County’s Money Affects Justice, Officials Told Regional District Attorneys Proposed To Replace Prosecutor In Each County

Equal justice in Idaho may boil down to a matter of money, county officials from across the state were told this week.

Larger counties that can afford it are more likely to pursue prosecution in capital cases than smaller, rural counties with fewer resources and less expertise, said Idaho House Judiciary Chairwoman Celia Gould.

“There’s a basic inequity,” the Buhl Republican said Wednesday at the Idaho Association of Counties meeting in Lewiston.

She suggested the state might consider establishing a regional system of district attorneys instead of each county having its own prosecutor.

Some of Idaho’s 44 counties have only part-time prosecutors, and many prosecutors in less populous counties are inexperienced in capital and other complicated cases, Idaho legislators say. Controversial plea bargains in murder cases in Custer, Valley and Minidoka counties helped spark the latest debate.

North Idaho prosecutors are divided on the idea. Benewah County Prosecutor Rich Christensen, a part-time prosecutor, says it’s time to explore alternatives.

He was faced with retrying an old murder case last year and the intense preparation and trial time were difficult to muster along with keeping his private practice alive.

Poorer counties also are unable to afford experienced attorneys. “This is something I thought about in 1982 when I was in Boise County and I was fresh out of law school,” Christensen said.

He went from being deputy prosecutor to prosecutor in two weeks. “I had no business being the prosecuting attorney,” he said.

Christensen had two law school classmates who also became county prosecutors fresh out of school. One ran in a contested race, and won, before he’d even passed the bar.

“It’s insane that the system allows for that to take place,” Christensen said.

Other North Idaho prosecutors focus on the issues of local control. “Local communities want people elected by them who are responsible to them,” said John Cossel, Shoshone County prosecutor.

If the regional district attorneys were elected, the population centers in a multicounty region would have the votes and likewise would get most of the prosecutor’s resources and attention.

In North Idaho, that would be Kootenai County “and I don’t think Shoshone County, Benewah, Bonner or Boundary counties would be very happy about that,” Cossel said.

Plus, “I would hate to see Benewah or Shoshone County cops having to file to Kootenai County to file a complaint,” he said.

The proposal also misses the fact that county prosecutors give legal advice to elected officials as well as prosecuting criminals. Because neighboring counties might have competing legal interests, each county probably would have to hire attorneys to give that legal advice, increasing costs for the counties, Cossel said.

The argument that smaller or more rural counties can’t prosecute murder cases doesn’t wash with Bonner County Prosecutor Tevis Hull. “I don’t think rural counties operate in a vacuum anymore,” he said.

“We have the resources of the attorney general, the Kootenai County prosecutor’s office and the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association.”

He agrees, however, that salaries and benefits for prosecutors and deputy prosecutors are a significant problem. “It’s very hard to entice young attorneys to stay as prosecuting attorneys because there is no money in it,” Hull said.

Most will work two or three years in a county prosecutor’s office and move on to the bigger bucks in private practice.

Even if all of the problems weren’t there, replacing county prosecutors with district attorneys would require a constitutional amendment, said Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas.

While the district attorney proposal is not popular with everyone, House Judiciary Chairwoman Gould said there are a lot of other ideas to explore.

“Maybe it’s time,” she said, “that we look at how we fund all of the judicial system.”

Staff writer Ken Olsen contributed to this report.