About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

105 Iowa L. Rev. 1537 (2019-2020)
Picking Prosecutors

handle is hein.journals/ilr105 and id is 1577 raw text is: Picking Prosecutors Carissa Byrne Hessick & Michael Morse- ABSTRACT: The conventional academic wisdom is that prosecutor elections are little more than empty exercises. Using a new, national survey of local prosecutor elections-the first of its kind-this Article offers a more complete account of the legal and empirical landscape. It confirms that incumbents are rarely contested and almost always win. But it moves beyond extant work to consider the nature of local political conflict, including how often local prosecutors face any contestation or any degree of competition. It also demonstrates a significant difference in the degree of incumbent entrenchment based on time in office. Most importantly, it reveals a stark divide between rural and urban prosecution. Urban areas are more likely to hold a contested election than rural areas. Rural areas, in which very few lawyers live, rarely hold contested elections and sometimes are not able to field even a single candidate for a prosecutor election. The results suggest that the nascent movement to use prosecutor elections as a source of criminal justice reform may have success, at least in the short term. But elections are, as of now, not a likely source of reform in rural areas-the very areas where incarceration rates continue to rise. I. INTRO DU CTIO N ........................................................................... 1538 II. METHODS OF PROSECUTORIAL SELECTION ................................ 1548 III. PROSECUTORIAL ELECTION IN THE STATES ................................ 1557 Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland Buck Ransdell,Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project, University of North Carolina School of Law. .. Ashford Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard University. J.D., Yale Law School. This manuscript greatly benefitted from the comments of Shima Baradaran Baughman, Jack Chin, Beth Colgan, Don Dripps, Cynthia Godsoe, Russell Gold, Bruce Green, Eve Hanan, IreneJoe, PeterJoy, Sam Kamin, Anders Kaye, Richard Leo, Ben Levin, Kate Levine, Cortney Lollar,Justin Marceau, Marc Meredith,Janet Moore,Justin Murray, Lauren Ouizel, Ellen Podgor, Anna Roberts, Addie Rolnick, Rebecca Roiphe, Maybell Romero, Jessica Roth, Jocelyn Simonson, David Schleicher, Anne Traum, and Ron Wright. This research was made possible by a generous gift from the Vital Projects Fund, Inc. The data to reproduce this analysis is available at: Carissa Hessick & Michael Morse, Local Prosecutor Elections, 202-2017, DATAVERSE, https:// dataverse.unc.edu/dataset xhtml?persistentld=doi: 10. 15139/S3/.I14LC [https://perma.cc/56 MIE-8SC4]. 1537

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most