Page 9 - Delaware Lawyer - Spring 2022

vision means focusing our resources and discretion on criminally prose- cuting the most serious crimes, while diverting those individuals accused of less serious offenses to the services or treatment more likely to address the underlying cause of their behavior.
I kept a photograph of Elon and his five-month-old son on my desk as I worked to undo the rushed prosecu- tion that put him in prison. His story is all too familiar: a Black man pulled over without reasonable suspicion, then a rush to judgment. As I learned more about the case upon taking of- fice, it was clear there had not been a proper investigation or prosecutorial
review. Instead, Elon was offered a plea deal with a reduced sentence in exchange for the prosecutor agreeing to forgo charges carrying a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence. With his young son in mind, Elon did what many in his position do — he took the plea. If there had been a proper review of the case, including a critical examination of the officer’s vehicle camera footage, it would have been clear the officer made a bad stop. But instead of recognizing this and evolving the treatment of Elon’s case in response, the team that preceded mine steamed forward to push him to plead guilty.
There are thousands of people estimated to be wrongly convicted in this country, and the average sentence of those who have been exonerated is more than eight years.
Reforming the Prosecutorial Approach
Understanding how stories like Elon’s happen is the key to unravel- ing the tangled mess that is our jus- tice system. As a federal prosecutor, I handled white-collar crimes while working in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Tax Division and Consumer Protection Branch, but I wanted to do more. I could see the inequities handed down to people of lesser means, people of color, and those who could use a hand to help them along instead of a hand to slap them down. I could see the ways in which this inequitable system made
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