Lorrin Freeman, candidate for Wake County District Attorney
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Candidates for Wake County District Attorney
Lorrin Freeman, the incumbent, and Damon Chetson are running for Wake County district attorney in the Democratic primary election. Jeff Dobson is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Get to know the candidates with our 2022 Voter Guide.
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Name: Nancy (Lorrin) Freeman
Age: 50
Political party: Democrat
Campaign website: www.FreemanforDA.com
Occupation and employer: Wake County District Attorney
Education: B.A. UNC-CH 1992; J.D. UNC-CH 1996
Elected offices held: Wake County District Attorney 2015-Present; Wake County Clerk of Superior Court 2006-2014
Please list highlights of your civic involvement: Chair and Member, City of Raleigh Human Relations Commission 2005-2011; Governor’s Appointee, NC Domestic Violence Commission; Chair, Wake County Democratic Party 2003-2005
Who are your top three campaign contributors? Franklin Freeman; Dean and Sesha Debnam; Betsy Freeman Fox
What are three things you want to accomplish in the next year, and how do you plan to accomplish them?
▪ Overcome backlog created by suspension of normal operations during COVID. Our jurisdiction has implemented a plan to add additional court sessions to work to reduce our pending case inventory. This includes setting for trial over 40 murder cases for the year.
▪ Expand opportunities to divert behavioral health crises from the criminal justice system. As one example, we will be working over the next year to develop a pilot pre-arrest diversion program for opioid possession offenses in collaboration with Family Resource Center, Southlight, Apex Police Department and our office. If this program is successful it would be my intent to expand it.
▪ Develop a new violence prevention strategy for Wake County. I am actively supporting several community partners who are working to establish community intervention violence prevention programs in Wake County.
What about your experience makes you the best person to be Wake County’s next district attorney?
Over the past 25 years I have served our community including six years on the City of Raleigh Human Relations Commission, as the elected Clerk of Court and most recently for two terms as the elected District Attorney. I have successfully led major agencies within our court system through major challenges including the COVID pandemic and chronic underfunding of the courts. In my role as district attorney I have worked hard to hold those who abuse their position accountable, and to keep our community safe while also increasing the opportunities for low-level, nonviolent offenses to be diverted away from the criminal justice system.
What does the District Attorney’s Office do well? In what areas does it need to improve?
The Wake County District Attorney’s Office does a good job of keeping our community safe while also offering more deferral programs than any other prosecutor office in the state. Moving forward it must continue to be smart in how we prioritize limited resources, and in providing data and information to our community on our decision making, and our program outcomes, in an effort to be more transparent and build trust.
Has the Wake County DA’s office done enough to attract and retain Black, Hispanic and other diverse prosecutors?
I have had a strong commitment to having a District Attorney’s Office that reflects our community. Over the last seven years I have hired close to 20 new prosecutors (nearly half of all attorney new hires) who come from our African American and Latino communities. Many of these individuals have used our office as a springboard into new positions that further their career. Recruiting and retaining a diverse set of prosecutors continues to be a challenge based in part on the limited funding for starting salaries and the demands of being on the front lines of working in our community during a pandemic. I have continued to build relationships with law schools that can feed our pipeline of hiring a diverse workforce. My commitment that this is a top priority remains.
What role does and should the Wake County DA’s office play in stemming violent crime?
Despite a recent increase in homicides, Wake County continues to enjoy a remarkably low per capita violent crime rate compared other urban communities in the state and nationally. The District Attorney’s Office plays a critical role in keeping our community safe. This includes not only aggressively prosecuting violent offenders but also actively participating in violence prevention efforts. I have actively worked, for example, to substantially expand mental health resources in our community by chairing the Director’s group, an advisory collaborative committee to the County Commission. Most recently I have been working with the Raleigh-Apex NAACP and others in support of starting new violence prevention programs within our community.
What is your stance on the death penalty?
The death penalty should be reserved for only those most egregious murder cases. North Carolina law continues to provide the death penalty as the maximum punishment under the law for first degree murder in those cases where statutory aggravating factors exist. Currently I have declared our office’s intent to seek the death penalty in only one of nearly 90 murder cases that are pending. We have not declared a case capital since 2017.
Should former Raleigh police detective Omar Abdullah who oversaw criminal investigations that resulted in trafficking charges on fake drugs and a $2 million settlement by the city of Raleigh, face criminal charges?
Criminal charges should only be pursued if the evidence supports prosecution. This matter remains under investigation and I am therefore prevented from discussing it in detail. The City of Raleigh paid out over $2 million to these 15 men and the Raleigh Police Department fired former Officer Abdullah. As soon as our office had substantiated information that individuals had been charged on false evidence, we dismissed all cases and have further reviewed all cases in which the same confidential informant was relied upon. Currently our office has criminally charged the confidential informant that was relied upon in charging these men and will seek justice in that case. Wrongful conviction of any individual is a prosecutor nightmare and regardless of the ultimate decision in this matter I take seriously the rightful concerns of our community about this and have taken steps designed to limit the risk of a similar situation reoccurring.
What is your definition of transparency and how do you plan to apply that to your office?
Transparency requires that the district attorney be accessible to being held accountable by our community. This happens most readily through open access by an active media. I have worked diligently to be responsive to media inquiries. Transparency also should include readily available information to the public on case decisions, program initiatives and outcomes. For this reason, if reelected I will seek funding from the county for a community outreach position for the courts that can develop and document deferral program outcomes and promote public awareness of other legal system operations and initiatives.
Does Wake County do enough to ensure that people charged with low-level, nonviolent crimes aren’t being held in jail because they can’t post bail?
Individuals who can remain on pretrial release without new offenses and while coming to court should be able to await the resolution of their cases out of custody. I recently have concluded leading a large collaborative that worked with the national expert organization Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research that, over 18 months, reviewed Wake County’s pretrial practices and made six significant recommendations to help meet the objective of not holding people in custody that shouldn’t be. These recommendations include expanding our pretrial release program to serve even more people, updating a pretrial release risk assessment that provides evidence-based information on who should be released to the community and ensuring individuals have access to an attorney at first appearances before a judge.
This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 10:19 AM.
