Durham DA Deberry promised to fight mass incarceration. See how she says she’s doing.

Shorter jail stays, fewer people in jail, and an overall shift away from mass incarceration.

Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry on Thursday morning released a progress report outlining her first six months in office.

Deberry was elected on a platform of prioritizing violent crime, while using the DA’s Office to promote policies that fight bias such as cash-less bail for certain offenses.

“While fundamentally changing the way the Durham’s criminal justice system operates will take collaboration from all corners of the community,” Deberry said, “I’m pleased to report that the District Attorney’s Office has taken steps to address mass incarceration, jail overcrowding, racial disparities in the criminal justice system and mistrust of the court.”

The report outlines changes Deberry has made, from how the office is structured and prosecutes homicides, to not prosecuting certain misdemeanors and school referrals. She also created an internal pre-trial release policy that seeks to keep more people out of jail and a committee that reviews and shares information about police misconduct.

Here are five significant changes Deberry has made since taking office Jan. 1.

▪ Staff and structure

Deberry has hired several new prosecutors and restructured how they operate.

She has created six teams: administration, juvenile, special victims, drug and property crimes, homicide and violent crime, and traffic.

The change help team members — assistant district attorneys, legal assistants, and victim services coordinators — specialize, she said.

About half of the 20 assistant district attorneys remained in the transition from former DA Roger Echols’ administration to Deberry’s.

Among the new hires:

Michael Wallace, who leads the homicide and violent crime team, taught at N.C. Central University’s law school for 11 years. Before then, he was an assistant U.S. attorney for 13 years and assistant federal public defender for nearly six years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Daniel Spiegel, who heads the drug and property crimes team, was senior legal counsel for the Fair Punishment Project, which works with Harvard University’s law school to examine systemic problems in the criminal justice system. He also served as a state appellate defender for three years, and an assistant public defender in Hoke and Mecklenburg counties for four years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Alyson Grine, also on the homicide and violent crime team, was also an assistant law professor at NCCU and was a defender educator at the UNC School of Government from 2006 to 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile and UNC School of Government biography. She also served as a senior adviser to the school’s N.C. Racial Equity Network.

Deberry said she wanted attorneys who “really reflect where the law is and where we think it is going,” as opposed to prosecutors who focus on statutes over human beings.

The biggest surprise in her first six months, she said, has been the sheer number of people of color who are defendants and victims.

“I knew that the system was mostly black and brown,” she said. “But until I was in here and really could see how many black and brown people run through the system every day ... Monday morning in district courtroom or superior courtroom, it is almost all black people. “

Deberry said she wants questions about race and the criminal justice system to be “top of mind” for prosecutors.

“Why do we have so many of people of color here?” she said. “And then why do we pick juries that are mostly white?”

▪ Homicides

Deberry’s plan to reduce nearly 100 pending homicide cases includes asking local law enforcement to consult the DA’s Office before filing homicide charges. This will keep people from being charged with insufficient evidence and reduce the cases that get dismissed, she said.

Deberry has also asked the state Attorney General’s Office for help, referring at least 12 defendants to state prosecutors in pending homicide cases.

The state prosecutions unit is a resource “when there is a conflict or when the case is unusually complicated,” said Lauren Brewer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice. As of January, it had picked up 23 Durham cases since 2017, more than half the 41 open cases the unit has received, Brewer wrote in an email.

In the first six months of 2019, Deberry’s report continued, 22 homicide cases were resolved. Of those cases, 15 people were convicted. Six cases were dismissed by the District Attorney’s Office for insufficient evidence, and a seventh was dismissed by the court, it noted.

Some friends and families of people killed have been frustrated with plea deals offered under Deberry’s administration. The family of Darelle Harper, who was killed in a shopping center parking lot in the middle of the day, told The News & Observer they don’t feel like justice was served by the killer’s roughly 20 years in prison.

“I felt like he should have gotten 25 to life,” Harper’s mother, Shirley Chambers, said in an interview. “If you take a life, your life should be taken too.”

Deberry said her office takes families’ concerns seriously, but their wishes are just one factor when offering plea deals to defendants.

▪ Pre-trial release

Deberry’s pre-trial release policy favors releasing people from jail on a written promise to appear in court on most misdemeanor and lesser felony charges except those involving domestic violence or physical harm to another person. The policy took effect in February.

“If the court insists on setting a bond, we ask the court to have a hearing on whether or not that person can afford that or not,” Deberry said.

The average stay in jail during the first six months of the year was down to 5.29 days compared to 19 days four years ago, the report states. Over that time period, Durham County, the Sheriff’s Office and judges have also taken actions contributing to the reduction.

▪ Marijuana, truancy

Deberry has said she won’t prosecute marijuana possession for personal use and other misdemeanor and some low-level felonies. She has also stopped accepting most criminal referrals from schools.

She also ended the practice of sending letters threatening criminal charges against parents of students who miss school, according to the report. Previously, parents of students with 10 or more absences received a letter from the DA’s Office stating that they could face fines or jail time.

“These unnecessary truancy letters were a poor use of court resources and put families experiencing hardship at risk without remedying their situation,” the report states.

▪ New positions

Deberry has also created two positions to promote accountability and improve community understanding, she said.

Civil rights attorney Brenda Ford Harding is deputy chief of legal and community affairs, and a liaison to law enforcement and community groups.

Former Indy Week reporter Sarah Willetts is working with Harding, the media and others as a department spokesperson. Mecklenburg County is the only other district attorney’s office in the state with a spokesperson, Deberry said.

This story was originally published July 25, 2019 at 11:43 AM.