The State's Attorney's Office

On this episode of Tony Talks Charles County Crime, State's Attorney Tony Covington breaks down the mission and work of the State's Attorney's Office.

Included in this episode:

02:54 - State's Attorney's Role
03:38 - Funding for the State's Attorney's Office (SAO)
04:38 - Holding Wrong-Doers Accountable
05:04 - Mission of the SAO
05:46 - Role of the Prosecutor
07:48 - SAO Units and Their Duties
13:10 - Victim Witness Assistance Unit and Victims
14:39 - Role of Prosecutors, Cont.
18:13 - Filing Criminal Charges
20:06 - Dropping Criminal Charges


Website: https://bit.ly/2FEFilB
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Twitter: https://bit.ly/2FwRaHn

Transcript

Tony Covington: 0:15

Hello, welcome to the official podcast of the Charles County State's Attorney's Office. I'm your State's Attorney, Tony Covington. I'm also your host for these podcasts. I really appreciate you tuning in. Now before I get into today's topic, let me give you an idea of what to expect from the Tony Talks Charles County Crime podcast episodes. We will be dealing with the many issues surrounding crime in our community and how we as a community can overcome those challenges to make a safer tomorrow for all of us. Some of the topics we will cover during our season are domestic violence, drunk driving, sexual assaults and child sexual abuse, the CSI effect and the list goes on and on. But whatever the topic is, please understand that we will be focusing on solutions to these problems. Whenever possible, I'll be joined by guest who can add insight to the topic under discussion, and more importantly can help provide solutions to the problem itself. Trust me, each podcast will be productive. We won't be flapping our lips just because we like to hear ourselves talk. Now lastly, I plan to end each episode by answering questions that the public has sent into us. After all, I am a public servant and a big part of my job is to keep the public informed on the issues the public wants to know about. So that's a general overview of what you can expect from our podcast series. I'll be right back after this message.

Kandes Carter: 1:40

The State's Attorney's Office is back again with another tour of our Think About It presentation. Tony Covington, your State's Attorney, goes out to Charles County schools and presents Think About It, an interactive presentation packed with real life scenarios, life quizzes and more. With Think About It, students are taught how to make the best decisions for living a successful life. Last year, over 3000 students countywide witnessed the presentation and appreciated Think About It's tagline,"Your choice. Your consequence. Your future." For more information, please contact us through our website, www.ccsao.us/ThinkAboutIt. Thank you for listening. Now back to the Tony Talks Charles County Crime podcast.

Tony Covington: 2:31

And now I'm back. In today's podcast, I'm going to introduce you to the State's Attorney's Office, our job, our organization, manpower, and our mission. I'm also going to spend some time on why prosecutors are the most important individuals in the criminal justice system and at the end of today's session, as promised, I'll answer a couple of questions from the public. So here we go. Our mission: as a State's Attorney for Charles County, I'm responsible for prosecuting every crime in the county. For you Law and Order fans out there, I'm the DA. I'm an elected official and must run for election every four years. Since I had no opponent in this year's election, I will be sworn in as your State's Attorney on January 7, 2019 to begin my third term in office. It's important for you to know that the State's Attorney's Office is an independent agency. Being elected State's Attorney means I have no boss, not the county commissioners, all the way up to the president of the United States. None of them can order me to do anything regarding the operation of my office. The only people I answer to are the voters of Charles County. Collectively, you are my boss. Now having said that, I am quick to point out that all of our funding comes from the county. Every year, like other independent agencies in the county, I make a request for funding to the county commissioners. Because, as you know, the county commissioners decide how our tax dollars are spent. In a televised public hearing before the commissioners, I justify and argue for the resources I've determined the State's Attorney's Office needs to get the job done. The county commissioners then decide how big a slice of the county's pie we get and just so you know, our piece of the pie is pretty small. It's less than one percent of the entire county budget. And you know, it dawned on me very quickly when I first took office in 2011, that the most important thing I can do for my office is not to try cases. Securing adequate resources is far more important than my participation in any one case. Enough funding so we can make our prosecutorial decisions based on the facts and not whether we have enough money to fully litigate a case. I have to secure enough funding to complete our mission. With the funding we are given, it is the State's Attorney's Office's responsibility to hold wrongdoers, from murderers to jaywalkers, accountable for the crimes they commit. Holding people accountable means that the wrongdoer, they either plead guilty to the crime or if he's unwilling to do so, we convince a judge or a jury to find him guilty after fair trial. That is our day to day job. Our mission, however, is more expansive than that. We have a saying that the State's Attorney's Office's mission has the twofold aim of protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. It is our mission to promote peace in our community. We do so by seeking justice in each and every criminal case. Without justice, there can be no peace and justice can only be sought through the ethical and evenhanded enforcement of the laws. If the public perceives unfair practices in law enforcement, that justice is not being done, that people were being railroaded or, conversely, that so called privileged people are not being brought to justice, then confidence in the system erodes and eventually people will take matters into their own hands. That of course is the absolute opposite of the peace we're trying to promote. You know, many say that prosecutors are the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, more powerful than the police and judges. I tend to agree with that assessment and I feel the weight of that responsibility every single day. Prosecutors are so powerful for a simple reason: We have the final word on who is or is not going to have their freedom placed in jeopardy because going to jail is a consequence for most crimes. In my mind, I picture the prosecutor as a guy standing by this huge machine. The machine is the criminal justice system. Prosecutor is standing there with his hand over the on/off switch. As each case comes by, he has to decide whether to turn the machine on or turn it off. On when a person needs to be held accountable or off when someone has been accused or arrested, but the prosecutor determines that the criminal justice system just does not need to be involved. That simple yet complicated decision to flip that switch one way or the other is made in every single case and that single decision has huge life-altering consequences for the people involved, both defendants and victims. Let's look at a prosecutor's importance in practical terms. The police can arrest people all day long, but if that prosecutor turns the switch off, meaning he decides to dismiss the case, that arrest doesn't mean much. That person will never be held accountable for whatever the police thought he did. Likewise, judges don't get to sentence anybody, meaning hold someone accountable, unless that prosecutor decided to turn the switch on and the case is fully prosecuted. That decision making, that power is what we call prosecutorial discretion, and it's an awesome responsibility. The life altering decisions we as prosecutors make must be made ethically and by prosecutors that value justice more than they do convicting people just because the police arrested them. Rest assured that my office is going to always try to do the right thing. We will always do our best to protect this county and promote peace by protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. That is our mission. So who are we and how are we set up to fulfill that mission? My office employs approximately 50 people, about 40 percent of the office are attorneys. The remaining 60 percent are support staff. Our support staff consists of legal secretaries, administrative assistants, and investigators. Generally speaking, the support staff in varying ways helps the attorneys prepare for trial because the courtroom is where the rubber meets the road in our world. Everything we do is designed to make sure attorneys are fully prepared to litigate cases in court. Our support staff personnel are spread out over five units. We have District Court and Circuit Court and Juvenile Court units, an Administrative Unit, and a Victim Witness Assistance Unit. Let me talk a little bit about each of them. First, we'll talk about the units that you are probably most familiar with: the District, Circuit, and Juvenile Court units. The legal secretaries in these three units have similar but not identical duties. Overall, our legal secretaries gather all the evidence and information an attorney will need to prosecute a case. That's a huge undertaking. There are police reports, lab reports, photos, videos, medical records, criminal records, MVA records, and I could go on and on. There are literally dozens of places we may need to get records and evidence from. And we don't just gather these records. We also have the ethical and legal obligation to provide them to a defendant. That providing of records is called discovery in Maryland's court system. The criminal justice system does not believe in what we call trial by ambush. The system makes sure that a defendant is aware of all the evidence and witnesses that the State will use to prosecute him or her. This discovery process is very time consuming, but critically important. If the State fails to fully disclose information to a defendant, cases can be dismissed or critical evidence may be excluded from a trial resulting in a guilty person not being convicted. So the legal secretaries in our district, circuit, and juvenile sections are critical to our mission. What type of cases do these three units handle? District Court Unit, for the most part, handle misdemeanor cases. For instance, shoplifting, simple assaults, destruction of property. Now, some felony cases can be and are prosecuted in District Court. For instance, if the value of the property stolen in a theft case is over a certain amount, the crime is considered a felony, but can still be handled in the District Court. The case load coming through the District Court is about seven times higher than the Circuit Court. Defendants do not get jury trials in District Court, only a trial before judge. Because there are no jury trials, the dockets go by very quickly. One District Court courtroom may handle up to 60 or 70 cases in a single day. If you're thinking of the District Court as the People's Court or Judge Judy, you have the right idea, except we're only dealing with criminal cases. Now the case volume in Circuit Court is much less than that of District Court, but that's because the Circuit Court handles all of the serious felonies committed in the county- murder, rape, robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, drug dealing- those serious felonies. Now it takes much longer for cases to make their way through the Circuit Court because the cases are more complicated and defendants, as I said, are entitled to trial by jury. They're more witnesses, more evidence, and the stakes are much higher. So, while our Circuit Court folks may have fewer cases, the workload is just as heavy as it is in the District Court. We also have a Juvenile Court Unit. Anybody that is under 18 years of age and is charged with a crime is for the most part handled in juvenile court. I say for the most part because certain crimes committed by a juvenile must be, as a matter of law, charged in adult court. For instance, if a 15 or 16 year old is charged with murder, he would be charged as an adult and the case will be handled in Circuit Court, not Juvenile Court. Now our juvenile support staff have really, really short turnaround times because litigation scheduled in Juvenile Court is much shorter than adult court. Juvenile Court in general is very different from adult court, but that's a whole other podcast that I promise you I will do another day. Let's move on to our fourth of five units. The Administrative Unit. This unit is critical to making the office run. The handle scheduling of cases, which may sound easy, but is anything but, also the unit makes sure all of our systems stay up and run properly. And just so you know, from an administrative viewpoint, our office is fairly technologically advanced compared to most prosecutors' offices, so our Admin. Unit is very important to keeping the office workload flowing. The Administration Unit also coordinates our grand jury effort. Now the grand jury, which I'm sure you've heard of, is not a part of the State's Attorney's Office. It's a judicial body that decides whether someone is indicted for a crime. Our Administrative Unit makes sure we are prepared to present evidence and provide proposed indictments to the grand jury. Within our Admin. Unit, we also have two investigators. They assist our attorneys. Our investigators do not take the place of the police investigating cases. If for some reason the police cannot or will not investigate a case, then I may task my investigators with looking into it, but that's a rare occasion. Our investigators are here to assist the attorneys as they prepare for and try cases. Their experience as retired police officers is quite beneficial in that regard. Now, our last unit, the Victim Witness Assistance Unit deals directly with the public more than any other unit we have. As you probably know, criminal justice system is not, I repeat, not set up to make things easy on victims. Courts don't really care about victims' work schedules or time. Victims don't really have a definitive say with the court. In short, it's just no fun being a victim of a crime and then having to endure the process that is set up to seek justice for you. But anyone out there who is a victim of crime, please, I'm begging you, have patience. Defendants do everything they can to drag out the process. It's a ploy. They do so hoping that you, other witnesses, and even the system will just get tired and quit. Please, please don't quit. My office won't, and our Victim Witness Assistance Unit is there to make things a little bit easier for you. They're going to do so by guiding you through the process. The Victim Witness Assistance Unit makes sure victims understand their rights to be informed about every stage of the case and make sure they are in fact informed. They also help victims get restitution if they're entitled to it. And our victim/witness counselors will physically sit through proceedings with victims to make sure they fully understand what's going on and to lend emotional support to our victims and their families. They also refer families to professionals that can help them and their families through the very tough times they are enduring. Our Victim Witness Assistance Unit has really been a godsend to victims and witnesses here in Charles County. So those are our five support units and they support our attorneys. Let's talk about our attorneys and their job. I'm sure everyone is familiar with what prosecutors do during trial. What you may not fully appreciate, though, is what a huge production a single trial is. Even your simplest misdemeanor requires a lot of coordination with victims, witnesses, police, etc. And all that discovery material I talked about earlier, who do you think has to review all of that and ensure everything that is supposed to be given to the defense is in fact provided? Yeah, you're right, the attorneys. Attorneys also assist the police in making some investigative decisions. For instance, anytime an officer needs to apply for or obtain a search warrant from a judge, the officers first submit that search warrant to one of us for review and that can happen anytime day or night because of course, crime occurs anytime day or night. I've been awakened countless times at o dark 30 in the morning- that's what we used to say when I was in the Air Force- to review warrants or provide the police advice on an ongoing investigation. Attorneys have to put together their trials. We don't just walk into court and start calling witnesses. No, it's much more like putting together a play except with real people. We're talking about real events and the purpose of this play is to layout all the evidence to a judge or jury to demonstrate a defendant's guilt. Prior to trial, attorneys have to interview witnesses, victims, figuring out what they know and what they can contribute to the trial. Attorneys prepare unique PowerPoint presentations to help explain the evidence to the jury. We prepare questions to ask of witnesses and prepare cross examination questions to ask defense witnesses. So in the final analysis, ladies and gentlemen, trying a case is a huge undertaking and guess what? Our attorneys have to do much more than just try cases. There are other proceedings We deal with besides trial. These are time consuming and complicated as well. We have to prepare for and conduct bond or bail reviews, sentencings, post convictions, violations of probation, etc. And on top of that, we have to make sure everything we do in court is somehow documented. We document things in our files, you know, depending on the case, the case notes can look like a book. It's just a whole lot of work. Believe me, though a government job, being a prosecutor is no laid back, nine to five. It takes a special person with special talents and incredible dedication to the cause of justice. Fortunately, here in Charles County, we have a great team of attorneys as well as support staff that are dedicated to that mission. In a nutshell, that is your state's attorney's office. Now as promised, I want to answer a couple of questions for you. First, let me take a quick break.

Kristen Schulz: 17:13

Be on the lookout for future Tony Talks Charles County Crime episodes. Coming up on future episodes, Tony talks with Jill Short, a domestic violence advocate who will talk about how people end up in abusive relationships, why they stay in those relationships, and how they can free themselves from their abuser. In another episode, Tony talks about the plague of drunk driving deaths and what we need to do to stop this epidemic that nationwide kills more than 10,000 people every year. Please tune in. You'll be surprised what you hear.

Tony Covington: 17:53

Okay, we're back. I hope you do listen to other episodes. There's going to be a lot in there that you're going to like. Now to those two questions and answers that I promised you. First, how does one go about filing criminal charges against someone? And the second question, which is the flip side of the same coin, how does one go about dropping charges against somebody? First, filing charges against a person is very simple in Maryland. The most common way is to call the police when someone has committed a crime. The police will come out, investigate and eventually charge someone. Now, some of you may have had the very frustrating experience of the police coming out, investigating, and then telling you they won't be filing any charges against anybody. In that situation, everybody has the right to go down to the District Court Commissioners. Now, not the Board of County Commissioners, but the District Court Commissioners Office in the courthouse. And you have the right to go down there and make an application for criminal charges against the person that committed the crime. While at the District Court Commissioners, you'll fill out paperwork, under oath I should point out, which includes the facts of what happened. The District Court Commissioner would review the facts and decide if evidence exists of a crime. If so, the commissioner will file charges. I should also point out that a person need not call the police first before going to the commissioner's office. You can go to the commissioner's office whether the police were called out or not. If you do apply for charges and charges are filed, the commissioners will direct you to my office. You'll meet with one of my attorneys to review the matter. You see, since my office has to prosecute every case, we have the last and final word as to whether charges should be filed, what the charges should be, and whether we will go forward with those cases. Lastly, if you've gone to the police and the commissioners and you got no satisfaction regarding the charges, you can always come to my office. Again, one of our attorneys will meet with you and determine whether your case should be prosecuted. Okay, so you have three ways to file charges: go to the police, go to the District Court Commissioners, or come to my office, the State's Attorney's Office. Just remember, the State's Attorney's Office has to decide to go forward on the case, no matter how the case begins. Now to the second question, charges have been filed and you want to know how to drop the charges. How do I make them go away? This is very simple too. You'd come to my office, meet with somebody in my Victim Witness Assistance Unit, and fill out a request to dismiss form, which includes why you want to drop the charges. Make sure you bring some form of ID so we know that you are in fact the victim in the case. Only the victim can make this request. Our Victim Witness Assistance Unit person will take your request to dismiss form, take all that information, and one of our attorneys will then review the entire case and decide whether the case will go forward. Please understand, that just because you have made the request, there is absolutely no guarantee that my office will decide to drop the charges. It is our decision, not yours. Why? Let me take the time to explain it to you. In our society, we believe criminal charges are not merely between the two people involved. The thought process is that if someone commits these criminal acts against one person, they may be a danger to any person in the community, so the thinking goes, the community, not the individual, must guard against this wrongdoer. The way I kind of look at that thinking is that sometimes people cannot or will not protect themselves, so the State has to protect them whether they like it or not. It sounds a little bit condescending, but that's just how we look at it in our society. Child abuse charges are a perfect example of this situation. Also, domestic violence cases between adults are another example. All too often an abused partner calls the police and the abuser is charged, but for all sorts of reasons that we won't go into today, the victim later wants to drop charges. We obviously will listen to what that victim has to say about why the charges shouldn't go forward, but my motto is that people should be held accountable for their crimes, nothing more and nothing less. So, depending on the facts of the case, we may or may not decide to drop the case. I don't want to discourage anyone from asking us to drop charges, but please remember, we're going to be guided by the facts of the case. If the evidence exists, we most likely are going to go forward, but whatever we decide, please know that our eyes are always focused on justice and every decision we make is designed to achieve justice in each and every case. And with that, we're at the end of this first episode. I really thank you for listening and I hope I provided some useful information to you. As I sign off, I'll copy what my airborne infantry army officer father would say, Carry on. Covington out.