NEW POLL: Voters Want Prosecutors To Decline Donations From Criminal Defense Lawyers
A bombshell report by The New Yorker in 2017 detailed accounts from multiple women who had accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including an Italian model, Ambra Battilana, who told the police that Weinstein had groped her. When it came time for Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance to decide whether to charge Weinstein, he ultimately declined to prosecute the case. Soon after Vance made the decision, Weinstein’s criminal lawyer David Boies, one the country’s most high-profile lawyers who charges nearly $2,000 per hour for his services, donated $10,000 to Vance’s campaign. Boies had also headlined a fundraiser for Vance and donated $55,000 to his campaign prior to the Weinstein charging decision.
A media shitstorm around the donations exploded. Columbia Law School’s Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity issued a report concluding that “to prevent the appearance of impropriety,” sitting District Attorneys or challengers should “adopt a blind fundraising system” where “the names of campaign contributors should be kept secret from the candidate…”.
Ultimately, though, Vance went further, announcing that he would refuse to accept donations from any criminal defense lawyers with active cases in front of his office. Vance did not run for reelection in 2020, but Alvin Bragg, who will be Vance’s predecessor, adopted the same policy.
But other elected prosecutors across the country continue to take donations from lawyers with active cases in front of their office, creating a risk of appearance that justice is for sale.
To gauge where the public is on this issue, City Watch conducted a survey of 1,223 likely voters nationally using the Data For Progress infrastructure. The sample is weighted by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The margin of error is +/- 5 percentage points.
WE FOUND: Nearly three-quarters of likely voters (73%) believe that prosecutors should decline donations from defense lawyers who represent clients with active cases in front of the prosecutor's office.
This is likely to be an issue in 2022 prosecutor elections, including in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada, Baltimore County, Maryland, and Tarrant County, Texas.
A recent investigative piece revealed that Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has given a series of head scratching deals to the wealthy clients of criminal defense lawyers who have donated to Wolfson’s campaigns. For example, in 2019, tech billionaire Henry Nicholas received what Clark County public defenders described in a court filing as a “sweetheart deal” from Wolfson’s office. Nicholas and a friend were arrested in Las Vegas in 2018 on charges of drug trafficking after police found a trove of drugs -- heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy -- in their hotel room. The plea deal allowed for Nicholas and his friend to plead to possession and avoid felony drug trafficking charges and prison. Nicholas’s lawyers in that case donated $30,000 to Wolfson’s campaign.
Sarah Hawkins, President of Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice, put the point best: “This smells bad and if you don't think it does you're not paying close enough attention.”
Clark County residents printed out the article, and handed it out to prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and other citizens as they entered and left the courthouse and the District Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas.
Nevada Independent reporter Jon Ralston, highlighting the investigative piece, reported that Chesnoff (the lawyer who represented the billionaire with a suitcase full of drugs) also represented soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. Wolfson reached out to Ralston to express his frustration, and Ralston ran a follow-up post:
As it turns out, the first lawyer stopped representing Ronaldo before Wolfson made the decision to drop the charges. However, the later one also donated generously to Wolfson’s campaign.
It’s not just Las Vegas.
In Tarrant County, Texas, which is home to Fort Worth and encompasses a population of over 2 million people, District Attorney Sharren Wilson has accepted at least $139,979 in campaign donations from criminal defense lawyers, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the total amount that she raised in her last election, according to a review of her campaign finances.
These criminal attorneys include lawyers representing police officers with cases before her office. The appearance of conflict in these cases is particularly stark: there have been at least 42 killings by police officers in Tarrant County while Wilson has been District Attorney, but only one officer has been indicted for killing a civilian during that time.
The same story plays out in Baltimore County, Maryland, where District Attorney Scott Shellenberger has accepted at least $309,995 in donations from lawyers with cases in front of his office. These donors include a prominent criminal lawyer who represents Baltimore police officers in DUI cases, a lawyer who was indicted for allegedly blocking a federal money laundering investigation, and a lawyer who was disbarred for improperly withdrawing money from a client’s trust fund account.
City Watch will stay on top of this issue, tracking the incumbents and challengers who accept and decline these donations during the 2022 election cycle.
