Who or what inspired you to get involved in politics?
I worked in the District Office in Athens for 5 ½ years before starting my law practice and was a prosecutor for over 6 years at the beginning of my legal career. I’ve been in the room with victims and victim’s families who have been harmed deeply by crimes committed against them and their loved ones. I’ve also seen people who have had contact with the criminal justice system after having committed a non-violent offense who need to have serious substance abuse or mental health issues addressed so they can return to being healthy and productive members of their community. As a prosecutor, you have the incredible opportunity and responsibility to deliver justice for crime victims by holding those who commit violent felonies accountable and the ability to connect members of our community who commit non-violent offenses with the services and treatment that they need. I really believe it is an area where you can provide incredible service to your community, and I want to build one of the best District Attorney’s offices in the State of Georgia for a circuit our size. My wife, Caitlin, and I are raising our two sons, Asher (7) and James (5), here because of how much we love this community. Clarke County and Oconee County are great places to live and work and have all the elements we need to create a District Attorney’s office that we can all be proud of. I decided to run to be our next District Attorney to provide the leadership we need to create that office.
My sister and I are the only cousins from our generation of our family who were born in the United States of America. My parents immigrated here from India. They always made sure that my sister and I understood that we had been given an incredible gift by being born in this country. They’ve given us t beyond anything that they could have imagined for themselves when they were young. No community pp is perfect, and they made it clear to us that when there were needs in our community that we could address then it was our responsibility to do so. When we saw wrongs that we could be a part of correcting then it was our responsibility to be a part of righting those wrongs. Our community has a pressing need for a well-led District Attorney’s office. I know I have the experience to lead an office of committed prosecutors with the expertise to deliver Justice for All in our community and who will be committed to a culture of doing the right thing, the right way, regardless of whether anyone is watching.
How would you assess the performance of the current DA’s office? Which reforms or alternatives would you implement in a fair court process? Why?
The current DA’s office is essentially non-functional at this point. They have had to resort to bringing in private attorneys to act as for-profit prosecutors to handle cases because they don’t have prosecutors in the office who can handle serious felony cases. They’ve had to bring in outside prosecutors from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council to handle cases to have any chance of delivering justice for victims in our community. There have been numerous incidents of violating a victim’s basic right to be informed of what is going on in their case. Some are very serious felony cases. They’ve dismissed charges against someone who sexually assaulted a child claiming there wasn’t enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a way that violated the victim’s rights. Thankfully this led to a DA from another circuit being assigned the case and obtaining a guilty verdict on all counts from a jury in Clarke County in less than an hour. There have been errors made that have led to the dismissal of charges against a child sex trafficker.
It is not just victims that are being failed by the office. People charged with crimes have Constitutional rights that should be respected and protected. The current DA’s office had a person accused of a crime held in confinement for over a year without indicting his case. Thankfully, that person’s attorney filed a plea in the bar asking the Court to dismiss the charges against him for violation of his Constitutional right to a speedy trial, and the Court granted the request and dismissed the charges. There are so many people who come into the criminal justice system having committed non-violent offenses due to underlying substance abuse or mental health issues. We have specialized courts called accountability courts that are designed to offer intensive treatment and are proven to reduce the chances that participants who graduate will re-offend once they’ve completed these court programs. However, under the current district attorney, our felony drug court and our veteran’s court are only being half utilized. There is no reason that our accountability courts should be so underutilized. At the end of last year, there were over 3000 cases pending where a felony arrest had been made but the district attorney’s office had taken no action to either move forward with prosecuting those cases as felonies, reducing them to misdemeanors, or dismissing them. That is probably 6 times or more higher than what would have been typical under the previous district attorney. These are systemic and catastrophic failures that cannot be tolerated or allowed to continue. We also need to put a greater emphasis on building community partnerships so that when we have young people coming into the criminal justice system we can connect them with relationships and social capital inside their own communities to make it less likely that they will fall back into peer groups and behaviors that led them to come into the contact with the criminal justice system, to begin with. I’ve spoken with several pastors in town as well as other community stakeholders and service providers about this need and how we can better serve these young people.
The biggest change that needs to happen at the district attorney’s office is a change in leadership. I think what we’ve found over the last three-plus years is that regardless of how noble your intentions may seem without experience you cannot effectively lead an office that is performing a function that requires expertise and training. I have the experience to identify and hire experienced prosecutors who are committed to a culture of doing the right thing, the right way, regardless of whether anyone is watching and the experience to mentor and train young attorneys so they have the skills and knowledge they need to be effective prosecutors for our community. I’ve taught a class in criminal litigation at the University of Georgia’s law school the past three fall semesters where we train law students on how to appropriately conduct common court hearings that they will encounter when practicing criminal law both from the side of the prosecution and the side of the defense. I’m obviously speaking on behalf of myself personally and not the University of Georgia in this article and on this campaign, but that experience has really driven home for me how much I enjoy teaching and mentoring future lawyers and young lawyers. We shouldn’t be reliant on infrequent state training to educate our prosecutors in the district attorney’s office on how they can perform their jobs better. One of the big reforms that I want to see put in place is for myself and my senior staff of experienced prosecutors to have a formal training program that newer prosecutors will enter and complete as part of their onboarding process of joining the office. This will make for a fair court process and improve the retention of young attorneys. Unjust outcomes mostly come from inexperienced prosecutors without mentorship and guidance making mistakes because they don’t know how to deal with a particular situation and don’t have someone they can go to who can help them understand the appropriate way to deal with any situation.
How do you feel about the concerns of erosion of law and order in the court system? Describe how you plan to reinforce a sense of safety in our community.
Our community, rightfully so, does not have confidence that people who have committed serious felony crimes will be held accountable for their actions and that the victims of those crimes will have justice delivered for them by the current district attorney’s office. We are in a situation where victims whose cases are high profile enough to have a prosecutor from an outside agency or from outside of our community brought in to handle that particular case because the district attorney’s office cannot handle those cases themselves. Victims’ whose cases aren’t deemed important enough to justify bringing in outside help are left in the wind. That is not justice for all. We need a district attorney who knows how to effectively prosecute cases and hire and train prosecutors who can do the same. We’ve had truly tragic failures whether it be the failure to be able to effectively prosecute a murder case leading to an acquittal and that same person killing someone else in a neighboring county or the failure to inform a family of a plea offer to offer probation to the person who killed their loved one until thirty minutes before that plea was going to be entered in court. The only way to reestablish trust from our community in the district attorney’s office is to have leadership that has done the work and knows how to effectively prosecute cases.
When you are talking about structural changes that can make a difference in outcomes in court or in communications with victims or victims’ families, there are several things we can do better. Having adequate hearing and trial preparation is essential to presenting evidence appropriately and effectively. That’s not being done effectively. The current district attorney’s office has done a wholly inadequate job of doing trial preparation work; knowing how you are going to admit relevant and essential evidence, knowing all the facts of your case better than anyone else involved, and knowing how the defense will attack your case at trial are skills that you develop only by having done the job effectively and been trained by more experienced prosecutors who have done the job effectively. I’ve done the job and done it effectively.
The district attorney’s office can also be a partner with law enforcement to be a resource that they can reach out to about certain legal issues or what additional investigation may be needed to make a case more rock solid prior to an arrest being made or an after an arrest is made but before a case comes to trial. When I was a prosecutor, detectives and other police officers had my cell phone number, and I had theirs. I was available to them and not just between 8 am and 5 pm. I would get calls, and we would discuss my thoughts on what they had in their investigation and what direction it may be good to go in. They would call me if they had a question about why we had reduced or dismissed a case they had investigated. Not all of those conversations were easy, but it was part of building a good working relationship based on mutual respect. It led to better cases coming into the court system and a better understanding for me as a prosecutor of what is happening on the ground in our community when crimes are being committed and investigated. We need to have more collaborative communications between our district attorney’s office and our law enforcement agencies and not just at the level of the elected district attorney and the chief of police. I will encourage those relationships between my senior staff and sergeants, lieutenants, and command staff at our law enforcement agencies as well as between detectives and other officers and our trial line prosecutors. At the end of the day, this will lead to better cases moving forward to trial.
Some would say this country creates and profits from mental health problems. As a district attorney, what role does mental health awareness play in your prosecution?
Mental health awareness is essential to being a good prosecutor. I’ve said this several times prior to deciding to run for district attorney, and I’ve said it on the campaign trail: Prosecute does not mean seek the maximum sentence under the law or the harshest sentence you believe you can obtain in a given case. Prosecute means to consider all the surrounding circumstances of what has occurred when a crime has been committed including the circumstances of the person accused of a crime that may have led to them committing the crime alleged.
Many times an underlying mental health issue is the reason a person has committed a crime, and many times there are substance abuse issues along with those mental health issues that are efforts to self-medicate for an undiagnosed or untreated mental health issue. When that is the case and the person has committed a non-violent offense, our goal in finding the right resolution in the case for our community and the person accused is to create a resolution that addresses those mental health and/or substance abuse issues. That’s what justice means for that person accused of a crime and it is a common-sense solution for the community because it reduces the chances that the person will reoffend if they complete treatment.
We are currently underutilizing the treatment resources available to us in our accountability courts and other treatment providers in our community. We have a treatment and accountability court that specifically addresses those with severe mental health issues, but oftentimes, it is more appropriate for someone even though they may have an underlying trauma that has caused a mental health issue to go into the felony drug court or veteran’s court based upon the relative severity of their mental health diagnosis and substance abuse issues. Currently, our felony drug court and veteran’s court only have about half their participant positions filled. We have to do a better job of reviewing cases promptly when they come into the district attorney’s office so we can connect people with the resources available through our accountability courts and other treatment avenues to help them get back to living healthy and productive lives.
Describe how you have distinguished whether a defendant's acts were a result of mental illness or criminal intent.
When it comes to issues of competency to stand trial or criminal responsibility in the technical legal sense of those terms, there are formal evaluations done by trained medical providers to offer expert opinions on those issues. These are evaluations that are required in a small percentage of cases.
What is more common are situations in which although someone may not satisfy the requirements of finding that they are not competent to stand trial or do not have any criminal responsibility due to their mental health issues, their actions were primarily caused by an underlying mental health and/or substance abuse issue. There are several factors that a prosecutor should review in making the determination of whether that is something that needs to be investigated further as the underlying cause of the actions that brought that person into the criminal justice system. Sometimes it is as simple as having thoroughly reviewed the evidence in the case including the police report and body camera footage or interview footage of the individual’s interaction with law enforcement. There are many times when it can be readily apparent to a prosecutor based on the person’s response to questions from law enforcement, inability to maintain a normal discourse with law enforcement, physical and emotional responses to questions from law enforcement, or other behaviors that have been documented that there seems to be an underlying mental health and/or substance abuse issue.
Once a prosecutor has identified that a mental health and/or substance abuse issue may exist, they should open a dialogue with the attorney for that person to see if there are any pre-existing diagnoses or other history of mental health and/or substance abuse issues that are present in that person’s history whether presently or in the past that may be relevant to consider in the present case. Additionally, it is important to have good working relationships with attorneys representing the accused and be open to considering information from them regarding someone’s past mental health and/or substance abuse history that may be a factor in why the current crime was committed even if it is not immediately apparent from the evidence available through law enforcement’s investigation that the person suffers from those health issues. This can be particularly true when someone is not caught during the commission of the offense but identified through fingerprints or some other part of the follow-up investigation after the immediate response to the crime scene.
I’ve had situations where treatment was appropriate as part of the resolution of a case that involved all of these avenues of gathering information. A prosecutor should always make efforts to explore and understand the surrounding circumstances of why a person committed a crime when they are looking to find a resolution that makes sense for the community and provides services to the person accused of a non-violent crime that makes it less likely that the person will commit a crime again. That is what justice means in those circumstances.
If you had to rate 1-10 what would you rate Athens district attorney's office prosecution performance when it comes to dealing with defendants that suffer from mental health issues? Why?
Numerical ratings are tough. I always struggle with these in surveys, but if I had to rate it on a 1-10 scale I would say a 2-3. The reason is that I believe the desire from a 10,000-foot view to connect people with resources when they need them is there, but they’ve demonstrated a lack the expertise and follow through to effectively evaluate cases in a timely manner and then take the steps necessary to connect those people with the resources they need. I’ll give you an example from when I was in court waiting to address my client’s case. Prior to our case being called, the public defender’s office had a client who had been in jail without bond for over 3 months. When the public defender’s office represents someone, it means that they are financially indigent and unable to pay for an attorney, so they have an attorney appointed for them. This individual was actually homeless at the time the offense was committed.
The allegations were that this person had thrown an object at a passing vehicle and damaged it. When law enforcement had contact with the person, he told them that his name was Jesus Christ. There seemed to be indications that the individual was suffering from a mental health issue and may have had a substance abuse issue. This would be a case that upon initial review would have warranted a pretty quick follow-up with the defense attorney about determining if going into treatment and accountability court or felony drug court. The defense attorney actually reached out asking for a plea agreement to be offered in the case because his client wanted to take responsibility for what happened, but the district attorney’s office essentially said they didn’t have time to review the case in order to make a plea offer even though this person was being held in jail pending trial on a relatively low-level felony offense. The only avenue available to get this person out of jail was to come in and enter a guilty plea without any kind of agreement with the district attorney’s office which is what his attorney did, but now that person is a convicted felon. At sentencing, the State offered no recommendation on what the sentence should be in the case other than to provide the Court with a recitation of the defendant’s criminal history and state the restitution for the damage to the vehicle that was owed to the victim in the case. The judge tried to do what she could by requiring as part of the probation sentence that the defendant be required to have a mental health evaluation done and follow recommended treatment. If the district attorney’s office had effectively evaluated the case as one that had mental health issues that needed to be addressed, they could have connected that person with treatment and accountability court and he could have received a much higher level of mental health services without having a felony conviction on his record.
Tell us about your career in the courtroom. What have you experienced that can convince us that you are prepared for the responsibilities that come with becoming a district attorney?
I’ve spent my entire legal career for over 12 years now in the courtroom doing criminal justice work. I was a prosecutor for over six years including 5 ½ years at the district attorney’s office here before starting my own law firm. While at the district attorney’s office, I moved up from prosecuting lower-level felony offenses to managing one of our four superior court courtrooms. In that role, I was responsible for handling the prosecutions of murders, sexual assaults, armed robberies, and the other most serious felony offenses in the courtroom in addition to supervising two younger attorneys with their caseloads and serving as a mentor and resource to them. I was also in charge of supervising our courtroom’s victim advocate and investigator as well as managing the administrative tasks associated with managing the courtroom. I’ve successfully tried to a jury for every type of offense ranging from DUI to murder. I’ve been in the room with people who have had their lives turned upside down because of a crime that has been committed against them or their loved one or who have a loved one who is no longer here because of a crime that has been committed. I know what it means to advocate for justice for victims and make sure their rights are protected. I also know from my time in the district attorney’s office how important it is to connect people who have committed nonviolent crimes because of an underlying substance abuse and/or mental health issue with our accountability courts or other treatment resources so that we can reduce the chance that they will re-offend and help them get back to leading healthy and productive lives in our community. I also know how important it is to form fully developed partnerships that can connect young people with the relationships and social capital that they need to make sure they don’t come back into the criminal justice system by falling back into peer groups that led them to make decisions that brought them into contact with the criminal justice system to begin with.
Since I’ve left the district attorney’s office, I’ve represented people charged with crimes including those that because of their financial circumstances qualify to have an attorney appointed to represent them. I’ve seen where the rights of those charged with crimes are most susceptible to being violated, and it is the role of the district attorney to make sure the rights of those accused of crimes are protected too.
Beyond the courtroom, I have a wealth of experience through my involvement in the community, legal education, and upholding the ethical standards of the legal profession that I believe are important to be the district attorney as well. I am the President-Elect of the Rotary Club of Athens, a civic service organization, where I also serve on the board. I am the immediate past president of the Western Circuit Bar Association, a local professional group for attorneys, where I also serve on the board. I serve on the board of a non-profit, ACC-SANE, inc., that provides free medical care and forensic medical examinations to survivors of sexual assault. My wife Caitlin and I as well as our two boys, Asher (7) and James (5), are members of Athens Church where we regularly attend services. I’ve taught a class in criminal litigation the past three fall semesters at the University of Georgia’s law school where we offer practical instruction to future attorneys on how to properly prepare for and conduct a number of common hearings in criminal legal practice from the perspective of the prosecution and the defense, and I serve by appointment of the Supreme Court of Georgia as a special master for attorney disciplinary issues where I serve as hearing officer when attorneys are alleged to have violated the ethics rules to determine if a violation has taken place and make a recommendation to the Supreme Court of Georgia as to the appropriate level of discipline if any in those matters.
I’ve spent my entire legal career developing the knowledge, expertise, and relationships necessary to lead our district attorney’s office and ensure it is one of the best DA’s offices in the State of Georgia committed to delivering justice for all with a culture that is committed to doing the right thing, the right way, regardless of whether anyone is watching.
What imprint do you believe the proposed police training facility in Atlanta will leave on law enforcement throughout Georgia and here in Athens? Why?
Training is an integral part of creating better organizations whether that is in law enforcement or any other organization. In my time working in criminal justice both as a prosecutor and after, I’ve had an opportunity to interact with law enforcement officers from a number of different agencies. As a whole, these are people who have chosen their profession because they have a desire to serve their communities and their neighbors. They are the people who ask to be sent into some of the worst and most dangerous situations that we face as a community though it may mean putting their lives at risk. That does not mean that every law enforcement officer always does the right thing. I want our law enforcement officers in Athens and Oconee County to have the best training available and that includes training in de-escalation, how to deal with people suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues, and understanding implicit bias. If we want better results when law enforcement interacts with people in the community, then we have to invest in the resources and training to provide law enforcement officers with the tools they need to achieve those better results. I am hopeful that the police training facility in Atlanta will provide law enforcement throughout the State of Georgia including law enforcement personnel from Athens and Oconee County an opportunity to receive additional training in best practices for law enforcement that will lead to better results when law enforcement interacts with people in the community.
Additional Thoughts
I’ve decided to run as a non-partisan independent candidate because I believe that there is nothing partisan about keeping our community safe and protecting the rights of people in our community. When people seek to divide us on these issues based on party labels, they are only doing so for their own personal benefit. The district attorney’s office should be a place for public service, not political advancement. This community is a great place to live and work. We have the potential to have one of the best district attorney’s offices in the State of Georgia. Our community deserves a district attorney’s office that delivers justice for all in our community and is staffed by committed experienced prosecutors who are committed to a culture of doing the right thing, the right way, regardless of whether anyone is watching. We deserve a district attorney’s office that will connect people who have committed nonviolent crimes and who need treatment for mental health and substance abuse issues with the resources available through the courts and through our community providers to help them address their issues and return to leading healthy and productive lives. We deserve a district attorney’s office that will partner with stakeholders throughout our community in a meaningful and impactful way to do everything that we can connect young people interacting with the criminal justice due to nonviolent offenses with relationships and social capital in our community that will give them a place to go other than the peer groups they were in that may have contributed to the actions that brought them into contact with the criminal justice system to begin with. And, we deserve a district attorney’s office that is committed to delivering justice for victims. We owe those who have had the worst thing in their lives happen to them because of a crime that’s been committed against them or a crime that’s been committed against their loved one the promise of an office staffed and led by prosecutors with the training and experience to deliver justice for them. That’s what I mean by justice for all. I believe that people in this community are committed to coming together to create a DA’s office that delivers justice for all. I have the training, experience, and commitment to create a DA’s office we can all be proud of and rely on to do the right thing, the right way, regardless of whether anyone is watching, and that’s why I’m asking you to vote for me to your next district attorney.
Comentarios