On Oct. 2, Brown County Prosecutor, Republican Ted Adams, and Democrat challenger, Greg Bowes, participated in a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Brown County to answer questions from voters.
Here are their answers to some of those questions:
Q: What is the most important skill a prosecutor needs?
Ted Adams: To me, it’s jury trial experience. … I was a defense attorney prior to becoming a prosecuting attorney. I gotta tell you, you know which prosecutors go to trial and which ones do not go to trial. If defense attorneys smell blood in the water, they will take advantage of that. … I am proud of our 100-percent jury trial conviction rate. … Many folks in this room have seen me in trial, have sat on my juries and have seen that in action. … I like to stick around after jury trials and get feedback. I am always looking and seeking to become better at my craft. I think another skill set a prosecuting attorney could have is exercising discretion. … That is the individual justice for individual cases. I don’t have a set of policies, because I think you can live and die by policies, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I like to take each case in a vacuum, look at the facts, determine whether or not I can prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt. I’ve also given back a lot of discretion to our road officers. … They don’t have to live and die by a policy that may or may not be applicable when they are out in the trenches on the scene. I have given that discretion back, and I think that’s another skill set a prosecuting attorney should have and should exercise.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Greg Bowes: I think a primary skill that a prosecutor ought to have would be problem solving. … The prosecutor takes misbehavior and tries to react to it in a way that helps us make sure we’re a safe community and people aren’t hurting each other. Part of what I’m worried about, especially when we talk about the opioid problem, is when you make decisions about prosecution, when someone does a crime, someone hurts someone else, we should be focusing first on how do we react to that case? … I think we should also be asking ourselves, how does what we do in this one case influence what is going to happen later? So, how we manage that case is going to determine whether that person commits a second crime. How we manage that case is going to determine whether there is a culture in our community that says to the other people, “Hey if you’re going to commit a crime, you need to be ready to face the consequences you saw in other case.” A prosecutor who is a problem solver is part of a team. … If we’re to attack an opioid crisis the way we have here, we need to work with the health department, we need to work with probation, we need work with law enforcement, we need to work with the recovery community and we need to work with the schools to make sure we have some sense of approaching this problem in a way that is going to be effective. The problem-solving prosecutor would be willing to work with all of those and willing to make decisions that are bigger than just that one case and making sure we’re affecting everything into the future.
Q: What role does the prosecutor play in the opioid crisis?
Adams: … Our No. 1 goal is safety to the community. … We provide safety to the community and we do that by enforcing the law. Our No. 1 goal, of course, is to enforce the law. … I have sat with Judge (Judith) Stewart and we talked about a drug court. I am open to a drug court and would participate in a drug court. Sheriff (Scott) Southerland and I sit on numerous boards where we talk about what courses of action we can take in order to nip this in the bud. … Until folks stop wanting to put that poison in their arms, we’re going to continue to have an opioid crisis, folks. When there is a demand, there will be a supply. The prosecuting attorney’s role can be, “What can we do to coerce or help people not want to take that and put that stuff in their arm?” That’s where individual justice on individual cases comes in. I look at each case. I want to help people. If they are willing to help and they are willing to make a turn in their life, and they have expressed interest in wanting treatment, by gosh, we will set a path out for that. I have initiated a felony diversion initiative in our office that helps them not only take a treatment-oriented path in order to hopefully kick that habit, but also avoid a conviction. … Unless we go to a jury trial, I am not a guy who needs to get convictions; I am a guy that wants to nip this in the bud just like anyone else. Now, if you have a person who is an addict with tons of convictions or they start endangering society — we had an individual that was doing drugs right near the school, within 500 feet of our school — those are off the table. I now switch into community safety mode, and we’re going to convict that person, and we did. … You’ve got to look at each case individually. … Sometimes, that answer is diversion. We take a treatment path and we try to keep out of the system. … Those are your first-time offenders, your low-level, nonviolent offenders. Some folks have so many convictions. … Some of these folks want to make a positive change in their life and you can see it in their eyes. You can help them. … You can use those coercive methods, and then those that put people in harm’s way, a safety concern, prison is appropriate for them.
Bowes: This is a complex problem. … We need to be measuring effectiveness, so in other words, you want to see measures. … The one that I had my eyes opened very much dramatically … would be the Child in Need of Service (CHINS) cases, where Department of Child Services comes in home and takes the children out because parents aren’t able to take care of the children. The ones I am involved in, they are not able to take care of their children because of their drug use problems. Those numbers went from 21 in one year in 2015 and exploded to 70 in 2017. … I’d like to be looking at those measures to see some improvement, and if we’re not getting improvement, then we need examine what we’re doing and see if we can find a better way to do it. … If, as Mr. Adams was saying, we can see that there’s a motivation to get some treatment, then we can give that carrot-and-stick approach that says, “OK, here’s your option. Get it because we helped you get screening, and we can find a resource for you.” But if you’re not willing to do that, then the stick approach is, “OK, you’re going to be held responsible for your crime.” There’s another thing that is interesting that I learned from reading a book called “Dreamland.” … They talked about how these people who have already lost their job, their home and their family were able to find money to get more drugs because they are using every day and they get dope sick if they can’t. They were describing all of these elaborate shoplifting ploys they would engage in at Wal-Mart. Then I hear from one of my local clients that this guy goes shoplifting three times a week and nobody ever stops him. He’s been doing it for months. … The interesting thing about that is that particular problem is an opportunity for a prosecutor to be more involved and aggressive about managing those shoplifting cases, because that’s probably someone who needs some help on a drug problem. If you use that screening tool, then you can divert them into a program better. … The prosecutor has a great big piece of helping to solve this problem. I’d like to devote some energy and reporting about it.
Q: We’ve heard the term “drug court” bantered around. … What are we doing as a county to reduce repeat offenders and give assistance to drug users? What are the different methods and programs we have?
Bowes: I know at the beginning if there’s a parent involved in a Child in Need of Services case that the Department of Child Services many times steers them onto counseling and treatment. They have intensive outpatient treatment programs through Centerstone, and the DCS has the funding to pay for it, which is one of the impediments for the people getting help is they can’t afford it. In that circumstance, they have to wait until they are in really bad trouble before they can find a funding source. I’d like to look for an alternative. Anyone who might get convicted of a particular crime, the judge routinely and the prosecutor routinely require substance abuse evaluation and treatment as part of the probation regime. I am certainly for that, but there’s a funding source issue behind it because I think the probationer has to pay for that and they don’t have that DCS source. The weakness here is the funding and the availability of the programming. … Why should we be waiting until it’s that bad to where we have to rip the children out of the home before we can find some funding to help them? I want to look for situations like that. … Drug court is a great idea. It does have a treatment model rather than a punishment model, which is going to be more effective. I just want to point out that’s a three-way effort where the judge, the defense bar and the prosecutor are all involved. … The prosecutor has a great big authority to decide which cases go into the drug court program, so I think it’s important for the prosecutor to be thinking, “I’d like to have more in the program.”
Adams: I actually sat on a drug court as a stakeholder during my time as a deputy Johnson County prosecuting attorney up in Greenwood City court … in the mid-2000s, so I got to see it in action. It’s an intense program. It is treatment-oriented with sanctions if you don’t comply, rewards if you do comply, and the rewards of course are moving through the program and graduating the program. I have indicated since 2015 with Judge Stewart my willingness to participate in that drug court and bring my knowledge base from Greenwood City Court Drug Court to that table. … Mr. Bowes is right, there’s a lot of funding issues and personnel issues in that. A drug court is going to be expensive if we do one locally. I’ve indicated my willingness to not only do one locally, but also participate or piggyback off of Monroe County’s drug court. None of these seem to be getting off the ground. I can’t signal any more willingness to do that, so that’s why I’ve been kind of going the diversion route in order to incentivize, use the carrot rather than the stick. … Your better approach is to invest some kind of treatment into folks. Sometimes that requires some executed time in order to dry them out and they have to go through the dope sickness, but if you are able to invest and get that individual, that addict to not use drugs, to recover, that initial investment of money you will see returned. It’s long-term return on your investment. The recidivism drops. You can think about anything from insurance rates to law enforcement costs to safety issues, all of that drops whenever an addict is fully recovered. … We have a new judge coming in one way or the other. … The ball will be in their court. I know the defense bar and I know the prosecution is ready to go and willing to do it.
Q: What are your thoughts on pre-trial diversion?
Adams: There’s some main advantages to pre-trial diversion. Pre-trial diversion is geared towards lower level charges — you know, possession of alcohol by a minor, possession of marijuana, disorderly conduct … things that are generally folks who have a one-time slip-up. It’s an opportunity for them to perform some community service, perhaps do some substance abuse counseling and pay a fee, and they keep it off their record if they comply with the terms and conditions of that pre-trial diversion program. It does generate a funding stream. … If you look at how many folks we employ and the amount of money we bring in from child support and generate for the local economy, our office is quite a cheap office as far as the county office is concerned because we have a lot of grant funding. We have a lot of self-user funds through the pre-trial diversion program and the deferral program. Pre-trial diversion is a preferred method if … teenagers or young college students … pick up that random illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor, first time possession of marijuana, it is an opportunity for them to keep that off their record and not have that blemish as they proceed through life. I think it’s an important program. We certainly want to keep it going.
Bowes: Diversion is a great opportunity to do something that I think is important. That is if someone is committing an offense, or more general, behaving in a way we don’t like, the worst response is to ignore it. … Diversion is sort of that middle ground between ignoring it and kicking them in the teeth for something small they might have made a mistake on, like a young kid. I am informed by some study I looked at when I was looking at recidivism. … What they determined was that the length of the sentence didn’t have as much of an impact on keeping someone from committing a new offense as the likelihood that the person will get caught. I think this diversion program is a great opportunity for us to say, “Hey, we caught you, now do these responsible things and pay consequences for what you did, then get back and hopefully you’ll behave.” If that person doesn’t get the hint the first time, then you escalate. … By making sure we don’t ignore it, we increase that likelihood that they think they’re going to caught if they do something wrong. One of the worries I have about diversion … diversion is where we go through that whole program, say you pay a little money, go through a little bit of effort to hold yourself responsible with volunteer work or some counseling, you won’t have a conviction. The deferral is related to traffic tickets, so on both of these, there’s a fee that is generated, deferral and diversion, it comes back to the prosecutor’s office and they have the opportunity to use that money. I would like to make sure we don’t have a policing-for-profit system, that instead, we make sure that money is used appropriately, and I would like to direct it toward our opioid problem.
