New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams’ recent prosecutorial decisions prove the efficacy of the late Mario Cuomo’s oft-quoted observation about campaign promises: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
As a member of the New Orleans City Council who also made a good living as a criminal defense attorney, Williams championed all manner of criminal justice reforms.
As a candidate for DA, he promised to reinvent the office by hiring prosecutors who share his compassion for youthful and non-violent offenders. He specifically promised not to try juveniles as adults and to drastically curtail the use of Louisiana’s multiple offender laws, which result in long prison terms for repeat offenders.
Those promises — pure poetry to progressives — helped him defeat former Interim DA Keva Landrum, who promised a more measured approach to prosecutorial decisions.
But now that Williams has worked in the belly of the beast for more than two years, he sees the hard-earned wisdom of governing in prose.
Most recently, he added six volunteer attorneys in his office’s screening division, which decides whether and how severely to charge defendants, from the law offices of plaintiff lawyer Morris Bart. The volunteers will focus on firearms cases and recommend screening improvements. Williams says this will allow the rest of his staff to focus on the recent spike in violent crimes.
Granted, Bart’s firm is better known for getting big settlements out of insurance companies than for locking up criminals. But, as Williams has noted, the volunteers will work as fully commissioned assistant district attorneys. Besides, several of them practiced criminal law before joining Bart’s firm — and all have passed background checks, gone through the employment process and received training in how to screen cases.
Bart, whose philanthropy extends beyond the legal community, deserves the public’s gratitude.
Moreover, district attorneys bringing in outside help is nothing new. Tony Clayton, the new DA in West Baton Rouge, Iberville and Pointe Coupee parishes, made his fortune as a plaintiff lawyer while serving for decades as a special prosecutor in the Baton Rouge DA’s office — and he famously convicted serial killer Derrick Todd Lee. Locally, former DA Harry Connick hired outside counsel for special matters starting in the 1970s.
On other fronts, Williams has learned that lofty campaign promises eventually must give way to the demands of fighting crime and locking up violent criminals.
Within months of taking office, Williams brought adult murder charges against two teenagers accused of killing a woman during a botched carjacking in New Orleans East. That decision brought howls from progressives, but Williams responded appropriately, saying, “I didn’t run for DA to make friends. I ran to make the city safer.”
And just this week, Williams invoked the multiple offender statute in the case of a New Orleans man accused of raping and strangling a dating partner. If convicted, 33-year-old Orlando Brown, who has four previous felony convictions — including two for battery — would face a minimum sentence of 40 years in prison.
“There are campaign promises, and there’s an oath,” Williams said in defending his decision. ”The oath is to do this job. I’m not using this tool to increase the numbers of convictions or the length of sentences as some sort of measure of success in this office. It is purely to make sure that individuals who hurt people … get taken off the streets for the amount of time that their level of violence warrants.”
America uses an adversarial system to arrive at the truth during trials. Defense attorneys advocate for the accused.
Williams is showing that he recognizes his new role is to advocate for victims — and the general public.
It’s not poetry. It’s reality.
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