In Black America; Craig Watkins, Dallas County DA

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is in Black America. But it's also to protect the citizens that I represent, and I saw the fact that we have this mentality of being tough on crime all these years. We weren't protecting our citizens. You know, the crime rate in Dallas County at the time was one of the highest, and we were considered one of the most violent cities. But yet, we had these DAs who campaigned on the fact that they were tough on crime and their conviction rate. But unfortunately, you looked at the statistics, the fact that they were tough, or they had a high conviction rate did nothing to make any of us safer. And so my philosophical approach is more of being proactive instead of reactive. It's easy to react to criminal activity. We react by punishing people.

The honorable Craig Watkins, criminal district attorney, Dallas County, Texas. Watkins is the first African-American district attorney in the state of Texas, began his legal career with the Tarant County District Attorney office as an intern prosecutor, lady accepted a position with the city attorney's office in Dallas, where he worked as a prosecutor. He then accepted a position with the Dallas County Public Defender's office. As an assistant public defendant, he represented low income defendant charge with criminal activities. During his time, he also taught class at Yale Central Junior College and the University of Texas at Arlington. Anagerated in January 2007, Watkins is committed to the concept of doing the right thing. He believes in being smart on crime, this means addressing the underlying issues that causes majority of individuals to commit crimes, including but not limited to the lack of medication, lack of marketable skills and legal substance abuse. Taking the smart on crime approach, also meaning punishing with the purpose of making sure at low level offenders become law-bought in Biblula, take two, abuse.

Taking the smart on crime approach, also means punishing with the purpose of making sure at low level offenders become law-biting productive members of society, and more importantly, doing what he can from a prosecution perspective to ensure that they do not create new victims. I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America and the beginning of our 39th season. On this week's program, Dallas County Criminal District Attorney Craig Watkins and Black America, unfortunately, we found several individuals that have been convicted for crimes that they didn't commit, and going forward with, you know, our conviction integrity unit, not only do we free the innocent, we continue to investigate the case and find out who committed the crime. And so in several of the cases that we've exonerated, we have actually found out who should have been prosecuted for it, and this whole DNA project, this conviction integrity unit, has basically given us the tools to go and lobby our lawmakers for reform.

We can look at a case and determine where the problem was had, what, where do we feel, you know, for example, in 99% of the cases that we've exonerated, the form of, I would just say identification was faulty, you know, the victim would pick the wrong person out. So we have sponsored legislation that will reform how police departments present photo lineups to potential victims so they don't make those mistakes. From 1951 to 1987, the Dallas County Texas District Attorney's Office was a domain of Henry Wade, a legendary prosecutor who personally never lost a case and who rarely missed an opportunity to seek the maximum punishment for criminals. In 2002, Wacom decided to run for district attorney, despite having very little money and no recognition outside of South Dallas, he came within 10,000 votes of winning. Four years later, he tried again, this time he won.

At the time of this production, 19 men unfairly prosecuted and falsely imprisoned have had their Dallas County Texas convictions overturned through DNA technology that was unavailable at the time of their prosecution. Most of them were found guilty because of faulty eyewitness and testimony, but all were not innocent. These were men who lost not just years of their life, but also lost family members, friends, and an opportunity to contribute positively to society, and chances are that all might have remained imprisoned if it had not been for the zealous commitment of Wacom's. Born and raised in South Dallas, Texas, Wacom was educated in the public school system. They received a bachelor of arts degree in political science with the criminal justice minor from Prairie View and M University, hearing his law degree from Texas Wesleyan University Law School in Fort Worth, Texas, and has been a licensed attorney since 1994. Sworn in on January 1st, 2007, Wacom has brought a new attitude in vision to the Dallas County DA office.

Wacom is the first African American elected district attorney in Texas history. The first Democrat elected district attorney in the county's 20 years, and the first Dallas County DA who radically altered the tradition of law and order row of the prosecution. Recently in Black America spoke with Dallas County DA, Craig Wacom's. Lessons learned from the 2002 election. Well, there's a lot of lessons learned. I didn't have the first clue about what it took to campaign, Penn and Uncle, who had been the president of the NAACP here for several years, and so here's pretty much my teacher in terms of how you run a campaign. We made a lot of mistakes, you know, that first go around and we made a lot of mistakes the second go around. But I think largely, you know, the first go around, it was an eye opener to understand that politics really is all local and that if, you know, you have a good message and you have a good presence about yourself and you're well spoken, then it's not that difficult to persuade people to take you seriously.

And I was fortunate enough, I think, when I ran the first time to get a lot of attention. I think largely because, you know, I was the only African-American in the race, so obviously that would get some attention and I was so young. I think what happened, it was one of those kind of timing kind of situations, although I didn't win, it really set me up for the second go around because maybe people really didn't take me seriously the first time, but when they saw that we had gotten so close that first go around, they really took it seriously the second time, which laid the foundation for the win in 2006. Why don't you want to become Dallas's district attorney? You know, I've always wanted to get into politics, obviously. As a lawyer, I felt it would be a great starting point to start with the DA's office, although this is a very large, serious position, you know, I had thought that it was doable. And especially from the first time running, I saw that it could be done. And so at that moment, after running the first time, you know, I had my site set on being

the DA and I don't think there was anything that would have deterred me or changed my mind or no one could have convinced me to run for something else other than the district attorney at Dallas County. And so, you know, I think I just experienced the political side of law enforcement, and I want to be a part of it. And I saw the failures of it up close as a defense attorney. And I just thought that this was a perfect starting point politically for me, because there's so much that could be done in this field, that could improve it, and then you could carry that on to maybe something else in the future. It was a large undertaking, Toby Schick had been a prosecutor for 23, 24 years. He had the legal community behind him. He had raised over $2 million. And he also had the media behind him in his campaign to be the DA. And although it was a close race, I tend to believe that it was really not that close, because he had so many resources available to him if the plane field had been leveled,

and I had those same resources. I don't think it would have been close. In fact, you can look at things as they are today. You know, we're getting ready to go into another term. And you would imagine that I would have an opponent, someone out there actively campaigning raising money, but we don't have one. And so I think that both well for how successful we've been over the last two and a half years. And the fact that the people that we represent really did want change, and we brought that to them. When you come to work, I was lead, there's a different mindset. But what does Martin Luther King, Jr., and Chris Gardner bring to your mind when you step into this office every day? Well, you know, obviously, as a political science major, I studied Martin Luther King very closely, especially when you go to an historically black college, when you study political science, you study the Civil Rights Movement, and Martin King was an integral part of the

Civil Rights Movement. So I know all the history of Martin Luther King and the struggles that he faced just to improve the place that we live, this country that we live in. And so what I gather from him, and this is one of the most difficult things to do as an elected official, as a politician, is to take yourself out of the equation and do what's best for the citizens that you represent. That's very difficult to do sometimes, because as a human being, as a politician, I have my own selfish motivation. You have to really focus on things that are not, that may not be in my own best interest, but that's in the best interest for the folks that I represent. So I got that from Martin Luther King. It's a larger picture, it's larger than me, and whatever, whims that I may want to go with, it's more about the people that I represent. Chris Gartner, on the other hand, is I take from his story as a fact that he was a nobody. He just decided that he wanted to pursue a goal, and he achieved it.

And the same place that I came from, I was what people would consider just an average citizen who decided to run for DA, and was successful at it. And so the story is, I think, that what people can take away from this is that politics is a great equalizer. And I think just living in this country, if you have a dream or a goal, and you pursue it, and you pursue it with vigor, you're more likely to achieve it, no matter what obstacles are in your way. And so that's what I take from, you know, should have happened, as Chris Gartner, and his experience in trying to develop a life for him and his son. People outside of Texas, and so much the inside of Texas, Texas does everything big. You're a pretty big fellow yourself. But obviously you had vision and objective becoming DA, and we're going to get into some of those projects and programs that you've initiated, but tell us about that vision once

you were elected, once you were sworn in. You know, at the time when I was being sworn and I didn't know that, I thought I obviously knew I would be the first for Dallas County, but I had no clue that I was the only elected DA in the state, which is very surprising to me. But I had a vision that was very different than what you would consider a traditional district attorney would have. My vision was more of, you know, if I am going to be elected in this job and part of this job is to seek justice, but it's also to protect the citizens that I represent. And I saw the fact that we had this mentality of being tough on crime all these years. We weren't protecting our citizens, you know, the crime rate in Dallas County at the time was one of the highest. We were considered one of the most violent cities, but yet we had these DAs who campaigned on the fact that they were tough on crime and their conviction rate. But unfortunately, when you looked at the statistics, the fact that they were tough or they had a high conviction rate did nothing to make any of us safer.

And so my philosophical approach is more of being proactive instead of reactive. It's easy to react to criminal activity. We react by punishing people. The proactive stance is let's make sure that we don't have to put people in a position to be punished. Let's make sure crime does not happen. And so that's the philosophy that we bring into the DA's office. And hopefully this philosophy will spread not just throughout, you know, this region, but throughout the country. And as a result of it, I believe that we will be better off if we look more towards preventive measures as opposed to reacting to criminal activity and building more prisons and, you know, carrying that banner of being tough on crime when the results speak for themselves. Ironically, as we were having this discussion today before the legislature there in the process of approving the Tim Cole bill, it has to do with you all's innocence project. Tell us about the project and the Tim Cole act and how this is going to hopefully assist

those that are reentry into the system who have been wrong and convicted. What we do is when we got here, we instituted what's called a conviction integrity unit. And that unit's primary responsibility is to make sure that the convictions that we obtain have integrity, that basically that they're the correct, the correct decision was made. And in that decision making process, you know, you can't go question our motives. Our motives at the end of the day was to see justice. And so we put this unit together and that unit primarily has been responsible for looking at all of these claims of innocence. And unfortunately we found several individuals that have been convicted for crimes that they didn't commit. And going forward with, you know, our conviction integrity unit, not only do we free the innocent, we continue to investigate the case and find out who commit the crime.

And so in several of the cases that we've exonerated, we have actually found out who should have been prosecuted for it. And this whole DNA project, this conviction integrity unit, has basically given us the tools to go and lobby our lawmakers for reform. We can look at a case and determine where the problem was had, what, where do we fill, you know, for example, in 99% of the cases that we've exonerated, the form of eyewitness identification was faulty. You know, the victim would pick the wrong person out. So we have sponsored legislation that will reform how police departments present photo lineups to potential victims so they don't make those mistakes. We've seen, you know, elements of prosecutorial misconduct and if the state had an open file policy and shared all the information with opposing counsel, then it would have been less likely that a person would have been wrongfully convicted.

And so we're advocating for an open file policy. We're advocating for if we do make a mistake, you know, we take in Texas, we take criminal justice very seriously. You know, if you commit a crime here, we're going to punish you and we're going to punish you harshly. And so if we make a mistake, we should be in the same position as we are when we convict someone. We should write that wrong. We should bend over backwards to make sure that that thing is fixed. And so we're advocating for more funds to be paid to these wrongfully incarcerated individuals. You know, I think we're asking that it be increased from 50,000 to 80,000 per year, asking that they get free health care. And they have an opportunity to go to any college in the state that they want. That's fair. And as a Texan, you know, I would imagine that anyone the most conservative person would believe in that. They would believe that, you know, since we are so tough as it relates to criminal activity, when we make a mistake, we need to fix it.

That's just the way we are as Texans. And I believe that, you know, we will see those reforms put in place in this Leslie Obsession, which is very fortunate for us, for me, politically, because just about every piece of legislation that we have sponsored in this session has made it through committee without a naivot. And so that bodes well for the fact that what we're doing here is the right thing. And people believe in it, and it crosses party lines. Has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative Democrat or Republican. Has everything to do with being a Texan and what's best for our state? You also have a program that deals with career criminals. Obviously, these individuals get out and then perpetrate more crimes, go back to prison, get out, and continue this cycle of minutes to society. How are you all dealing with those individuals? You see, that's the proactive side of it, you know. We look at, you know, the issues as to why people commit crimes. And so if we get a person that may commit, you know, for example, a burglary of a vehicle

or even a building, well, that's an opportunity for us to look at this individual and say, you know, it's kind of like going to the doctor, you know, we're going to do a well-bodied checkup and see what else you. And then we're going to prescribe the proper medication to make sure that, you know, you don't have this illness anymore. And so that's what we're trying to implement in the criminal justice system, what caused you to break into that building or break into that car and be it that, you know, you did have any opportunities for employment, you're an educated, or is it that you have some kind of drug problem, whatever that ailment is in the process of punishing you because punishment is part of it. We're going to put, you know, standards of rehabilitation in place to make sure that after you are punished, after we, you know, make you feel the pain, we're also going to make you whole.

So when you come back and live in Dallas County and our community, if you have to go off to prison, right, if you just spend some time in the county jail, when you are released from whatever punishment we give you, you're no longer a threat to society. You're not a criminal anymore. And so what we've had all these years is the fact that, you know, our approach has really made, you know, law enforcement complicit in the increase in crime because we have not put rehabilitative standards in place. We are at fault when we arrest someone, convict them for five years. And then we, you know, look at that individual crazy when he comes back out on the street and commits more crime. We hadn't done anything to prevent it from happening in the future. So the blame lies largely with us when we've had every opportunity to ensure that that individual who may have committed that offense early on has been rehabilitated. And so those are the kinds of approaches we're taking on the local level largely for us to, for this to work, it's going to have to be done really by the state of Texas.

There's only so much we can do on the local level as relates to reentry and, you know, based on programs that we can put people in and drug treatment programs that we can put people in. But on the larger scale for this to work, it just can't be done by one DA. And, you know, even though we're the second largest county in the state, we're going to collectively need all of law enforcement throughout the state to implement these progressive programs for us to make Texas, you know, the model of what it means to dispense criminal justice in this country. If I'm not mistaken, it's $42 a day to house and inmate. The programs you're speaking to are those that are caught up in the system. What do we do to tell young people how to avoid being caught up in the system, to avoid criminal activity? You know, that's, you know, a very interesting point. I think I don't know if it has anything to do with telling them anything. I think it has everything to do with making sure that they're properly educated.

And if they're properly educated, then it's less likely that you will see these individuals come to the system because there's so much that's wrapped up into the educational part of our society. You know, we can look at the fact that, you know, 80-some out percent of the folks that we are incarcerated are not educated. So I think the first step we need to do is to make sure our children are educated. And then it's less likely that we would see them on the other side of the fence committing crimes. And for those few, hopefully, when we get to that point that do find themselves on the wrong side of the law, let's, you know, again, go towards those standards of rehabilitation as opposed to just punishment. Now, you know, some people we can't rehabilitate, you know, they should be in jail forever. But 99 percent of them, we can't. And you know, we're allocating that $42 a day to incarcerate an individual. Just think about that.

That's tax dollars that you pay. You're not getting a return on your investment. And so we need to get a return on our investment. If we're going to spend $42 a day, we can spend that a little bit more wisely. Use the same funds. Just use them differently than what we've used them in the past, where we can use those same funds to put educational facilities in prisons, to put job training, skill opportunities in prison, to provide opportunities for these individuals as opposed to them just going down that working in the field, in the fields, sleeping in our condition buildings. We're not getting a return on our investment. And I say, let's use that $42 a day, that's a lot of money for an individual. And we only use $8 a day for education system. Let's use it a little bit more wisely than we use it in the past and we'll get a return on our investment. Next couple of minutes, what are some of the other programs that you've initiated to protect the citizens of Dallas County? We noticed when we got here, we've kind of changed procedures on, you know, how cases are filed.

We went to a 24 hour intake process whereby police officers can file cases 24-7. And we'll have a prosecutor there to review the case to make sure that, you know, the charge is proper. And also, you know, if we get a person in jail and, you know, we have what's called a bond schedule here in Dallas County. And a lot of times, a bond is not correctly set and so you get the violent offenders who are making these low bonds and right back out on the street. So now we have a prosecutor there 24-7 that can monitor that and make sure that the bonds are adequately set to make sure if this is a violent offender. Hey, you're not. We're going to make sure that you don't get out, you know, we want to make sure you staff our streets to protect the citizens in Dallas County. And we've also looked at, you know, our co-case, they'll have a lot of co-cases. And we stopped police departments from filing cases, what's called at large. You know, they'll file a case not having the defendant in custody.

And at that point, they'll file it with the DA's office and just stop their investigation and won't go out and try to look for the person. And we've seen that cases have sat around for 20 years. What happened? Your division, doesn't it? When they filed it at that large case, it hampers, yes, and it makes, you know, the citizens less safe because what they'll do or what they did was that they will file a case without the person being arrested. The guy's still out there committing crimes and 20 years passes and no one has done anything. And so what we require is that if you're going to bring a case, bring the defendant with you so you can put him in jail so we can continue to adequately prosecute those people instead of waiting 20 years, you know, and we've seen several cases like that. So we've changed a lot of procedural things on how certain things are done just for the betterment of our community to make sure that the burden is just not dropping our lap on a violent case because the police may not be able to continue their investigation.

They can say, well, we filed the case with the DA, but that's not good enough. If we don't have a defendant in custody, we don't have the resources to go out there and find them. That's what police departments are for. And so we put in requirements like that and a little things, you know, also, you know, we advocated for if science, if there is an ability to use proven technology and science to prove a crime did or did not happen, we implement that. We encourage, you know, police departments and law enforcement agencies across our county to use whatever technologies they have at their exposure for the benefit of everyone and so we don't make mistakes and so we can have the necessary, seri resources to go forward with a prosecution for personal community crime. It's what we call a progressive stance, criminal activity. Mr. Walk and the final question, what does the DA of Dallas County do when he's not being the DA of Dallas County?

I have three kids and a wife and so everything, you know, my family revolves really pretty much around me and my schedule, like, you know, I just got in from New York this morning and I'm going to Boston on Thursday and so I'm sure, you know, after the, after the excitement about, you know, this new phenomenon here in Dallas slows down a little bit, I'll have more time to really think about doing other things, but right now it's a 24-7 job. Has the media exposure handed a help? I think, you know, it helps, you know, it helps that the media is interested in what we're doing because we get our message out and it's not very difficult for us to do that because like you are here and somebody will be here tomorrow and I'll, you know, I get interviewed every day and I think the good thing about it is is that, you know, the media has been very responsive to it and they see that it makes sense and they want to report on that and so hopefully we can continue to have that and we can continue to have a positive

effect on the criminal justice system. The honorable Craig Watkins, Dallas County, Texas, criminal district attorney. If you have questions, comments or suggestions ask you future in Black America programs, email us at lowercasejhansen at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for Tech to Co-producer David Averis, I'm John L. Hansen Jr. Thank you for joining us today as we began our 39th season and please join us again next week. The CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712.

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