Cape & Islands District Attorney Candidates Needed to Fight Justice System Inequities
Cape & Islands District Attorney Candidates Needed to Fight Justice System Inequities
The Issue
District Attorneys are the most powerful people in the US criminal justice system, a system which has undeniably impacted the lives of people of color disproportionately. District Attorneys decide when to prosecute and when not to, who gets charged with a crime and what the charges will be, how the plea bargaining will go, whether or not to request bail, and even make sentencing recommendations. As such, they exert a palpable impact in their jurisdictions.
We the people of Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket counties strongly support the need for a District Attorney who will work with his/her community to eradicate all vestiges of racism and racial inequities from our local justice system. We believe that the current District Attorney, Michael O’Keefe, who is currently in his 5th term of office, has demonstrated racial biases against people of color as evidenced below, and we urge you, as the Board of the Cape and Islands Democratic Council to assign the highest priority to finding and fully supporting a challenger for the District Attorney race of 2022.
We offer the following information as ample cause for concern of racial inequity in practice by the current Cape and Islands DA’s office:
According to the Vera Institute (which studies incarceration trends by county and by race) not only do black inmates consistently outnumber white inmates for both Barnstable and Dukes counties, black inmates exceed the Massachusetts statewide averages in both cases.1
MassInc has produced a report which looks at racial disparities in bail and pre-trial detention. In a snapshot from 2015, black residents comprised just 2.4% of Barnstable County but 24.7% of the individuals charged and detained, and median bail amounts were set significantly higher for blacks compared to whites. Significantly, their data showed that racial disparities in Barnstable were the worst of any Massachusetts jurisdiction.2
In 2016, the Boston Globe made a public records request for prosecution records from all 11 district attorney’s offices in Massachusetts. DA O’Keefe, along with 2 other DAs refused to comply prompting Attorney General Maura Healy to file a lawsuit to release the records. In 2018, a Superior Court judge ruled in her favor but O’Keefe appealed the ruling in 2019. 3
In addition to the troubling lack of transparency shown by his refusal to release prosecution records, DA O’Keefe authored an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe that drew attention for its racist overtones, particularly his reference to “a culture that celebrates disrespectful language and misogyny under the guise of art.” 4
He was quickly rebuked by many across the Commonwealth, including a former public defender, Suffolk County DA Rachel Rollins and CourtWatch. 5,6,7,8
Before racism can be eliminated, it first must be openly faced. Without more than one candidate for Cape & Islands District Attorney in 2022, we will not be able to have the public debate necessary to improve racial equity in the application of the law in our district. We therefore urge you to prioritize the search for a candidate in your action plan.
1. Barnstable County: http://trends.vera.org/rates/barnstable-county-ma Dukes County: http://trends.vera.org/rates/dukes-county-ma
(Follow the links above, click race/ethnicity, and check the boxes for black and white to see comparative trends. You can also click compare, and see how these compare to statewide averages.)
2. https://massinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bail.brief_.3.pdf
8. https://radiopublic.com/the-young-jurks-G4bmN7/s1!19539
The Issue
District Attorneys are the most powerful people in the US criminal justice system, a system which has undeniably impacted the lives of people of color disproportionately. District Attorneys decide when to prosecute and when not to, who gets charged with a crime and what the charges will be, how the plea bargaining will go, whether or not to request bail, and even make sentencing recommendations. As such, they exert a palpable impact in their jurisdictions.
We the people of Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket counties strongly support the need for a District Attorney who will work with his/her community to eradicate all vestiges of racism and racial inequities from our local justice system. We believe that the current District Attorney, Michael O’Keefe, who is currently in his 5th term of office, has demonstrated racial biases against people of color as evidenced below, and we urge you, as the Board of the Cape and Islands Democratic Council to assign the highest priority to finding and fully supporting a challenger for the District Attorney race of 2022.
We offer the following information as ample cause for concern of racial inequity in practice by the current Cape and Islands DA’s office:
According to the Vera Institute (which studies incarceration trends by county and by race) not only do black inmates consistently outnumber white inmates for both Barnstable and Dukes counties, black inmates exceed the Massachusetts statewide averages in both cases.1
MassInc has produced a report which looks at racial disparities in bail and pre-trial detention. In a snapshot from 2015, black residents comprised just 2.4% of Barnstable County but 24.7% of the individuals charged and detained, and median bail amounts were set significantly higher for blacks compared to whites. Significantly, their data showed that racial disparities in Barnstable were the worst of any Massachusetts jurisdiction.2
In 2016, the Boston Globe made a public records request for prosecution records from all 11 district attorney’s offices in Massachusetts. DA O’Keefe, along with 2 other DAs refused to comply prompting Attorney General Maura Healy to file a lawsuit to release the records. In 2018, a Superior Court judge ruled in her favor but O’Keefe appealed the ruling in 2019. 3
In addition to the troubling lack of transparency shown by his refusal to release prosecution records, DA O’Keefe authored an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe that drew attention for its racist overtones, particularly his reference to “a culture that celebrates disrespectful language and misogyny under the guise of art.” 4
He was quickly rebuked by many across the Commonwealth, including a former public defender, Suffolk County DA Rachel Rollins and CourtWatch. 5,6,7,8
Before racism can be eliminated, it first must be openly faced. Without more than one candidate for Cape & Islands District Attorney in 2022, we will not be able to have the public debate necessary to improve racial equity in the application of the law in our district. We therefore urge you to prioritize the search for a candidate in your action plan.
1. Barnstable County: http://trends.vera.org/rates/barnstable-county-ma Dukes County: http://trends.vera.org/rates/dukes-county-ma
(Follow the links above, click race/ethnicity, and check the boxes for black and white to see comparative trends. You can also click compare, and see how these compare to statewide averages.)
2. https://massinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bail.brief_.3.pdf
8. https://radiopublic.com/the-young-jurks-G4bmN7/s1!19539
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Petition created on August 14, 2020