Wake DA faces criticism from Democratic challenger in run up to 2022 election
Note to readers: Candidate filing initially began Dec. 6, but was delayed after a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling pushed the 2022 election primary from March 8 to May 17. Dates for a new filing period have not been set.
Filing to run in next year’s elections didn’t officially start until Monday, but one Democratic challenger has already been campaigning to try to build enough momentum to unseat two-term Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.
Damon Chetson, a criminal defense attorney for 12 years, is calling for change in the DA’s Office in one of the most high-profile judicial districts in the state.
“We will create a fairer and better justice system for the 1.1 million of us that call Wake County home,” Chetson says on his website.
The Wake County district attorney handles the state’s corruption and government malfeasance cases in addition to running an office with about 70 employees who work on over 100,000 criminal infractions and violations each year. The DA makes $140,834 annually.
In May, Chetson wrote a piece for Indy Week criticizing Freeman’s handling of the Kyron Hinton case, saying she went easy on officers involved in the 2018 incident that left Hinton with multiple bites from a police dog and a fractured orbital bone.
He also criticized her for a lack of diversity in the office, saying there were no Black or Latinx prosecuting felonies in Wake.
Freeman responded in a statement to the weekly paper, saying she has hired 16 African American or Latinx prosecutors since taking office in January 2015, including six African-American prosecutors who remain on staff. Two African American prosecutors handling felonies left earlier this year for jobs with higher pay at the Attorney General’s Office and the Raleigh Police Department, while a Hispanic and Asian prosecutor remains, she wrote.
“I have been committed to building an office that reflects our community,” she wrote.
Attrition of newer prosecutors is common issue in district attorney offices, and it creates challenges cultivating an experienced group of prosecutors “despite very strong hiring practices of African American attorneys,” she wrote.
Freeman had no Democratic challenger in the 2018 primary and won more than 63% of the vote in the November 2018 election against Republican challenger John Bryant. Before Freeman was elected as DA in 2014, she served as clerk of court for Wake County, and a Wake County assistant district attorney.
Criminal justice reform
The election could test whether Freeman’s measured approach still connects with voters after the national call for criminal justice reform following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 and other killings by police.
At the same time, it’s not clear how rising violent crime across the state and the country could affect Chetson’s push for further changes.
For too long, Wake County has ignored common-sense, criminal justice reforms and basic transparency in the DA’s office, Chetson wrote in an email to The News & Observer.
“We can create a safer and fairer community by building a DA’s office that is responsive, shifts resources to preventing violent crimes and away from crimes of poverty, no longer seeks the death penalty, and builds programs that address the racial and social disparities in our county,” Chetson wrote.
“Wake County is over 1.1 million people and grows larger and more diverse by the day,” he wrote. “Our community deserves a world class justice system that works for all of us.”
Freeman contends she has brought change while focusing on violent crime.
“I encourage the voters of Wake County to study my record and make their own determination,” Freeman wrote. “I am committed to fulfilling my oath of upholding the law as enacted by our legislature. At the same time, I have consistently worked to prioritize second chances and treatment for low level non violent crimes and to eliminate unfairness in the system.”
Safer, more inclusive Wake
Chetson and Freeman agree the key issues in the election will be how to make Wake safer and the justice system more inclusive, but they disagree on the path on how to get there.
Chetson said he supports not seeking the death penalty, not prosecuting low-level marijuana offenses and dismissing charges that originate from traffic stops for minor incidents such as a broken tail light.
“In Wake County we have focused, in my view, too many resources on prosecuting misdemeanor quantities of marijuana and other nonviolent, low-level misdemeanors that would be better resolved through treatment or mental health services,” he said.
Freeman, whose office does seek the death penalty, disagrees with dismissing low-level marijuana charges, noting the county provides ways to defer those charges.
“We need to get behavioral health issues out of the criminal justice system,” she said at a September criminal justice reform forum. “But we need to do that by linking people with the appropriate resources and not just leaving them unhelped within our community if we really want things to improve.”
Freeman says her office has made strides in reform by revising the pre-trial release policy, providing diversion programs to people with addictions and mental health problems, and collaborating to help people who re-enter the community after incarceration.
The accomplishments she is most proud of include expanding teams prosecuting domestic violence, child abuse and sexual assault; working with partners to expand mental health and substance abuse treatment; and assisting with restoring driver’s licenses and criminal expungements, she wrote.
“My commitment to our community has remained steadfast and I have worked daily to meet the promises of working to keep our community safe and find ways to address underlying causes of criminal behavior to minimize recidivism,” Freeman wrote.
Freeman has also faced criticism for investigations into police, including not charging fired Raleigh police Detective Omar Abdullah. A federal civil rights lawsuit accused him of having about 10 people arrested in a fake heroin sales scheme, The N&O reported. A confidential informant in the case has been charged with obstruction of justice.
The Abdullah case remains under investigation and charges related to the matter are pending, so Freeman couldn’t comment on that specific case, she wrote.
“However in those instances where there has been evidence of criminal wrongdoing by law enforcement I have brought charges and sought accountability consistently,” Freeman wrote.
This story was originally published December 7, 2021 at 5:40 AM.
