Cool Cleveland Interviews Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Candidates
As a service to the community, Cool Cleveland has invited all five Cuyahoga County Prosecutor candidates to respond to a series of questions prior to the primary election on Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Because no Republican candidates are running, the Democratic candidate with the most votes in the Democratic Primary on Tue 3/6 will become the next County Prosecutor. Responses to these questions will be reprinted verbatim, up to the requested limit of 350 words total.
To ensure fairness in the justice system, I will address complaints of unfairness and work to resolve issues in a timely manner. I will examine, Rev. McMickle and C. Ellen Connally’s, complaint and give the reader an insight on how issues of fairness will be applied by me.
In 2001, Rev. McMickle, foreman of the Grand Jury, found that African American and Hispanic defendants were more likely to be charged with a low level drug possession felony offense than white defendants.
In 2006, Connally pointed out that African Americans in the City of Cleveland found by the police to be in possession of a crack pipe were charged with drug possession, a felony. In contrast, police officers from neighboring suburbs charged individuals found in possession of a crack pipe with drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.
What I have identified in both Rev. McMickle’s and C. Elllen Connally’s case is a racial disparity complaint. Angela J. Davis in her book, Arbitrary Justice, The Power of the American Prosecutor, found that “the elimination of race [disparity] is totally consistent with the responsibility of the prosecutor to seek justice not simply win convictions.”
I would adopt the vision outlined by Davis in her book under the chapter Prospects for Reform. I would meet with area bar associations and ask the bar to conduct a racial impact study. The bar would collect data on the race of the victim and defendant for each category of the offense and the status of the case at each step of prosecution. The information provided would indicate whether similarly situated defendants of different races were treated the same at each step of the process or if the criminal process was disproportionately applied. If the study finds that the process was disproportionately applied, the second step would be to identify whether there was a race-neutral reason for the disparity. The study would be disseminated to police agencies in Cuyahoga County. I would ask police departments to join me in an effort to use the racial impact study in future training initiatives. The study would be available to the public.
Part of my campaign platform is to push for a citizen’s review board modeled after the Civilian Police Review Board in Cleveland. In 1984, the Civilian Police Review Board was created by a City Charter Amendment approved by the voters of Cleveland and amended in 2008 following a vote by the citizens of Cleveland.
The prosecutor’s office handles many cases with sensitive issues and information that should not be made available to the public at large, and this must be taken into consideration when discussing the parameters of a citizen’s review board. I would have to conduct more research and consult with my steering committee in order to further examine how to advocate for or create a review board that would be acceptable to the constituents of Cuyahoga County.