U.S. Attorney Dismissals: How the Numbers Stack Up
Much ado has been made of the recent dismissals of U.S. attorneys from nearly a dozen of the 93 districts in the United States. With varying degrees of subtlety, critics such as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose state has recently lost two of its four U.S. attorneys, have suggested that there were political motivations behind the firings.
The speculation has zeroed in on Carol Lam, the ousted U.S. attorney in California's Southern District, which covers the San Diego area. Lam's office prosecuted Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former House member from California who was jailed for taking bribes, and some say her firing is a form of retribution for that case, which caused major problems for the Republican Party.
To counter those allegations, other lawmakers and Justice officials have cited Lam's prosecutorial record unrelated to Cunningham. As the New York Times reported, Lam "has been criticized by some lawmakers as failing to prosecute immigrant-smuggling and gun cases along California's border with Mexico."
In fact, this type of data–how many cases each prosecutor files each year–is not a secret number locked away in some dusty vault in the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which is compiled by investigative reporter David Burnham out of Syracuse University, collects such data. The numbers for California South strongly suggest that there is truth behind these criticisms, regardless of whether they are the real reason Lam was shown the door.
From fiscal 2003 to 2006 (Lam arrived at the office in late 2002), the total annual number of prosecutions initiated by her office dropped over 20 percent, from 4,375 cases to 3,397. In 2000, before she arrived, the office was prosecuting 5,309 cases a year.
Immigration prosecutions in the district, which includes the porous border between California and Mexico, dropped 36 percent during Lam's tenure. In fiscal 2005, the Border Patrol in the San Diego sector made 126,908 apprehensions.
Of the 10 categories of prosecutions, only two categories saw a rise in prosecutions–narcotics and drugs were up 15 percent, and environmental cases were up 33 percent (from three cases in 2003 to four in 2006).
But let's be fair: In that same period of time, the median prison term resulting from successful prosecutions rose by three months, from 15 to 18, in Southern California. Those same figures are represented in the immigration category. Meanwhile, the prison terms for both government regulation and environmental cases dropped to a median of zero months (meaning that over half of those found guilty got no time at all).
The other ousted U.S. attorney in California, Kevin Ryan in the North District, presided over a 9 percent drop in prosecutions.
Contrast these numbers with a few from the East Arkansas district, where U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was fired last summer in favor of Tim Griffin. The appointment of Griffin, a former Bush aide, has caused many, including the state's two Democratic senators, to cry cronyism.
Since Cummins took office in 2001, prosecutions went up 20 percent while the median sentence remained steady at 27 months. There was clearly a shift of priorities–government regulation, weapons, and immigration cases were way up while the number of white-collar and civil rights cases dropped–so Cummins was clearly busy doing something.
The thicket of pointed fingers is not likely to let up from the infusion of a few data points. But maybe a few numbers will help those fingers point in the right direction.
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