AURORA | District Attorney-elect George Brauchler said he plans to review pending cases where 18th Judicial District prosecutors have sought to file “habitual offender” charges, but his primary focus will be on changing the way the designation is used going forward.
During the campaign, Brauchler said he supports the designation in some cases, but argued that current District Attorney Carol Chambers’ administration had sought it too often.
Once he takes over in January, Brauchler said he will likely use the designation less frequently in new cases, but will also take a look at cases where Chambers’ prosecutors have sought the designation. If his staff sees a case where maybe the designation wasn’t warranted, Brauchler said that case could get a second look.
“I think that I would leave the door open to discussions about anything that hasn’t yet been resolved,” he said.
But, Brauchler said, his primary focus with regard to habitual criminals will be how to use the designation in future cases.
“What I’d rather do is focus on what I have to deal with at the moment and moving forward in the future,” he said.
It’s not immediately clear how many defendants in the judicial district have pending cases where prosecutors have said they plan to seek the designation. A spokesman for Chambers did not return an email seeking comment this week.
In recent years, Chambers’ office has sought to tag defendants as “habitual offenders” about 250 times each year. That’s a small portion of the more than 4,000 cases the DA’s office typically deals with, but up from about 50 habitual tags prosecutors sought before Chambers took over in 2004.
Throughout his campaign, Brauchler had argued Chambers’ office used the habitual offender designation too often. During Chambers’ administration, prosecutors in the 18th Judicial District have sought the designation more than prosecutors in the state’s other 22 judicial districts combined.
Brauchler said the designation, which often means sentences up to four times as long as a typical sentence, makes it difficult for prosecutors to work out plea agreements.
Chambers has argued for years that the designation is important because criminals with lengthy felony records pose a greater threat and should face harsher punishments.
Brauchler, however, argued that the designation was overused and that there wasn’t a correlation between Chambers’ aggressive use of the designation and a drop in crime.
The policy moving forward will be to look at every case where the habitual offender tag is applicable, and decide on a case-by-case basis, he said.
“We are just not going to have as a policy automatically doing anything,” he said.
During the general election, Brauchler and his Democratic opponent Ethan Feldman largely agreed when it came to the habitual designation, with both candidates vowing to use it less frequently that Chambers has and instead saying they would give prosecutors more leeway in plea negotiations.
But during the Republican primary last spring, the issue provided a contrast between Brauchler and his opponent, Leslie Hansen. Hansen, who is one of Chambers’ top deputies and was seen by many as Chambers’ likely successor before Brauchler beat her in the primary, defended the use of the designation.
Brauchler said he it was difficult to say if his criticism of the aggressive use of the designation during the primary helped sway voters.
“I don’t think there was any one particular thing,” he said.
Arguing against harsher punishments for some repeat offenders was a tough sell for Republican primary voters, but Brauchler said when he framed it in fiscal terms — essentially arguing that the cost of locking people up longer wasn’t resulting in a more dramatic drop in crime than in other jurisdictions — he won some voters to his side.