BY ELAINE GOODMAN
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office prosecutes cases brought by local law enforcement at a higher rate in the North County compared to the South County, according to a new auditor’s report that calls the trend concerning.
Attorneys in the DA’s North County office in Palo Alto filed charges in 55.8% of non-specialized cases referred to them in 2022, while the rate at the South County office in Morgan Hill was 38.3%. The non-specialized cases are those not handled by a specialized unit such as the homicide, gangs or sexual assault team.
Those figures could give people the impression that offenders are prosecuted more aggressively in some parts of the county than others, said the report from the management audit division, which reviews county operations for the Board of Supervisors.
“Widely varying rates of issuing (charges) across the county raise the concern that the same crime might be handled differently depending on where in the county it was committed, giving the appearance of a lack of fairness and consistency in prosecution,” the report said.
In addition, the report found that the rate of filing charges varied widely among attorneys in the DA’s office, ranging from 45% to 70% among attorneys who review more than 100 cases.
The supervisors’ Finance and Government Operations Committee is scheduled to discuss the report Wednesday.
The report recommends that the DA’s office create a manual that gives more specifics on when a suspect should be charged with particular offenses. The guidelines should include what evidence is needed and under what circumstances charges shouldn’t be filed.
The DA’s office should then provide training on the manual’s contents, the report said.
In a response letter, District Attorney Jeff Rosen disagreed with the recommendations. He said deputy DAs in his office receive guidance, but ultimately they’re entrusted with deciding whether to file charges and how to handle a case.
Rosen also said the figures in the audit don’t match his office’s statistics on charging rates. That might be because the auditors received redacted information as is legally required, he said.
“The difference in the percentage of cases declined in different offices is not concerning, nor does it suggest that any arrestees are being treated differently,” Rosen said in the letter.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has three locations: a main office in San Jose as well as the North County and South County offices. Attorneys in the main office decided whether to file charges in 13,164 cases in 2022, compared to 2,979 cases in the North County office and 2,018 in the South County office. The charging rate at the main office was 52.1%, close to the 55.8% at the North County office.
The auditor’s report cited several possible reasons for the different charging rates at the North County and South County offices. Crime trends likely differ throughout the county, which includes urban, rural, high-income and low-income areas, the report noted.
And different law enforcement agencies in the county may have different ways of handling cases that they submit to the DA’s office.
The reasons for rejecting cases also varied between the North County and South County offices. In the North County office in 2022, 39% of submitted cases were rejected due to insufficient evidence; 23% were rejected “in the interest of justice”; and in 21% of cases, offenders were sent to diversion programs such as drug treatment. The rest of the cases were rejected for other reasons.
In the South County office, rejections were 50% due to insufficient evidence, 27% in the interest of justice and 8% for diversion programs. The auditor report includes a range of other recommendations for the DA’s office. It says the office needs a more organized system for handling the growing volume of video evidence, such as footage from officers’ body-worn cameras. Rosen agreed with the recommendation.
Another recommendation is for the DA’s office to more frequently replace staff members’ “old, slow, and inefficient computers.” The office received 700 new laptops in October 2023, but nine months later, 250 of those hadn’t been given to staff, the report said. The county’s chief information officer agreed with the recommendation to replace equipment more often.
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