Page A4
May 11, 2016
David Rogers, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, speaks out on a new
ACLU Oregon report showing how district attorneys (DAs) in Oregon are rarely challenged at the ballot
box even though they have a powerful role in our criminal justice system and how the subsequent
lack of public engagement in DA races locks in the status quo.
Roadblocks at the Courthouse
said, “There is no recording made
and no one in the room can discuss
another issues that deserves more what happened. DAs can get any
result they want form the grand
attention, Rogers said.
“It is a secretive process,” he jury process but their message to
the public is ‘trust us’. There is no
transparency or accountability.”
Citing the “atrophied democra-
cy” around DA races, he said it’s
no wonder that public has very lit-
tle understanding of how powerful
district attorneys are and the role
they play in the criminal justice
system.
“We rely on elections to ele-
vate public conversations around
important issues,” Rogers said.
“The dynamics around district at-
torney elections and appointments
mean that the voters don’t get to
inluence critical policy concerns
about the direction of our criminal
justice system.”
He said there is some hope be-
cause of a changing political land-
scape and the increase attention to
the positions raised by the ACLU
of Oregon and other advocates.
Local groups like the Portland
NAACP and Albina Ministerial
Alliance Coalition for Justice and
Police Reform have been on the
front lines in the push for crimi-
nal justice reforms, and the Black
Lives Matter movement has raised
the visibility of justice issues na-
tionally and in Portland.
In Chicago, Anita Alvarez, a
hardline prosecutor under serious
criticism or her failure to hold po-
lice accountable for high proile
shootings of young black resi-
dents, got taken out in the prima-
ry, Rogers said, adding that “This
was huge.”
The ACLU of Oregon report
c ontinued froM f ront
also calls for the governor to use
justice reform-minded criteria
when appointing interim district
attorneys. Nearly half of all the
current DAs in the state were ini-
tially appointed to their ofices by
the governor.
Rogers said the appointment pro-
cess lies under the radar and allows
incumbent DAs to recommend their
hand-picked successor to the gover-
nor. Once in ofice, a sitting district
attorney is very like to be reelected,
so competition is scarce.
Ultimately, Oregon’s criminal
justice system is unlikely to be re-
formed without more competitive
district attorney races, guberna-
torial appointments that support
reform-minded candidates, and
increased public engagement with
sitting DAs around critical com-
munity issues, the study inds.
Rogers was named executive
director of the ACLU of Oregon
last June. He has over 20 years of
social justice organizing, advoca-
cy, and organizational develop-
ment experience including eight
years as the executive director of
the Portland-based Partnership for
Safety and Justice.
He also has extensive relation-
ships with Oregon advocacy orga-
nizations rooted in communities
of color and groups working for
gender justice, immigration re-
form, economic and environmen-
tal justice, and was the recipient of
a Charles Bannerman Fellowship
for Organizers of Color from the
New World Foundation.
The full DA Roadblocks to Re-
form report can be found on the
ACLU of Oregon website at ac-
lu-or.org/DAreport.