No matter how grim the outlook—and having spent the last four years under a Donald Trump presidency, it can get pretty grim—no one can convince me that voting doesn’t matter. I live in Georgia, for one, where voters not only flipped a state blue that hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton in 1992 but similarly showed up in a runoff election unseating two Republicans. But if recent victories in the state from Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock weren’t proof enough of the power the people have in this country, the outcome of the Orleans Parish district attorney’s race surely is.
In a state that has jailed its residents awaiting trial at the highest rate per capita in the nation, one of the most populous parishes in the state had a prosecutor at the helm who “terrorized the people he’s supposed to serve—especially Black and Brown people,” the ACLU described in a Facebook post. In the aftermath of a national outcry for criminal justice reform, not only did that prosecutor, Leon Cannizzaro, fail to beat newly elected district attorney Jason Williams, but the former district attorney didn’t even run for the seat he’s abused for two terms. Williams, who was sworn in on January 11, has wasted no time showing Orleans Parish residents he is no Cannizzaro, in the best possible way.
The new district attorney’s first week on the job, he fired—well, technically opted not to re-hire—10 people Cannizzaro employed, Williams said in an interview with nola.com. “There were a lot of people who were following very strict policies and things they were told by their supervisors,” Williams said. “But there's always instances in which a person does have some autonomy, or had some autonomy, and I wanted to know what they did in those decisions, and I wanted to know what they thought about some of the things they were told to do.” Williams told the news company he cleaned house with lawyers and section chiefs first and that staffers who aren’t employed as attorneys would be next. “We need to make sure everybody is committed to the work that we're trying to do, and that's not just the job of lawyers, that's the job of everyone,” he told nola.com.
Even before his time in office, Williams laid out a progressive agenda, seeking to reverse course on the common practice of trying children as adults and ruling out use of the death penalty. "A place that has the highest rates of exonerations—that means we got it wrong—I don't think can be trusted to use the death penalty,” he told WWL-TV in December. “It does not make us safer. Science has shown it does not deter crime."
Williams also vowed never to use the state’s toxic habitual offender statute, allowing prosecutors to stick former felons with increasingly longer sentences each time they are convicted. "It is unnecessary because the sentences that exist right now are more than enough in terms of what we need to accomplish in terms of punishment," Williams told WWL-TV in December. He said: "When you look at mandatory minimums and the overuse of the habitual offender law in the city of New Orleans, you can see a very racially biased implementation of those things." Udi Ofer, director of the ACLU's Justice Division, tweeted on Saturday in response to a more recent version of Williams’ promise: “This is a BIG deal. The newly elected New Orleans DA has vowed never to use the habitual offender statute, which was widely abused by his predecessor, leading 2 extreme sentences. This is why the ACLU mobilized our supporters in this race. Elections matter.”
And district attorney races matter immensely in the larger conversation of what criminal justice reform should look like, especially in states like Louisiana with established histories of incarcerating Black and brown people disproportionally. An ACLU of Louisiana report released last March showed the state’s pretrial incarceration rate is more than three times the national average, which is fewer than 200 defendants incarcerated per 100,000 residents. The ACLU stated in its report: “The people represented in our sample of jail records had spent an average of 5 ½ months in jail with no trial or conviction.”
That approach to criminal justice, based in large part on who can afford to pay bail, has been devastating in Black communities, and keeping those accused of minor crimes in jail during the coronavirus pandemic has even more severe public health implications in those communities. Williams, who was vice president of the New Orleans City Council at the time, condemned the district attorney’s stance last March that it is best to keep all offenders in jail during the coronavirus pandemic. “Jail is temporary detention for pre-trial offenders who are presumed innocent,” Williams said in a statement. “It is unconscionable to exploit this already marginalized population in a way that may have fatal consequences without ever consulting healthcare or infectious disease experts.
“This is not the moment to set a precedent based on his own personal yet misguided fears. Years of wrong-headed thinking may have convinced the DA that he is protecting the public. In actuality, he is putting the city of New Orleans at greater risk.”
Cannizzaro ultimately said in a statement WWL-TV obtained that he didn’t seek reelection for his family. “I have proudly devoted the past 42 years of my life to the cause of making New Orleans a safer place to live, work, raise families and visit,” he said. “But after long discussions with my wife and family, it became apparent that my interest in serving another term has waned, outweighed by a desire to spend more time with my family, especially my nine grandchildren born since I first took office. This was not an easy decision, but it is the one with which I’m most at peace."
I’m quite at peace with that decision too, though about two terms too late.