Prosecutor Candidate Robert Triozzi Responds to Questions on Controversial Procedures
This is a big election, and it comes at an important time. County reform is a little over a year old, and many changes have been instituted by newly elected County Executive Ed FitzGerald and the new County Council. But the reform process that has transformed Cuyahoga County didn’t affect the Prosecutor’s Office, until this election.
On Tuesday, March 6, Cuyahoga County voters will choose between five candidates for the position of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor: Subodh Chandra, Stephanie Hall, James McDonnell, Tim McGinty and Robert Triozzi. Each week, we asked a different set of questions:
WEEK THREE:
Please use a maximum of 700 words total to answer the following three questions:
* What is your position on “open discovery?”
* What is your position on “stacking” indictments?
* What is your position on using “jailhouse snitches?”
Definitions
* Open Discovery is the prosecutor sharing all information discovered during an investigation, no matter which direction that information points in, guilt or innocence.
* Stacking Indictments is when a person gets caught with say a rock of crack in their pocket while driving and the car, the cell phone, the money in their possession all become separate cases … now four instead of one. Three will be dismissed if the person agrees to the plea bargain.
* Jailhouse Snitches: If police believe someone is guilty and have no proof, they will place a paid snitch in the cell with the suspect, with the understanding the snitch will come out the next day and say the suspect admitted the crime to them overnight. They’ll take the witness stand and tell the same story. In some cases professional snitches used to be given a “license” to commit crimes, such as selling drugs, so the police don’t have to pay them out of their funds. Also known as a “get out of jail card.”
Prosecutor Candidate Triozzi responds:
The correct measure of success for the County Prosecutor’s Office is the extent to which the policies, programs and decisions made in that office impact crime reduction in the community. It is not simply a contest to demonstrate a high conviction rate. Successful law enforcement and criminal prosecution is fundamentally about building strong cases and accurately holding people accountable for the criminal acts they actually commit.
The underlying thrust of three questions here are examples of strategies used when there has been a failure to construct and develop strong cases for prosecution in the first place. With good investigatory work and solid case building, open discovery ought to be a strong prosecutorial tool to demonstrate the strength of the case and the futility of taking a case to trial. Similarly, with the emphasis on the front end on solid investigation and case development, stacking become superfluous and use of jailhouse snitches and deal-making, the purest act of prosecutorial desperation, is banished from any rational consideration. The strength of the case speaks for itself. That is how you hold people accountable. That is how you gain the public’s confidence and that is how you are able to increase the impact on crime reduction in the community.
Simply saying that you oppose these long-abused prosecutorial strategies is not enough. The system needs to be reformed in fundamental ways to ensure that the justifications for these weak and suspect strategies become irrelevant.
To reform the current system, the County Prosecutor’s Office must develop new ways to support law-enforcement strategies across the County. I have proposed a new model of prosecution, called vertical prosecution, which has had great success nationally. In this new model individual prosecutors work with law-enforcement on the investigatory end to help build a case and then that same prosecutor is responsible for handling that case throughout the court process. This stops the current habit of simply passing along weak cases from prosecutor to prosecutor with no one being held accountable for ensuring the case is strong enough to ultimately sustain a conviction. Any prosecutor who needs to withhold discovery, rely on stacking, or desperately needs to cut a deal with a jailhouse informant will ultimately be held accountable for moving the case into the system in the first place. If you are the responsible for trying the case, the decisions you make on the front end will be sharper, more thorough, and more effective.
We will also organize around areas of particular expertise in order to develop more effective prosecutorial strategies and develop closer connections with law-enforcement and victims. For instance, I will implement a Sex Crimes Unit, a Public Corruption Unit, and expand the Economic Crimes Unit with the idea that these specialized units assist more effectively in case building. I will also implement an intelligence-driven prosecution/crimes strategies unit that specifically targets priority offenders that impacts not only charging decisions about all decisions relevant to that case.
I will also employ a county-stat review process that will keep track of and evaluate decision making at all levels. We will also make training and development a more central component to ensure my team is constantly sharpening and expanding their skills to ensure just results without any use or dependency on weak and questionable prosecutorial tactics whatsoever.
Remember, this is a leadership position. I am the one candidate in this race to not only with a strong vision of what this office needs to become, I am the one candidate with the experience and the leadership, management, and organizational skills to get the reforms accomplished. Throughout my career I have earned the respect of my colleagues and community partners for my leadership skills in many justice system reform efforts: drug court, mental health court, the domestic violence docket, the truancy docket, the specialized municipal domestic violence and sex crimes unit, the use of deadly force protocol. This is our moment to bring reform to the County Prosecutor’s Office. It starts with embracing open discovery and building a new system that strengthens cases and eliminates the dependence on weak prosecutorial strategies like stacking and jailhouse informants.
Click here to read the Prosecutor Candidates’ responses to ALL of Cool Cleveland’s questions.