It’s a rematch in the race for Wake County district attorney. Here are the candidates.
In 2014, Nancy “Lorrin” Freeman won election as Wake County’s district attorney, replacing Colon Willoughby, who had held the post nearly 30 years.
She brought a background that combined her work as a prosecutor with the administrative skills gained as Wake’s clerk of court — not to mention a family with deep connections in judicial and Democratic Party circles — but still she faced some criticism as having too little time in the courtroom.
Four years later, Freeman has managed a staff of 75 while personally handling three first-degree murder trials, six officer-involved shootings, the embezzling case of Wake’s register of deeds and now an inquiry into ethics allegations against N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore.
As she seeks a second term, Freeman said, “I’m at a point where I can say I didn’t know what i was getting into when I took this on.”
On Nov. 6, Freeman faces a rematch of the election of 2014. Republican lawyer John Bryant is seeking to take the office, running on his extensive trial experience and a pledge to have the district attorney’s office reach beyond the courthouse and into the community.
Being centered in Raleigh, Wake’s district attorney wields more power than most prosecutors. The job includes handling the state’s public corruption and government malfeasance cases.
In a recent, high-profile move, Freeman has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to examine connections between Moore’s private legal work and public legislation that might have benefited people in two cases. The inquiry is not a criminal investigation, and Moore has denied any mixing of private and public work.
“Certainly, the allegations in both of these (cases), if they bear out to be true, seem to suggest a pattern of the use of public position for personal gain,” Freeman told The N&O in early October.
Before taking her elected posts, Freeman worked as a Wake assistant district attorney, helping to start teen court, and as an assistant attorney general.
In another attention-getting case, Freeman’s office accepted a guilty plea from former Register of Deeds Laura Riddick, who will serve five to seven years in prison as part of an investigation that found more than $2 million missing from her office.
Some disapproved of the deal for being too light, especially because Riddick will be allowed work release. But Freeman said the punishment falls in line with other embezzlement cases and, most importantly, Riddick returned the $926,615 she was charged with taking.
“This is sad because someone who had the public’s trust was betraying it and was motivated, certainly in my opinion, by greed,” Freeman told The N&O.
But Freeman said the deepest experience came through the regular meetings with victims’ families, experiencing the raw emotion up close.
She has especially pushed for more assistance for defendants with mental health issues, assigning an attorney to a deferral program that lets mentally ill people charged with crimes get their cases dismissed if they seek treatment.
In his second campaign, Bryant has also stressed the need for more focus on mental health issues, reducing the number of cases prosecuted against those defendants and steering them to treatment.
Another priority, Bryant said, is creating a veterans’ resolution court to assist service members with financial and mental problems. He pledged to start one within his first week in office.
As a lawyer in private practice for 30 years, Bryant has argued cases at the federal and N.C. Supreme Court level.
On his website, he called it “remarkable” that Wake County’s district attorney’s office has no outreach program in the public schools, which he pledged to create so children experience the judicial system without becoming defendants. Getting outside the courts will make prosecutors and the law more visible and a more positive influence, he said.
“Father used to say, the best fertilizer you can put on your fields is your footprints,” he told The N&O.
This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 4:32 PM.