Meck has one of the country’s most understaffed DA offices. Now, NC GOP wants more cuts.
In discussing the impact of a seemingly routine decision by the N.C. Senate last week, Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather wants the public to look beyond a single number.
On Thursday, the Republican-led Senate passed a $26 billion spending plan that would cut one prosecutor from Merriweather’s office, reducing the roster of assistant district attorneys to 84. The trim still leaves Merriweather’s office as the largest in the state.
But the Democratic prosecutor says the loss of even one job is far more damaging because it’s part of a pattern — more than a decade of legislative budget decisions that have steadily depleted the court system and left the Mecklenburg prosecutor’s office as one of the most poorly staffed in the country.
It also comes as Mecklenburg — the only North Carolina county that lost a prosecutor in the Senate’s budget plan — begins to dig out from a yearlong pandemic shutdown of its courthouse that created a backlog of hundreds of major-crime cases.
Meanwhile, Mecklenburg, Wake and other urban court districts around the state are two years into a dramatic uptick in murders, rapes and other violent crimes that shows no signs of easing.
Mecklenburg now has more than 110 homicide defendants awaiting trial, according to Merriweather. The wait to get a murder trial before a jury could reach five years by year’s end, he says. Families seeking justice face agonizingly longer waits, too.
Trial delays also hit taxpayer wallets. According to a spokesperson with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, jailing a inmate for a day costs just under $200, or about $72,000 annually. Fewer prosecutors mean fewer trials and plea agreements, resulting in longer pre-trial jail stays.
“If anyone would use their eyes, they can see that the need here is great,” an emotional Merriweather told the Observer on Monday.
“There is no way I should have to go to a victim and tell them that somebody thinks that you’re going to wait longer because you live in Mecklenburg, and your life is cheaper than one in the other 99 counties.”
The offices of Senate leader Phil Berger, who helped pass the budget, and House Speaker Tim Moore, whose chamber will take up the spending plan in the weeks ahead, did not immediately respond to Observer requests for comment.
But Berger aide Pat Ryan told Axios last week that the decision to cut a prosecutor from Mecklenburg County boiled down to simple math. Under the Senate’s calculations, the combined court district in Anson, Richmond and Scotland counties was one assistant district attorney short. Mecklenburg, as the largest, had one to give, Ryan said.
“Based on those two data points, it was a fairly simple decision,” Ryan said.
State Sen. Danny Britt, a Republican who represents rural Columbus and Robeson counties, said the Senate’s choice involved the haves vs. the have-nots.
Mecklenburg County, he said, had the money to hire additional prosecutors beyond the 58 that the state provides. That’s a luxury many rural counties can’t afford, he said.
“I think the larger context here is that Mecklenburg County is one of the wealthiest in the entire state,” Britt said in a statement to the Observer on Monday.
“By comparison, my district is the poorest and also has the highest rate of violent crime. It comes down to this question: Should state funding help out the rich counties that can take care of themselves, or the poor counties that can’t?”
Merriweather said every N.C. county needs more state money for criminal justice. Currently, the courts receive only 3 percent of the state budget — a level he described as “abysmal.”
Mecklenburg may have the advantage of a county supplement to hire 26 more ADAs, he said, but it also has the state’s largest caseload. Since Republicans took over control of the General Assembly in 2010, the Mecklenburg office has added one prosecutor, despite a population gain in the county of 20 percent.
“The truth is I haven’t met a single prosecutor or judge or public defender that doesn’t need more resources. We all have needs. But we don’t need to be cut,” Merriweather said.
“Why during a period of economic health we are cutting even a single prosecutor doesn’t make sense.”
A time to expand, not cut?
In 2019, Mecklenburg already had fewer prosecutors than almost any county its size in the country, the Observer found.
A county with Mecklenburg’s population — 1.1 million people — ought to have at least 130 prosecutors, according to David LaBahn, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
That’s based on a national average of 12.5 prosecutors per 100,000 residents. Mecklenburg, with 85 prosecutors, has about eight, the lowest among the country’s 50 largest DA offices.
LaBahn told the Observer on Monday that Merriweather’s office is facing a “crisis situation.”
“The current state funding is for 58? It’s appalling, and it’s certainly not respectful to victims and their families or to the accused. How are they going to get a day in court?” he said.
“And to think that they cut rather than added. Given the surge in violence, the state legislature should be expanding the funds for the court system — not just prosecutors but judges and defenders. So nobody has to wait five years to get a case to court.”
The shortage of court personnel carries life-changing consequences.
▪ A recent investigation by The Charlotte Observer and News & Observer found that a shortage of court resources has made it easier for extreme speeders in North Carolina to escape serious consequences and to cause havoc on the state’s highways. Over the past five years, only about 5% of extreme speeders were convicted as originally charged, the newspapers found, and dozens of those who got breaks in court later became involved in fatal crashes.
North Carolina prosecutors often handle hundreds of cases in a single day of traffic court, leaving many of them with no time to check the records of those charged with speeding, the investigation found. Prosecutors said the state’s overwhelmed and underfunded courts would simply grind to a halt if they didn’t offer deals to most people charged with speeding.
▪ The same holds true for felony crimes. A 2019 Observer investigation found that Mecklenburg prosecutors were dismissing nearly 7 of every 10 weapons charges, a higher rate than any other urban county in North Carolina. Former prosecutors told the Observer they had little choice but to plea bargain or dismiss most charges. That’s because prosecutors shoulder heavy caseloads and operate in a state-funded court system that is so overburdened that less than 1 percent of felony cases go to trial.
‘Cockamamie funding formula’
State Rep. Brandon Lofton, D-Mecklenburg, said his county needs every assistant district attorney it can get.
“The decision to cut a prosecutor from the Mecklenburg DA’s office is completely unacceptable,” he said in a Monday email to the Observer. “ Our community’s staffing levels trail similarly-sized counties and have not kept pace with our growth. We must ensure that we adequately fund our courts and justice system to help keep our community safe.
“I am hopeful that we can develop a budget in the House that better invests in our justice system, our schools and our healthcare.”
John Bradford, the county’s lone Republican member of the House, also said he would work to restore the lost prosecutor slot, as did Democrat Nasif Majeed, who accused Senate Republicans of justifying the budget cut with a “cockamamie funding formula that really marginalizes Mecklenburg County.”
Rep. Wesley Harris, another Mecklenburg Democrat, agreed:
“I think it’s atrocious.,” he said. “We have the best financial position our state has ever had. And we’re not funding our justice system ... It’s just preventing justice from being delivered.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
