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- 1:22pm — June 30, 2022
a smarter Tucson is a better Tucson
While Jonathan Mosher has been on the job, the Pima County Attorney's Office headed by Barbara LaWall has consistently resisted meaningful criminal justice reform, exacerbating the mass incarceration that exists in this state. ... Read more»
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4 comments on this story
We need an AG who is willing to make the tough calls, whether that’s to indict a standing governor for mass murder resulting from abdication of duty or to press first degree murder charges against murderous officers of the law or root out police conspiracies to wrongfully deprive people of their Universal Human Rights.
Are you brave enough, are you smart enough, are you intelligent enough, are you tough enough to face down these demons and prevail?
My name is Steve Neely. I was hired by Bill Schafer as a Deputy County Attorney in 1968. I was Pima County Attorney from 1976-1996. I dont know any of the candidates, although I was introduced to Mr. Mosher in passing some years ago.
For more than 50 years criminal defense lawyers have tried off and on to take over the County Attorney’s Office. Their aim has not been to promote public safety by conscientious prosecution. This year is just the latest effort, but the song never changes - “victimless crimes and non-violent offenders” are filling our prisons. It was nonsense then and it’s nonsense now. Mandatory sentences apply to violent and/or repetitive offenders and drug dealers. Judges rarely if ever sentence anyone else to prison.
As for prosecuting drug cases, well Pima County is virtually a border county. There are lots of drug cases. The police can’t ignore them and neither can the County Attorney if the oath of office means anything. The good news is they can be handled expediently through plea bargaining with few resources expended on individual cases, but they should be handled, not ignored. I have never heard of a prosecutor’s office de-emphasizing prosecution of violent and repetitive crimes to pursue piddling drug cases and I doubt that Laura Conover and her surrogates have either.
Let’s look at accountability and “independent prosecutors” to review police misconduct. Seriously? Elected County Attorneys are accountable to their constituents. Who is an “independent” prosecutor accountable to? Really! Does “independent” not mean what it has always meant?
Being County Attorney used to be about enforcing the law with the best interests of the community in mind with scrupulous honesty and managing a budget of tens of millions and hundreds of employees many of whom are lawyers. Hopefully it still is, not about sloganeering, spinning statistics and amateurish solutions.
There are reasons Arizona has the highest incarceration rate of any state in a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world: the County Attorneys in Maricopa and Pima.
Sentencing people to decades in prison should be extremely rare. 40,000 people in prison is about 35,000 too many.
Way past time for changes in these two offices.
Jonathon Mosher was a registered Republican in Coconino County. He was brought to Tucson by Barbara LaWall to protect the sordid secrets of corruption and misconduct occurring throughout the 40 years under the Neely/Lawall dynasty.
Neely wrote a response to your recent piece on the county attorney election in which he supported Mosher. Here’s a question: Why would a man who went to New Zealand just long enough to allow the statute of limitations to expire care about who becomes Pima County Attorney? Just sayin’