All North Carolina counties are electing their sheriff this year, and most DA offices are also up for grabs across the state. 

Durham County DA Satana Deberry, a progressive seeking a second term, easily won and will be unopposed in November’s general election. Besides pursuing reforms at home, including limiting the use of cash bail and clearing thousands of outstanding court fines and fees, Deberry has represented progressive prosecutors on the national stage. 

“Stop pretending reform is the real threat to public safety,” she testified in front of Congress in March. 

Deberry was responding to GOP critics of reform prosecutors, but that was also the message of her campaign against two primary opponents who criticized her for being lax and pointed to violent crime in the county to make the case for change. (Violent crime declined in Durham in 2021, though homicides rose.) One of Deberry’s two opponents endorsed the other in late April in an effort to consolidate the vote, but Deberry received nearly 80 percent of the primary vote on Tuesday.

But elsewhere in the state, challengers who made similar cases for criminal justice reform lost handily against incumbent DAs in two other Democratic primaries. 

In Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), DA Spencer Merriweather easily defeated defense attorney Tim Emry, who was active in a group that sought to lower incarceration during the pandemic. Emry ran on sentencing reform, vowing to never use “habitual offender” statutes, which drive up prison terms. “I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, no one should do 10 years for stealing your television,” he told Bolts in April.

Merriweather won with roughly 70 percent of the vote, and he too is unopposed in November.

In Wake County (Raleigh), DA Lorrin Freeman prevailed by a tighter margin against challenger Damon Chetson; the campaign was marked by her decision to attack him for his work as a defense attorney. (Freeman will face Republican Jeff Dobson in the fall.)

In the campaign’s final stretch, Chetson focused his efforts on a pledge to never prosecute abortion. If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, as a leaked draft opinion in early May signaled it would, it would be up to DAs to decide whether to bring charges in states that have banned abortion. Freeman declined to specify how she would act if put in this position when asked by the publication Indy Week, unlike many other prosecutors nationwide—and unlike Deberry in neighboring Durham. In a May 3 statement, Deberry pledged not to prosecute abortion, saying, “Criminalizing personal health care decisions around abortion creates untenable choices for women—particularly those experiencing sexual assault and domestic violence—and undermines trust and fairness in our criminal legal system.”

North Carolina does not have a “trigger” law that would immediately criminalize abotion if Roe were to fall like other states do, though many restrictions are in place; the GOP-run legislature would likely pass anti-abortion bills that would be blocked by the Democratic governor’s veto pen, but an open governor’s race looms in 2024 that could upend the status quo.

The incoming DA of Orange County—the third county that makes up North Carolina’s Triangle alongside Durham and Wake—is on Deberry’s side of the issue.

“We cannot stand for this assault on women and private reproductive healthcare decisions,” Jeff Nieman, an assistant DA who easily won the Democratic primary to replace the retiring incumbent, tweeted earlier this month. “Which is why, if elected, I have committed to join more than 60 prosecutors nationwide in this pledge not to prosecute women who obtain abortions nor the health care professionals who perform or assist in these procedures.”

The state’s closest DA primary was in Buncombe County (Asheville), in the western part of the state. As of publication, and with all precincts reporting, Democratic DA Todd Williams was clinging to a lead of just 200 votes against public defender Courtney Booth, who ran on staunchly decarceral platform and criticized the incumbent for betraying his promise of reform. A third candidate, a former prosecutor who took the different tack of faulting Williams for dismissing too many cases, was close behind.

The status quo prevailed beyond DA elections in North Carolina.

Conservatives failed in an unusual primary challenge against Donna Stroud, the Republican chief judge of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the state’s second highest court. They blamed her for not being partisan enough when it came to hiring a new court clerk, and for not ensuring that the job went to a Republican. Even a supreme court justice joined in the right-wing effort to oust her. Still, conservatives have a golden opportunity to entrench their power this fall as they aim to flip the state supreme court to the GOP.

Democratic sheriffs first elected in 2018, during an historic wave for Black candidates in the state, also prevailed today in some of the state’s most populous counties, with one notable exception.

Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller crushed a challenger who ran as part of the “constitutional sheriff” movement, a far-right theory that claims sheriffs have supreme authority. Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden prevailed after a rocky tenure marked by his decision to terminate the county’s contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and by criticism over jail conditions. Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead, who ended his own department’s policy of cooperating with ICE, defeated one of his 2018 rivals.

The major exception in this night of incumbent victories is the sheriff’s race in Wake County. Democratic incumbent Gerald Baker, who drew criticism from reform advocates for slow-walking changes after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, is headed to a primary runoff against challenger Willie Rowe. 

A powerful Republican is waiting on the sidelines: Donnie Harrison, the former Wake County sheriff who lost to Baker in 2018, easily prevailed in tonight’s GOP primary. 

Over his long tenure, Harrison cooperated closely with ICE and partnered with the federal agency’s 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement to act like federal immigration agents within the local jail; Baker quit the program as soon as he came into office, and Rowe has said unequivocally that he would not reinstate the program. (The only Democrat who ran on reinstating the program came in last in the crowded field.) Harrison, by contrast, says he still supports the program and he faults his succesor for releases of undocumented immigrants. 

Whomever wins the Democratic runoff, Tuesday’s results ensure that 287(g) will once again be a major fault line in the general election—and that, come November, Wake County will have one of the nation’s most important electoral showdowns on local immigration policy.

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Merriweather, a Democrat and the county’s first Black DA, has issued numerous news releases on his website touting habitual offense cases since taking office in November 2017. On May 17, he will face criminal defense lawyer Tim Emry, who takes issue with the incumbent’s approach to sentencing, in the Democratic primary for DA of Mecklenburg County, which is home to the city of Charlotte. Emry has vowed to never bring habitual offense charges, saying such sentencing enhancements balloon prisons and  exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal legal system. “They grow overall numbers by keeping people in prison for too long,” Emry told Bolts.

Emry has been an outspoken critic of Merriweather’s use of habitual offense laws, having represented what he estimates to be 300 people facing such charges over his 20 year career. On the campaign trail, Emry tells a story about a man who broke into his brother’s home and stole a television to sell for money to buy drugs. Prosecutors who predated Merriweather’s tenure sought to convict him as a habitual felon, and he was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“My attitude is I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, no one should do 10 years for stealing your television,” Emry told Bolts. “Let’s look at individual harms, let’s look at individual crimes.”

During a virtual debate last month, both the incumbent and challenger positioned themselves as reformers. Merriweather spoke of “continuing to move towards transforming our justice system to one that operates more effectively and more fairly,” while Emry declared, “We need systematic change to remedy this diseased system.” Underneath this shared language, though, the two candidates are split on a range of major issues. 

Emry has been part of Decarcerate Mecklenburg, an advocacy group that has called on public officials like the DA to shrink the county’s troubled jail during the pandemic. He has also criticized Merriweather for his handling of police shootings cases that have rocked the county. At a recent debate, they also disageed on the death penalty, with Emry pledging to never seek it and Merriweather saying he would keep the option open. But it’s their approaches to sentencing and the state’s habitual offender statutes that are setting them apart most starkly.

Before it became a dividing line in this year’s DA race, Mecklenburg County’s use of habitual charging laws has long been the subject of local debate. In 2009, the Charlotte Observer published an analysis showing that reforming the state’s habitual-felon law could save the state nearly $190 million over 5 years in reduced prison costs. The authors credited Mecklenburg County for sending far fewer people to prison on habitual-felon charges than a number of other large jurisdictions around the state. After the story ran, then-DA Peter Gilchrist, a Democrat, wrote a letter to the paper explaining that he had established a new team of four prosecutors to review every case in which someone qualified for habitual-felon charges. “The new team’s primary goal is to increase consistency in the application of the habitual felon law,” Gilchrist wrote. “This office has tried to apply the harsher penalties of that statute only when the defendant is a repeat offender who has committed crimes that impact others in the community, not addicts whose only offenses have been possession of drugs.”

Two years later, Gilchrist’s successor, Republican Andrew Murray, rallied behind aggressive prosecutions of people accused of repeated crimes. At a press conference marking his first 100 days in office, Murray said that he had won 137 habitual sentences. Gilchrist’s office had 78 sentences in that same time period, according to the Observer. “Our resolve is strong,” said Murray, who was years later nominated for a U.S. attorney position by then-President Donald Trump. 

As North Carolina’s prison population grew, legislators in 2011 scaled back sentencing under habitual laws with the passage of the Justice Reinvestment Act. The changes meant that people charged habitually would receive lesser sentences. “The idea generally, was to try to reduce prison populations without compromising community safety and to reinvest the savings,” said Jeffrey Welty, professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina school of government. 

Merriweather, who last year vowed to stop prosecuting most drug possession cases, said that the majority of prosecutions in the habitual felon unit are for violent crimes. “It’s not a situation where we’re seeking enhanced sentences for nickel and dime things,” he told Bolts. 

The vast majority of habitual charges touted on the DA’s website since 2019 involved Black people—85 percent of nearly 100 defendants named press releases about habitual felony unit cases, according to an analysis by Bolts, compared to an overall county population that is 33 percent Black. Merriweather said those press releases aren’t representative of the overall demographics of people facing habitual felony charges; Merriweather also said his office doesn’t track those details.

“We usually try to highlight those folks who have been some of the worst, either repeat or violent offenders in our community,” Merriweather told Bolts. “We work really hard within our office to make sure that those disparities aren’t ones that are created by this office.”

In 2020, a task force made up of judges, law enforcement, public officials, and advocates formed to develop strategies for racial equity in North Carolina’s criminal justice system released a report hailing Merriweather’s office’s approach to habitual cases. The report said that district attorneys across the state should make habitual charging decisions through working groups similar to the process in Mecklenburg County. 

Merriweather says his office currently seeks habitual status indictments for everyone who qualifies. After indictment, prosecutors then discuss whose sentences they actually want to enhance or consider for plea agreements, looking over their case files, talking with alleged victims, and considering mitigating factors provided by defense lawyers. The vast majority of cases in the habitual felon unit end in plea deals that avoid a habitual felony conviction, yet often still result in long prison sentences; Merriweather says that 14 percent of defendants handled by his habitual felony unit are eventually convicted under habitual felony laws and receive enhanced sentencing. 

Merriweather said his office’s screening process has led to at least a 20 percent decrease in habitual sentences each year he’s been in office. “I think that speaks to the thoughtfulness we bring to it,” he said. 

But Emry thinks this is not sufficient. If elected, he says he will disband the office’s habitual felony unit and never seek to indict someone with habitual felony charges.

Even if prosecutors say they apply them thoughtfully, Kristie Puckett-Williams, deputy director for engagement and mobilization at the ACLU of North Carolina, lives under the cloud of  habitual sentencing laws. Puckett-Williams says she was convicted of three felonies stemming from trauma-induced drug use when she was younger. Even though those days are behind her, another conviction, for even a minor crime, could mean a long prison sentence. She says habitual offender laws are part of a larger system that puts immense pressure on defendants to plead guilty to avoid the possibility of steeper punishment at trial. 

“I would say the entire pretrial system itself is something that puts pressure on people to plead guilty,” Puckett-Williams told Bolts. “The pretrial system, coupled with habitual offender laws, puts an ordinate amount of pressure on mostly Black and poor people to take pleas so that they can move through the system more efficiently.” 

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The filing period for candidates to run for prosecutor closed in five states over the past month, adding clarity to the question of where the midterms may shake up the criminal legal system’s status quo. With primaries looming as early as May, criminal justice reformers are pressing their case from North Carolina’s biggest cities to Omaha and the Portland suburbs.

Public defenders and legal aid advocates are running in Arkansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, enlivening proceedings in places like Little Rock and Salem that have not seen a contested election in decades. In North Carolina, where racial justice protests drew thousands into the streets in 2020, challengers are now running on reform promises. And Utah brings the uncommon sight of a Republican reform incumbent who faces a tough-on-crime challenger. 

But away from those fireworks, the filing deadline is more often than not the end of the road for a prosecutor election, as most races only drew one candidate. In Oregon, whose filing deadline passed on Tuesday, just two of 15 DA elections feature multiple contenders. 

The situation is only slightly less desolate in Arkansas and North Carolina, where filing deadlines passed last week. Roughly one-third of their elections will be competitive this year. In each of Nebraska and Utah, the two most populous counties at least will have contested elections. (In Texas, as Bolts reviewed last month, 76 percent of elections are uncontested this year.)

Still, those elections that will be contested offer rare opportunities to confront local injustices. Arkansas, for instance, has a unique law that criminalizes falling behind on rent, empowering local prosecutors who choose to use it. And North Carolina allows children to be prosecuted at an unusually young age, though the state reformed its statutes last year. 

Below is Bolts’s preliminary guide to the prosecutor elections in those five states.

Arkansas

Larry Jegley has been the prosecutor in the state’s most populous judicial district (Perry and Pulaski counties, home to Little Rock) since 1997, and yet he has never faced an opponent—not once, over eight elections. This year Jegley is retiring, and voters will get a choice for the first time in decades. And it may be a historic election: Alicia Walton is running to become the first Black prosecutor in the history of a district whose population is 37 percent Black.

Walton, a public defender, vows to reform what her website calls a “fundamentally flawed” criminal legal system. Her opponent Will Jones is the chief deputy prosecutor in a neighboring district who worked under Jegley for more than a decade. 

Another public defender, Sonia Fonticiella, is running for prosecutor in the eastern part of the state, in a district that covers Clay, Craighead, Crittenden, Greene, Mississippi and Poinsett counties. She will face deputy prosecutors Martin Lilly and Corey Seats. And in Northwest Arkansas (Madison and Washington counties), incumbent Matt Durrett faces Stephen Coger, who says incarceration is too high in the district and that he would change bail and jail practices, though Coger also attacks Durrett for being too lenient toward people accused of higher-level crimes.

The state has five other contested races, all in smaller jurisdictions (twenty districts drew only one candidate). The full list of candidates is available here.

These are nonpartisan elections scheduled for May 24.

Nebraska

Each of Nebraska’s 93 counties will elect its prosecutor this year, but stakes are highest in the only two counties with at least 100,000 residents with a contested election.

Both races pit a Republican incumbent against a Democratic challenger who proposes some reforms in counties that went for Joe Biden in 2020. In Lancaster County (Lincoln), County Attorney Pat Condon faces Adam Morfeld, a former lawmaker who founded the progressive organization Civic Nebraska and helped lead efforts to expand Medicaid in the state.

But the state’s premier battle is in Omaha: Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine switched to the GOP two years ago after the Democratic Party accused him of furthering white supremacy; he had brought no charges against the man who killed James Scurlock, a Black protester. In November, Kleine will face Democratic challenger Dave Pantos, the former director of Legal Aid of Nebraska, whose platform is largely centered on reform themes.

North Carolina

Mecklenburg (Charlotte) and Wake (Raleigh) counties, each jurisdictions of more than one million people, mirror one another this year. 

In each, a Democratic DA is seeking re-election but must face a defense attorney in the May primary. In Charlotte, challenger Tim Emry has been part of the local coalition Decarcerate Mecklenburg, which has sought to reduce jail population during the COVID-19 pandemic; he faces DA Spencer Merriweather. In Raleigh, Demon Cheston, whose criminal defense practice involves capital punishment cases, is challenging DA Lorrin Freeman. Cheston and Emry are each running on progressive platforms that include never seeking the death penalty and accountability for police officers who lie or commit misconduct. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Charlotte and Raleigh drew thousands of protesters who demanded action against racial injustice and more accountability for the police. 

Other populous North Carolina districts are hosting competitive DA elections as well.

In Forsyth County (Winston-Salem), the race will come down to the November general election. In this county that voted for Biden by 14 percentage points, Republican DA Jim O’Neill will face Democrat Denise Hartsfield, a retired judge who is also a former prosecutor and attorney with the Legal Aid Society.

There are also Democratic primaries to watch in Buncombe (Asheville), Durham, and Guilford (Greensboro) counties, though some of the candidates who filed do not appear to be running active campaigns as of publication. In Buncombe, the incumbent faces tough-on-crime attacks from at least one challenger.  In Durham, two defense attorneys filed to run against DA Satana Deberry, who has built a reformer profile, rolling out bail reform and clearing thousands of old fines and fees. Deberry testified in Congress earlier this week on behalf of progressive prosecutors. “Stop pretending reform is the real threat to public safety,” she said.

The North Carolina primaries are on May 17th. The full list of candidates is available here.

Oregon

Even by low national standards, Oregon has a striking problem with democracy when it comes to its DAs. It has long been marred by a pattern of DAs resigning shortly before their terms conclude—with governors filling the resulting vacancies by appointing deputy prosecutors who then get to face voters as incumbents. That dynamic struck again in 2022, though only in one county. What’s more shocking is that only two elections out of 15 drew multiple candidates.

At least both of those races offer voters a real choice on the direction of local criminal justice policy.

Populous Washington County, right next to Portland, features a clear-cut divide between DA Kevin Barton and challenger Brian Decker, a public defender who is active in various reform drives and advocates for investing in programs that fall outside the criminal legal system. Barton is attacking Decker’s views as “dangerous” and holding up neighboring Portland, which is led by a reform-minded DA, as a boogeyman. (Barton’s 2018 election featured a similar contrast, and he won with some ease after an uncommonly expensive campaign.) Further south, in Marion County (Salem), public defender Spencer Todd is challenging DA Paige Clarkson, saying he wants to turn the page of “tough on crime” policies. Marion County has not had a contested DA race since at least the 1990s.

Oregon’s DAs are notoriously active in opposing criminal justice reform legislation, making these elections meaningful for statewide policy as well. However a coalition of three reform DAs formed in the wake of the 2020 elections, with the new DA of Multnomah County (Portland) banding together with those of smaller Deschutes and Wasco counties to defend reform bills. But the group is set to lose one of its three members as Deschutes County DA Jon Hummel is retiring. He will be replaced by Steve Gunnels, a longtime prosecutor who is the only candidate who filed. (The Multnomah and Wasco DAs are not on the ballot this year.) 

Oregon’s DA elections are nonpartisan elections that are scheduled for May 17. The full list of candidates is available here.

Utah

David Leavitt is the rare Republican prosecutor who grabs headlines for championing criminal justice reform. As county attorney of Utah County, he established new diversion programs after he came into office, and last fall he announced he would no longer seek the death penalty. “It simply demonstrates our societal preference for retribution over public safety,” he said of capital punishment in a public release. 

Leavitt’s re-election race will test the GOP’s appetite for such changes. He faces Jeffrey Gray, an assistant Utah solicitor general who touts his ties to law enforcementand promises to bring back the death penalty if elected. 

Over in Salt Lake County, Democratic prosecutor Sim Gill triggered a national furor during the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020, filing gang enhancements against protesters accused of spilling red paint in front of his office, which threatened sentences of up to life in prison (the charges were later amended). Protestors were criticizing Gill’s decision to decline charges against officers who killed 22-year-old Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal earlier that year. But Gill is in relatively good shape in his reelection bid this year; he drew no challenger in the Democratic primary, which can be decisive in this blue-leaning jurisdiction. Republican challenger Danielle Ahn has no campaign website or campaign account as of publication.

Utah only has two other contested prosecutor races: one in Washington County where a GOP incumbent faces a Libertarian challenger, and one in the very sparsely populated Grand County.

The primaries will be held on June 28, followed by the November general elections. The full list of candidates is available here.

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ICE’s prized 287(g) program took a hit last week. Two of the nation’s four largest counties with 287(g) contracts quit the program within days of one another; both are North Carolina counties that encompass more than one million residents each.

Gerald Baker and Garry McFadden promised to curtail cooperation with ICE in their successful bids against the sheriffs of Wake County (Raleigh) and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) this year. And both terminated their counties’ 287(g) contracts shortly after entering office.

The contracts authorize local law enforcement to research the immigration status of people brought to the county jail. Mecklenburg and Wake’s participation led thousands to be deported over the last decade. Its proponents argue that these deportations improve public safety; Wake County’s departing sheriff, Donnie Harrison, described 287(g) as “a valuable tool that has identified some very dangerous individuals.” But Harrison’s participation meant that he was alerting ICE of people who were not yet convicted and who faced minor allegations.

According to Indy Week, one of the last individuals to face deportation in Wake because of 287(g) is a man named Coronilla Loyola who was arrested in November for driving without a license. Harrison’s policies shaped the very circumstances of Loyola’s arrest since Harrison rejected demands by immigrant rights’ activists that he support legislation enabling undocumented people to get driver’s licenses or that he recognize alternative forms of identification.

In addition, Durham County’s new sheriff, Clarence Birkhead, announced that he would stop honoring ICE requests to continue detaining individuals beyond their scheduled release. (Durham was already not part of 287(g).) Birkhead ousted Sheriff Mike Andrews, who defended such detainers, in the Democratic primary in May.

Mecklenburg and Wake’s departures leave four North Carolina counties in the 287(g) program.

One of these four, Henderson County, has a new sheriff who is publicly undecided about whether to remain in 287(g). Lawrence Griffin ousted Sheriff Charlie McDonald in the Republican primary, which took place right after high-profile ICE raids. Griffin expressed ambivalence toward 287(g) during the campaign. “I am going to have to look into [287(g)] in detail,” he told WLOS in May. “We have a lot of folks in this area that have come here looking for a better way of life. They are paramount to the economy of Henderson County as a whole, so I don’t want to use it as a punitive measure to intimidate anyone in the county.” Griffin indicated in November that he was still undecided and he pointed to the current contract’s June 30 expiration as a horizon for his decision. The immigrants’ rights groups Compañeros Inmigrantes de las Montañas en Acción and El Centro have been active in demanding change, and First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hendersonville launched a petition for the county to quit 287(g).

Cabarrus County is yet another 287(g) county with a new sheriff. Cabarrus joined the program in 2008 under the direction of Democratic Sheriff Brad Riley, who retired this year and endorsed Republican Van Shaw, the eventual victor. I found no public statements from Shaw about 287(g), and his office did not answer requests for comment regarding his position toward it.

The sheriffs responsible for 287(g) contracts in the remaining counties are still in office. Both secured new four-year terms in November. In Gaston County, Democratic Sheriff Alan Cloninger joined 287(g) in 2007, and his website boasts of the deportations that the program has enabled. In Nash County, Republican Sheriff Keith Stone joined 287(g) in March of this year. Despite the fact that this county is politically competitive, Stone secured a second term without facing a single opponent in either the primary or general election.

Immigrant rights’ organizers also scored a win in Alamance County, where Sheriff Terry Johnson dropped his application to rejoin the 287(g) program in November. The Obama administration terminated Alamance’s contract in 2012 after a Department of Justice investigation alleged discrimination and racial profiling by Johnson and his deputies.

Groups including Siembra NC and Down Home NC organized numerous protests against Johnson’s bid for a new 287(g) contract this year. Andrew Willis Garces, the organizing coordinator for American Friends Service Committee, the group that launched Siembra NC, told me that this local mobilization was crucial to the sheriff’s decision to back down. “They’ve seen the level of opposition,” he told me. “It’s literally been evident on street corners. That has everything to do with it. This has been an unprecedented year of organizing, with different kinds of people who are not the usual suspects coming out against family separation locally. That is very inspiring.”

However, Johnson is still looking to reinstate a contract to house ICE detainees in exchange for payments. The 287(g) decision “is a victory in the sense that there will not be county employees doing ICE’s job, but there will still be ICE employees nearby,” Garces said of this other potential deal. “It’s still going to undermine public safety.”

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