June 1, 2006

Times Election 2006

District Attorney candidates name their top five priorities

Crime prevention, ethics, juveniles, sex offenders and office morale top the list

By Daniel DeBolt
Staff writer

When Almaden residents enter the voting booth June 6 and look for their favorite candidate for District Attorney on the ballot, that candidate might just be a neighbor.

Deputy District Attorney Jim Shore, Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller and Judge Dolores Carr all live in Almaden Valley, while Karyn Sinunu lives in the Rose Garden area of San Jose.

Each of the candidates were asked what their top five priorities would be if elected to replace George Kennedy as District Attorney. A top issue for each is addressing ethical problems, as well as doing community outreach and recruiting good staff.

Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller
“I have tried more cases, as far as criminal cases, than anyone else in the race,” Buller said.

Buller said he also has more management experience than the other candidates, except for Sinunu.

Marc Buller

Throughout Buller’s career, juvenile justice has been a top priority, something he shares in common with candidate Shore.

“I continue to work with schools, law enforcement and nonprofits on juvenile justice. It is detrimental to any system if your DA doesn’t have knowledge in that area,” Buller said.

For Buller, the number-one priority of the next DA is community outreach.

“I think we do an excellent job of doing our business at First and Hedding,” Buller said, but community outreach needs to be improved. “As public servants we need to respond and react to the community.”

Buller helped create curriculum for the San Jose Unified School District to educate students on justice and fairness by incorporating these lessons into social studies and history. A few thousand students a year participate and there are field trips and mock trials that the students learn from. Community outreach and crime prevention can go hand and hand, he said.

The second priority for Buller is to take more people out of the court process and put them into mediation. Buller cited neighborhood disputes and domestic violence as an example. These are disputes where the problem often goes deeper than somewhat impersonal crimes, he said.

Technology is Buller’s third priority. The use of technology is an excellent tool, not just for the courts but for the whole system to share electronic records and information across the Internet to every person involved in the process from the police to the defense attorneys.

“So everyone knows what is going on in the entire jurisdiction to resolve crime,” he said.

Doing a “360-degree evaluation” of how staff feels about management and vice versa is Buller’s fourth priority. An evaluation can get staff “on the same page so we can all strive for the same goal,” he said. Two of his main goals are increasing productivity and improving morale.

“I think it’s important to understand, regardless of who wins (the race), how management and staff feel,” Buller said. “The management should have a good understanding of that.”

Last but not least, Buller said “staffing wise, we need to make sure we have a diverse staff. It needs to reflect the diversity in our county.”

But the top priority, Buller said, is “the solemn obligation for the DA to pursue justice for every person who lives in the county. To make sure public safety is tantamount for the people in the valley, to make sure we have the most confident and ethical lawyers, not only in the county, but in the country.”

Even though Buller is the only Latino in the race, he was not invited to the mayoral and DA forum on police accountability and community safety in late May, attended largely by Latinos.

Buller was told that he and Shore weren’t invited because there simply wasn’t enough time in the forum to have that many candidates on stage.

But if Buller were there he would have said this about police accountability: “I think every individual should be held accountable, as we do everyone. It is important to investigate and be responsive to anyone in the community and understand where they are coming from and to respond accordingly.”

At the forum many were angry about the failure of the DA to prosecute police and provide open hearings. But Buller said the office has done well.

“I think we’ve done a pretty good job in the cases that were brought to us,” he said.

Among Buller’s endorsements are County Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, former County Sheriff Charles Gillingham and Franklin McKinley Superintendent Larry Aceves.

Buller has been a resident of Almaden since 1965.

“I think it’s a great community for families,” Buller said. The Leland High Alumni says he is happy to be raising his teenagers, ages 13 and 16, in the same place he grew up.

Judge Dolores Carr
The Santa Clara County Bar association has endorsed Carr for DA.

Carr has been the supervising judge of the family superior court for three years, managing two courthouses and 125 people. She is responsible for a clerk’s office, facilitator’s office, self-help clinic, the restraining order desk and security as well as the division’s budget concerns. It had a reputation for being a difficult division to work in, she said, but after she had managed the division for several years it became one of the smoothest running divisions in the county court system. Carr won several awards for making the court accessible to families.

Delores Carr

Some of Carr’s opponents like to say they have more management experience, but Carr claims it’s not about how much experience you have, but the quality of your work.

“I think all of us have various degrees (of management experience),” Carr said. “I have among the most effective management experience. Being in the position is different from doing the job effectively. It’s about who has the best track record.

“If I am elected district attorney my priorities really are the following: the district attorney needs to set the business or management plan for the office and make sure everyone understands the mission, which is to seek truth and justice and balance public safety with fairness,” she said.

Carr said she would seek input from all staff before setting expectations in the office.

The second priority is rebuilding trust and confidence in the office following the series that was critical of the district attorney’s office culture and ethical practices. This would entail working with the general community as well as criminal defense lawyers to make sure the office deals with their concerns.

Balancing resources effectively is the third priority. This would mean addressing which attorneys are working on what kinds of cases.

“Is the way the office is operating on a day-to-day basis the most efficient?” Carr wants to know. “As the new DA I would be looking at all of the jobs to make sure resources are allocated appropriately.”

A fourth priority is community outreach, meeting with community agencies and creating an ombudsman position for someone who the community can come to with concerns. The ombudsman position is something Carr said she is willing to commit to.

“Many community agencies have their pulse on what is going on in their communities,” Carr said.

Carr also wants to increase the number of lawyers from various ethnic communities to make sure the office reflects the diversity of San Jose.

Carr, married with children, has lived in Almaden Valley for 15 years after moving to the area from Santa Clara.
“We love Almaden Valley,” said Carr, who is married to San Jose Police Lt. John Carr. “We raised our children here. We have never seen any reason to leave, it’s a wonderful community.”

Deputy District Attorney Jim Shore
Without a doubt, Jim Shore’s first priority is protecting children “from abuse, sexual assault and child exploitation.”

“I don’t want to make Santa Clara County safer, I actually want to make it safe,” Shore said. “I want to make it a place where “parents can allow their kids to walk to school or play in the park without fear—that doesn’t occur today. We may be safer than some places in some respects, but we are not safe. I want kids to be able to be kids again.”

Jim Shore

Shore wants to make sure everything is done to prevent crime and end the cycle that affects communities when people spend their lives in and out of jail.

“Those effects are felt throughout our communities and on everyone,” Shore said. “I’m tired of sending juveniles into juvenile hall only to come out more sophisticated (criminals). I want to sentence those kids to finish high school or learn computer skills to face the ever-competitive world we live in. We need to keep kids in school, that’s crucial.”

Shore said he’s spent a lot of time working on juvenile justice. For three years he led a team of police and sheriffs on the east side that helped reduce juvenile crime by 45 percent. He said he is the only candidate who has won an award for that kind of work. Shore has also served on the juvenile justice advisory commission under Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

His third priority is to make sure the office continues to be tough on crime so people who commit violent crimes are dealt with effectively. But the office also needs to be “smart on crime,” he said. As president of The California Prosecutors Association, Shore said he fought to get Megan’s law online. Now Shore said he is the only candidate that has come out in support of Jessica’s law, which would toughen up penalties for child molestation and require molesters to wear GPS devices after release so authorities can track them.

“We know that sex offenders suffer from an untreatable pathology,” Shore said. “We need to do everything to protect ourselves and our communities and to use the technology created here in Silicon Valley.”

In light of the allegations made in a Mercury News series, Shore is calling for priority number four.

“I’ve called for an independent ethics review,” he said. “Outside people would come into the office to look at policies and procedures to makes sure we are prosecuting for the right reasons, then we’ll publish the findings so the public would know on a yearly basis how we are doing. I think that is very, very important in maintaining the trust the community should have in our government. Too often the public’s trust is shaken, so having outside experts come in is the best way to achieve that.”

Shore’s fifth priority entails a “wholesale management audit.”

“I’m a big proponent of using taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently,” he said. “I also want to publish that management audit for the public so they can judge our performance at any given time.”

Shore admits that more openness doesn’t fix problems by itself, but before solutions can be made “we have to diagnose the problems first,” he said.

A “modernization of management” is also required at the DA’s office, Shore said. On top of hiring the best staff and equipping them with the best technology, Shore wants to have regular performance reviews for each attorney as well as a full time training officer.

The DA’s office has come under fire for having a “win at all costs” culture, which Shore addressed.

“For almost 20 years now I don’t think there has been anyone in this office that sets out to prosecute an innocent person,” he said. “But what’s occurred unfortunately, especially with our younger attorneys, is they see the way to get promoted is to win. I want to make sure that perception is eradicated completely. The mission is not to win cases but to do justice for the people of Santa Clara County. The person at the top needs to set the tone and reinforce it every single day.”

Shore said he is the only candidate endorsed by the Crime Victims United of California.

“I will continue to make sure that victim’s rights are upheld and victim’s voices are never silenced,” Shore said.
Shore has lived in Almaden almost fourteen years and has four children.

“We’ve been very active in this community and I intend for it to stay that way,” Shore said. “My wife is a long-term member of the Almaden Valley Women’s club. We both helped with the Almaden Valley Counseling Service. I’ve coached soccer and been active in the elementary and high schools trying to raise money so our kids have some of the things the state doesn’t provide anymore, like music, sports and technology.”

Karyn Sinunu
Sinunu has a long list of endorsements, of which her favorites are Congresswomen Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo and the local NAACP. The current DA, George Kennedy, said Sinunu is the best qualified of the candidates, Sinunu said.

Her number-one priority is to protect the citizens of Santa Clara County, with an emphasis on violent crime.

Karyn Sinunu

Number two is to be mindful of the rich diversity of the county and create a District Attorney Advisory board so she can meet with members of the community every quarter to have a dialogue. If citizens are worried about problems such as increases in domestic violence, graffiti, real estate or elder fraud they can come to the board with concerns. Outreach efforts could help people understand the role of the DA’s office, she said.

For priority number three, Sinunu is very interested in further diversifying the office, building on what George Kennedy has already done over the past few years. That staff includes paralegals, investigators and attorneys.
“I want to continue our work in preventative programs including our juvenile outreach, drug abuse, consumer fraud, child abuse, and family violence programs,” Sinunu said, for her next priority.

Sinunu said the department just merged child abuse and family violence into one unit.

“Children who witness violence are more likely to be violent,” she said. “In the area of juvenile delinquency we are very well partnered with non profits in the community. I want to continue that.”

And finally, “I want to have an ethics and training officer work in the office and with the police department,” she said.

This would entail one dedicated deputy district attorney whose sole job is to be an ethics adviser and give regular legal updates to the deputy DAs and to the police for training. Newsletters would go to police as they do in Alameda County, every week with new updates on things such as search and seizure law, “things important for police to know since they are doing the arrests,” she said. The newsletters could also include issues of cultural competency, as officers have been criticized for how they have dealt with communities of color in the past.

Sinunu said a good example was one brought up at a recent candidate forum. Drivers from Ethiopia have been taught that you get out of the car when pulled over by the police, but that is something that could get them in trouble here.

Sinunu also said she would be very proactive in white-collar crime and “continue to make that a top priority.”

Sinunu who is divorced, has two children and two grandchildren and lives in the Rose Garden area of San Jose.

Front-runners embroiled in controversy
If you read the Mercury News or the Metro, you might have two totally different opinions on Sinunu and Carr.

Carr’s past has been questioned in the Mercury News. Working in the DA’s office, she took on a case in 1991 against a man who was eventually found to be innocent by Sinunu, who ordered the case to be dropped. The evidence against the man, Dr. Daniel Lucas, was reported to be obviously lacking, though Carr pursued his prosecution and continued to stand by her actions in the March article.

At a recent forum on police accountability, Sinunu said Carr was married to a police officer and that Carr said in a closed hearing that it’s the DA’s job to back the police. Carr denied that accusation, but said she is married to a police officer. The next day Sinunu said Carr’s statement was that the role of the DA is to back “police arrests.”

Following the Mercury News’ endorsement of Sinunu for mayor, the Metro wrote about an investigation going on in the DA’s office that could implicate Sinunu in a case of obstruction of justice. According to the article a prominent defense attorney was caught by authorities in 1997 buying over a pound of cocaine and the prosecuting attorney assigned to the case never brought it to trial. Sinunu was reportedly the prosecuting attorney’s supervisor.

The Mercury News has chosen not to report on the investigation. The Metro has endorsed Shore for DA.

Sinunu declined to comment but said she was not the target of the investigation. Although her opponent, Buller, claims that their boss, George Kennedy, is no longer endorsing Sinunu, to date Kennedy has not publicly retracted his endorsement.