Our current District Attorney has
failed us. His record is unacceptable by any measure.
In June, while seeking their endorsement, Mr. Hartnett told the
Republican Committee that his conviction rate was "over 94%" and
well above the state average. Statistics are misleading and a poor
indicator of real performance, unless you know the rest of the story.
For example, if a defendant were arrested for violent felony assault,
which is a serious crime mandating state prison if convicted, and
the District Attorney plea bargained the case down to disorderly
conduct, which is not a crime, that case would be counted as a conviction,
in the DA's record of convictions. Mark Suben believes that this
kind of "statistic" seriously misleads the public regarding the
competence and judgment of our current DA's office.
A more reliable indicator of the competence and judgment of a District
Attorney is the record of his office at trial, and which cases he
chooses to plead out and not take to trial.
In the four years of our current District Attorney's term, we calculate
that his office has a County Court trial conviction rate of about
75%. That means that the office lost one out of every four major
cases taken to trial.
Even that statistic is misleading. In many of those cases that resulted
in conviction, the defendant was actually found not guilty of the
most serious charges, showing that the District Attorney did not
properly evaluate those cases. Many of the cases won at trial were
not the more serious crimes, worthy of trial time, and cases that
were lost at trial were frequently very serious matters. Those defeats
put a criminal back on our streets.
For more information on competence issues in Mr. Hartnett's office,
click on just a few of the cases you should know about before voting
for your next District Attorney, and see how Mark Suben will handle
these issues differently, effectively:
The Thibeault Murder Case
The Homer Boys Toy Gun Case
The Dempsey Baby Assault Case
The Vandenberg Cop and Chase Case
The Walter Wood Jr. Rape Case
The cases discussed here involve several well-publicized major crimes
that were poorly handled by District Attorney Dave Hartnett and
his staff. These cases represent an on-going pattern of inept prosecutions
and poor judgment, and they clearly illustrate the need for change.
As your District Attorney, Mark Suben will handle such situations
quickly, properly, competently and professionally.