that the New York Times wrote “is virtually unheard-of for an elected prosecutor.”In fact, in January 2020, Gardner filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of St. Louis and its police unions, detailing what has been described as the unprecedented and shocking racist conspiracy to push her out of office and violate the rights of Black and minority communities.
Gardner angered the St. Louis Police Officers Association by bringing charges against more than a dozen officers and declining to accept cases that relied on accounts from more than two dozen officers on her “exclusion list” whose credibility had been called into question.She also prosecuted the then-sitting governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, on a charge of felony invasion of privacy.Not long after, she became the focus of a special prosecutor’s investigation, accused of withholding evidence and manipulating testimony after failing to turn over a requested recording for several weeks.After the recording in question was salvaged—Gardner has said she did not initially turn it over because she believed it could not be used—it was found to contain no additional information. The special prosecutor then directed police to seize her office’s email server, which contained information about active investigations.
In September, the St. Louis police union called on Gardner to resign, and she and fellow Black prosecutor Wesley Bell of St. Louis County were not invited to a September meeting about crime with Missouri Governor Mike Parson, the mayor, and the police chief.Gardner also received pushback from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office when her office asked to set aside the 1995 murder conviction of Lamar Johnson, a man serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime prosecutors now believe he may not have committed.In August, the Attorney General sought to block court review, filing a brief in the case claiming that the district attorney’s office had no authority to ask the court to reopen it.
Suffolk County, Massachusetts, District Attorney Rachael Rollins has also faced challenges to her authority. Rollins was the first Black woman elected to her position and, after she took office, she outlined a slate of upcoming changes, including her decision to not prosecute 15 minor offenses, such as drug possession and shoplifting.In response, the Boston police union and a fellow district attorney claimed her policies could hurt the state’s efforts to address the opioid epidemic.Other male prosecutors questioned her ideas.Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said her plan would make Suffolk County more dangerous.And, after she declined to prosecute counterprotesters at a “Straight Pride Parade” for disorderly conduct, a judge attempted to usurp her authority by continuing the prosecution.Rollins eventually won a judgment saying that the judge had improperly intervened in the case.But Rollins, who won with 80 percent of the vote, is not without her supporters: the Boston Globe named her one of its “Bostonians of the Year.”
Black women aren’t the only prosecutors facing a backlash from law enforcement officials and lawmakers. But with so many Black women facing pushback, the race- and gender-targeted nature of the attacks has drawn media attention.Other progressive prosecutors, though, have also experienced resistance to their agendas.
- Dallas, Texas, District Attorney John Creuzot, who declared he wouldn’t prosecute people for minor nonviolent crimes that are committed out of necessity—like shoplifting—has been the subject of police press conferences and gubernatorial tweets claiming he is a “socialist” who will “allow the common criminal to feast on the business retail community”;
- San Antonio, Texas, District Attorney Joe Gonzales has vowed not to pursue criminal trespass charges for people without housing, a decision the police union called “a total abdication of a D.A.’s responsibility”;
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Larry Krasner faced fallout in July from his decision not to prosecute some cases (like low-level marijuana offenses) when legislators added a Philadelphia-specific provision to a bill giving the state attorney general concurrent jurisdiction over certain gun-related crimes—crimes that Krasner’s office has not yet declined to pursue; and
- St. Louis County, County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, a Black former public defender and criminal justice professor, came under fire from media and former colleagues for terminating three assistant prosecutors—one had tagged him in inappropriate remarks about the office on Facebook and another has been accused of “prosecutorial vindictiveness” after filing additional charges against a man who, after refusing a guilty plea, was acquitted of the original charges.
The issue has gone as high up as the Trump administration, with U.S. Attorney General William Barr in an August speech to a police group calling progressive prosecutors “anti-law enforcement” and “dangerous to the public safety.”And Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen took aim at progressive prosecutors as well in an editorial calling their policies “a misguided experiment in ‘social justice reform.’”But on a local level, many voters remain committed to the idea that justice reform is a prosecutor’s job. In November, for example, Chesa Boudin was elected San Francisco’s next district attorney.Boudin, a former deputy public defender, has vowed to confront police misconduct and reduce mass incarceration.