Freeman faces critics, questions as she seeks 3rd term as Wake district attorney
More than a year ago, mobile billboards were driven around downtown Raleigh criticizing Lorrin Freeman’s actions as Wake County’s top prosecutor.
In the months since, various groups and campaigns have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars echoing some of those billboards’ messages,
They have highlighted the district attorney’s continued pursuit of the death penalty, her prosecution of people charged with low-level marijuana offenses, and her refusal to make sweeping pledges on other criminal justice reform issues.
Still, Freeman took nearly 59% of the vote in the May Democratic primary against challenger Damon Chetson.
Now competing against Republican Jeff Dobson in Tuesday’s general election, the two-term incumbent again faces criticism, this time from the upper echelons of the state’s Democratic Party.
At the heart of the criticism is the Wake County District Attorney’s Office investigating whether a political ad from state Attorney General Josh Stein’s 2020 campaign violated what appears to be an obscure, never-before used law that makes publishing false reports about candidates running for office a class 2 misdemeanor.
Jim O’Neill, Stein’s 2020 Republican challenger and the district attorney for Forsyth County, filed the complaint. He took issue with a Stein campaign television ad blaming O’Neill for not addressing untested rape kits. O’Neill contended that was the job of law enforcement not the DA.
The N.C. Board of Elections recommended Freeman close the case, but her office moved forward until the prosecution was paused by a federal lawsuit from Stein’s campaign challenging the constitutionality of the law.
Gov. Roy Cooper criticized Freeman’s office’s action, calling it “unprecedented repression of free speech that should trouble everyone.”
A recent article published by North Carolina online publication The Assembly portrayed Freeman as a prosecutor who has gone from Stein’s likely successor to a “pariah among many of her fellow Democrats.” The headline read “Lorrin Freeman’s last stand.”
“It’s the great mystery of current North Carolina politics,” wrote New York Times contributing opinion writer Frank Bruni, “an act of Democrat-on-Democrat sabotage that’s as alarming as it is inscrutable.”
Freeman, however, says there’s no mystery here. Her office is just applying the law irrespective of who’s involved, as she said she has done throughout her time as district attorney.
Freeman has recused herself from personally handling the Stein campaign case, but has defended the decision of the prosecutor on it.
Broad discretion
North Carolina district attorneys have great discretion in how they carry out their responsibilities, which includes deciding whether to bring criminal charges, support pretrial release and negotiate plea agreements. They also decide whether to seek the death penalty and whether to push some juvenile cases to adult court.
The Wake district attorney makes $140,834, and oversees nearly 73 positions, including 42 assistant district attorneys, and 100,000 criminal infractions each year.
District attorneys approach their responsibilities differently.
Durham DA Satana Deberry has said she won’t seek the death penalty or prosecute some low-level marijuana charges. Some might put Freeman on the other end of the spectrum, as her office continues to do both and she refuses to make broad promises not to use laws that are on the books.
Freeman says her overarching philosophy centers on her asking, “What is my role, and what is appropriate for me to take unilateral authority and control over, and what is more appropriate for there to be a process that involves the community or the court that weighs in.”
That philosophy, Freeman said, respects the limits of power she thinks one person should have in a larger system.
“I think it is a personal decision about what you see as your role as the DA, and how do you want to communicate that, and when and where you communicate that,” she said. “And by that again, I am just not given at this stage to pronouncements — and I think that is consistent with my nature.”
How her office has approached the Stein campaign case is no different, she said.
“I think what to us is clear is that prosecutors should not unilaterally, when there are questions as to whether a law is constitutional or not, make that determination,” Freeman said. “That is what courts are for. That is what process is for.”
Stein campaign case
When Freeman was contacted by the State Board of Elections Associate General Counsel Candace B. Marshall in November 2020 about the complaint, she recused herself because she had professional relationships with Stein and O’Neill. She asked Assistant District Attorney David Saacks to take the case, she wrote in a Dec. 14, 2020, email to Marshall.
“I will be maintaining a firewall between myself and him for the duration as to this case,” she wrote. “While I do not believe myself to have a conflict as defined by the State Bar, I do think this is the most prudent course of action to avoid an appearance of partiality in the matter.”
Saacks took the case to a grand jury, which asked the DA’s Office to present indictments it could consider against Stein and two of his top aides. The next day, the federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Wake grand jury from formally charging Stein and others. The ruling was part of a federal lawsuit filed by the Stein campaign against Freeman.
“What I think is unfortunate,” Freeman said, “is that there is some expectation, that at the end of that, because David comes to one decision as opposed to another one, all of a sudden I am supposed to say ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. When I told you I wasn’t going to be involved in it, and that I didn’t feel like it was appropriate to be involved in it, I didn’t really mean it. I need to correct what you have done, or do something different from what you have done, or impose myself in this decision.’”
That wouldn’t be fair or appropriate, Freeman said.
Saacks came to Freeman after he decided the case should be presented to the grand jury and the parties had been notified.
That’s when Stein folks started contacting Freeman, she said, and she referred them to Saacks.
Saaks is still directing actions in the case, but there is a less of a firewall since Freeman now has to become familiar with the case after she was named in Stein’s lawsuit.
Claims that Freeman is trying to help herself to statewide office by going after Stein just don’t make sense, she said.
“I am a lifelong Democrat. I am in a county that has become increasingly progressive, and just went through a bitter primary,“ Freeman said. “The idea that this is any way, you know, fits or enhances me politically or is done out of some sort of personal motivation or reason, it doesn’t make sense; I mean look at what I have been through the last six weeks over it. It doesn’t make sense that that is what would drive this.”
Freeman, who is seeking her third term as Wake DA, says she has no plans to run for statewide office in 2024.
Freeman, 51, served as an assistant district attorney, and assistant state attorney general and a two-term clerk of court.
Republican challenger
In another twist, Freeman’s Republican challenger outlined in an interview many concerns raised by her Democratic primary challenger Chetson, who advocated for more criminal justice reform faster.
Dobson, 40, said he wants to use his military and small-business owner experiences to reform the Wake District Attorney’s Office
Dobson said he has managed multi-million dollar budgets and at one time oversaw the education and training of 7,000 soldiers during his four years in the U.S. Air Force and 14 years in the Army.
Dobson graduated from law school in 2019 and has since run his Raleigh-based Dobson Law Firm, which practices criminal defense, family and business law.
Dobson said Wake County’s criminal justice system is broken.
“The current policy of the office appears to be let’s just get the maximum sentence humanly possible, even when there’s tons of mitigating circumstances or it’s a first-time offender, and that’s not what we are supposed to be doing,” he said.
Freeman’s leadership is resulting in a high turnover rate among prosecutors in her office, as felony and murder cases pile up, he said.
Instead of making reasonable plea deals, Freeman’s office is unbending, wasting money on trials that don’t result in convictions, he said.
When asked about Freeman’s pursuit of the death penalty, Dobson responded, “Inappropriate, excessive and I think that is probably the nicest way I can say it.”
Dobson pointed to reports that Freeman seeks the death penalty more than other prosecutors in the state. Those cases should be reserved for the most heinous crimes that don’t involve defendants with severe mental illnesses, he said.
Freeman isn’t seeking justice, he said, but plotting her next political move.
“She is worried about what is best for her,” Dobson said.
Freeman disagrees
Freeman disputes Dobson’s characterizations.
Staff turnover is problematic across the state, she said, and her office is working to make improvements in the Wake County courts system, she said.
Instead of responding to the ever swinging pendulum of public opinion — including those who called for criminal justice reform after George Floyd’s death and others who wanted more law and order after a rise in violent crime — Freeman said she is advocating for measured and sustainable change.
If changes aren’t made in a collaborative way, they will not last and progress will not be made, she said.
“We are going to continue to try to do that, but we are not going to make them at the cost of public safety, “ she said.
In April, Wake County officials made changes to court services under the Pretrial Reform Project and adjusted the recommended bail bond schedule to help fight bias and reduce the number of people in jail awaiting trial.
Freeman was the chair of the committee.
The reality, Freeman said, is that more people are using pretrial release programs instead of sitting in jail on low-level felony and misdemeanor charges.
From January 2021 to September of 2022 the average daily population of those using pretrial release services increased from 400 to about 650, according to paperwork provided by Freeman. Those numbers, however, aren’t translating into a decrease in the overall jail population due to an increase of violent crime, she said.
One of the challenges, Freeman said, is a lack of access to jail data which they are continuing to work on and receive updates on, she said.
What the numbers say
According to an August state report, Wake County’s pending felony cases had a a median age of 289 days, which is below the statewide age of 329 during the 2021-22 fiscal year.
During that year, Wake County had 104 jury trials in Superior Court, 80 of which resulted in a guilty verdict and 17 resulting in a not guilty, according to the report. Seven more defendants pleaded guilty before the verdict.
As of Sept. 30, Wake County had 95 pending homicide cases with 124 defendants, Freeman said.
Amid trials being paused during the pandemic, and the rising violent crime, Freeman’s office has been working on reducing that list, including disposing of 45 cases this year.
Freeman said her office reserves the death penalty for the most egregious cases, and the fact there is just one out of the 95 cases reflects that.
Jury selection in Brandon Hill’s capital murder trial has been paused due to health challenges by one of his attorneys. Hill is accused in the 2016 slaying of a pregnant April Holland and Dwayne Garvey at the former America’s Best Value Inn near Crabtree Valley Mall. In 2019, a jury sentenced Hill’s co-defendant to death.
Before the court process was paused, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina argued the current capital jury selection practice is discriminatory and violates Hill’s rights to a fair trial, as well as some community members’ right to serve on Hill’s jury. Wake assistant district attorneys are defending the jury selection process.
Freeman’s said Dobson’s descriptions of an inflexible plea negotiation process in Wake aren’t accurate.
“With all due respect, he has been practicing [law] for three years, not exclusively in Wake County, “ Freeman said. “If he has specific examples I am happy to look at him and talk about it.
Chetson has endorsed Freeman, citing her experience and commitment to public service compared to Dobson who was licensed as an attorney in 2019.
“While District Attorney Freeman and I have our differences on policy, she has the experience and commitment to public service that is essential for Wake County,” he wrote in a statement.
Republicans used to nominated people with experience, he wrote.
“Her opponent may be a nice guy, but he is vastly inexperienced to be the District Attorney of a growing county home to more than one million people,” Chetson wrote.
(N&O staff reporter Will Doran contributed to this report.)
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 2:30 PM.
