Colleen McCarty's kind of justice: Putting the criminal first
Colleen McCarty, the long-time Democrat advocate for "criminal justice reform" and "alternatives to incarceration" who is running for Tulsa County District Attorney as a "Republican," used to have a fairly well-followed Twitter (now X) account. While she has deleted her Twitter account, a couple of threads of her tweets have survived thanks to ThreadReaderApp.
In reaction to my article on McCarty's short, progressive, soft-on-crime resume, her supporters have claimed that she can't be blamed for the initiatives she led and the position papers she wrote as Policy Counsel and Deputy Director of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform and as the Founding Executive Director at Oklahoma Appleseed Project for Law and Justice. They claim, implausibly, that these were just jobs, that she might not necessarily agree with the work of those organizations, that she was just following orders from the board.
What a ludicrous apologetic! As a law student, McCarty could have published articles on any number of legal subjects, but she chose to publish articles supporting SQ 780 and 781 and opposing the efforts of District Attorneys to mitigate the damage those sentence-reducing "criminal justice reform" initiatives did to law enforcement in Oklahoma. As a newly minted attorney, a wide range of fields of practice were open to her; she chose to work exclusively for organizations pushing to reduce incarceration rates -- to help criminals avoid the consequences of their crimes.
Any claims that these were merely jobs evaporate in light of what survives of her well-scrubbed social-media history. One of the surviving threads, McCarty's pitch in support of State Question 805, is clearly a heartfelt explanation of her personal motives driving her career and her personal philosophy of crime and punishment.
Below is a Colleen McCarty Twitter thread dated October 17, 2020. SQ 805 was on the November 2020 ballot. It was a constitutional amendment to eliminate sentence enhancements for a convicted criminal's prior crimes. In other words, prosecutors would not be able to seek, and judges and juries would not be able to impose, tougher sentences on repeat offenders. Happily, Oklahoma voters defeated SQ 805, with 61% voting no.
SQ 805 was heavily backed by national left-wing groups like FWD.us and the ACLU, who contributed a combined $6.3 million to its passage, and by local liberal Democrat leaders like former Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor, former Governor Brad Henry, and disgraced former Governor David Walters. Conservative leaders like Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, victims of violence, law enforcement, and prosecutors united to oppose SQ 805.
Former Gov. Frank Keating, writing in opposition to SQ 805, called it "the ultimate gift to the career criminal and the insect crime wave of the lifetime repeat offender." Keating noted that under SQ 805, if you repeatedly commit one of many "very serious and dangerous" criminal acts, such as drunk driving and causing injury, child trafficking, incest, hate crimes, stalking and violation of protective orders, and drug distribution, "a second offense remains a first offense for punishment. No matter how many times you offend. There is no 'enhancement' permitted. 'After Former Conviction of a Felony' will become a useless phrase. A person's selfish and destructive long life of crime will be handled as one first offense after another. The fifteenth offense is the first offense as far as punishment goes.... How many times can a criminal do these? As many as they wish. Each time, they will be treated as a first offender."
In this thread, Colleen McCarty calls for passage of SQ 805, implying, in a statement with racist overtones, that "citizens of color" are more likely to be repeat offenders:
Voting Yes on 805 means doing justice. We are eliminating enhancements on nonviolent crimes which reflects the enhancements systems in other states and brings OK's sentencing into the modern age. To continue to participate and architect a system that perpetuates cycles of harm on citizens of color and low income communities is not doing justice. It is immoral and cruel.
Colleen McCarty reveals what drove her career choices in the thread. Her initial desire to be a prosecutor was "inspired by @adamjohnfoss and his work around restorative justice" and cites an example of putting a thief "on a plan" instead of taking him to trial. "This type of justice was what I was interested in as a legal intern in the DA's office." [According to her LinkedIn profile, McCarty's DA office internships lasted two months in Tulsa County and one month in Wagoner County.]
McCarty's use of the term "justice" is typical of the left. She confuses justice with mercy when she writes, "Sometimes it means convicting, sometimes [i]t means dismissing." Neither convicting, the prerogative of a jury, nor dismissing, the prerogative of a judge, is in the hands of the prosecutor. Justice for a thief is to be convicted and penalized for his crime. She is calling for mercy, to spare a young man from the punishment he deserves for the crime he has committed. Undergirding this whole approach to justice is a failure to understand human nature. It doesn't work -- not even in schools -- because some people have decided to pursue evil.
Let's learn more about Colleen McCarty's inspiration: Adam Foss served 7 years and 9 months as an Assistant District Attorney (ADA) in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, DA's office -- that's in Boston. He gave a TED talk in 2016, "A Prosecutor's Vision for a Better Justice System," that gave him a national profile. In 2017, he founded Prosecutor Impact, described on the University of Oregon's Diversity and Inclusion page as "a non-profit developing training and curriculum for prosecutors to reframe their role in the criminal justice system." (Emphasis added.) A left-wing foundation that gave a $250,000 grant to Prosecutor Impact described the organization:
Adam Foss's experience as an Assistant District Attorney (ADA) in Boston convinced him that prosecutors are the most influential actors in the criminal justice system. One ADA's discretion and decisions can make the difference between a young person being charged with multiple felonies and beginning their adulthood in prison, or being diverted from the system without a criminal record and giving them second chance. By providing ADAs with the training and resources to approach their jobs with compassion, knowledge and creativity, he believes he can make a substantial impact on thousands, if not millions, of lives. Foss founded Prosecutor Impact in 2016 and began to seek partners who would be willing to test a radical new way to prepare ADAs for work. PI's model is very new, but grounded in experience and research and tested on a small scale in other cities. This proposal would support an unprecedented partnership in Philadelphia's District Attorney's office that will allow them to credibly test their eight-week program for incoming prosecutors.
Prosecutor Impact went out of business circa 2020, but its website was captured by the Wayback Machine.
A page called "The Role of the Prosecutor" sets out the strategy of Prosecutor Impact: Expose new ADAs to "those most in contact with the criminal justice system" in order to "inform prosecutors' decision-making at all points in the life of case [sic]". Foss wanted to groom ADAs to resist "pressures from judges, veteran police officers, court clerks, seasoned defense attorneys, and senior colleagues... [that] can wear down the resolve of new prosecutors and leave them feeling unsupported to make the tough decisions we want them to." "Prosecutors are the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system. Because they choose who to charge, what to charge them with, and the number and severity of the charges, prosecutors heavily influence the short and long-term outcomes of the people impacted by the system."
In a nutshell, the vision of criminal justice that inspired Colleen McCarty to go to law school is one in which progressive lawyers infiltrate DA's offices to become prosecutors who choose not to prosecute crimes. It's a vision of criminal justice that puts the criminal's future first. Protecting the public from predators is an afterthought.
McCarty says that her brief exposure to prosecution as a law student intern in the Tulsa County and Wagoner County DA's offices (two months and one month, respectively) convinced her that "it's impossible to 'do justice' in OKs justice system. The system has been written and architected to be unjust and to foster unjust results. One of the main reasons for this is sentence enhancements for any prior felony."
Seeing the Oklahoma District Attorney's Association (ODAA) successfully advocate against banning these prosecutorial tools against career criminals enraged McCarty and turned her against prosecution as a career.
When a task force in 2016 recommended restricting the use of sentence enhancements they put a bill forward to accomplish this. This is essentially the policy in State Question 805. The ODAA fought it and killed it in committee. FOUR TIMES.... Seeing how our elected DAs actively thwart the creation of a just system ultimately [p]ushed me out of choosing prosecution as a profession.
I'm going to guess that Colleen McCarty's publication and advocacy record by that point, her work for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform to commute sentences and here law review articles arguing that DAs should stop finding workarounds to jail repeat offenders and drug pushers, would have made her a less-than-attractive applicant for an ADA position in any Oklahoma DA's office.
Instead, she went to work as an attorney and then Deputy Director for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform and then founded the Oklahoma Appleseed Project, two organizations funded by leftist foundations and actively agitating to make it easier for career criminals to avoid jail or get out of jail earlier than they should, where they can go back to their career of hurting Oklahomans.
If your goal is to radically redefine the work of prosecuting crime, and you can't get hired as an ADA to infiltrate the system, running for DA as a stealth candidate would be the only path to your goal.
Colleen McCarty has been telling us for years exactly what kind of DA she wants to be. Colleen McCarty has been telling us for years that her vision of justice puts the criminal's best interests first. Here's hoping that Tulsa County's Republican voters will have the discernment to see that.
If you're on the home page, click "Continue reading" to see the original Twitter thread cited above, plus the other thread that survived her pre-campaign social media purge, plus a personal statement on the occasion of her promotion to Deputy Director of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform.
Here's the whole Colleen McCarty thread in support of SQ 805, as preserved by ThreadReaderApp:
[THREAD] I went to law school to be a prosecutor. I was attracted to the job because the prosecutor's duty is to "do justice." This is the commonly and dearly held belief in the profession. Doing justice means just what it says. Sometimes it means convicting, sometimes (1/18)It means dismissing. I was inspired by @adamjohnfoss and his work around restorative justice. In his @TEDTalks he discusses being able to put a defendant on a plan instead of taking him to trial for theft. Defendant was a young kid. Due to Adam's redirect as the (2/18)
Prosecutor, the kid repaid all the damage done and ultimately went on to become a doctor. He would never have been able to go to medical school with a felony on his record. This type of justice was what I was interested in as a legal intern in the DA's office. (3/18)
I worked for two different DAs in OK, urban and rural. Truthfully loved everyone I worked with and for. They taught me the law. I will always appreciate them for that. But, what I came to realize is it's impossible to "do justice" in OKs justice system. (4/18)
The system has been written and architected to be unjust and to foster unjust results. One of the main reasons for this is sentence enhancements for any prior felony. Another maxim I heard routinely was "we just follow the law." The idea that they may not like the law (5/18)
But they will follow it. DAs often paint themselves as removed from the law-making process and project an air that their duty is to follow the letter of the law. The whole system hinges on this idea - this is how we decide to charge crimes and apply discretion. (6/18)
The problem is that this idea is false. In OK there is no more powerful lawmaking body than the DA's Council (DAC). This body runs the OK DA's Association (ODAA) who lobbies on their behalf for law changes. This body has never lobbied for reform. They have used their (7/18)
Power and influence to fight reform every step of the way, even lobbying to repeal voter-led change in 2016. They use taxpayer funds to fight the changes the very same taxpayers voted for. This is how "doing justice" is applied OK. (8/18)
The DAC and the ODAA have lobbied to add felonies, make more crimes violent, lengthen sentence ranges, and effectively make the harshest justice system in the world even harsher. They do not lobby for alternatives to prison nor do they put forward any change that would (9/18)
Reduce OK's incarceration crisis. When a task force in 2016 recommended restricting the use of sentence enhancements they put a bill forward to accomplish this. This is essentially the policy in State Question 805 (10/18)
The ODAA fought it and killed it in committee. FOUR TIMES. Running 805 as a bill would have allowed different crimes to be excluded and compromises to be made. Instead it's been killed so many times there is no hope of passing this policy legislatively. (11/18)
Doing justice means creating a just system. It means letting the people create a just system. It means not fighting just reforms. Doing justice is not restricted only to the courtroom. Seeing how our elected DAs actively thwart the creation of a just system ultimately (12/18)
Pushed me out of choosing prosecution as a profession. I believe creating a just system that does not routinely dole out life sentences for low level crimes is the most just work I can ever or will ever do. (13/18)
Voting Yes on 805 means doing justice. We are eliminating enhancements on nonviolent crimes which reflects the enhancements systems in other states and brings OK's sentencing into the modern age. (14/18)
To continue to participate and architect a system that perpetuates cycles of harm on citizens of color and low income communities is not doing justice. It is immoral and cruel. (15/18)
To fight against modest reforms and fear monger their own constituents is in violation of the oath violates their duties as public servants. They swore to utter no falsehoods. They pledged to do justice. (16/18)
We as citizens have the ability to do what our leaders and public servants refuse to do. We can vote to correct decades of overcriminalization and government overreach that has destroyed our state. (17/18)
If our prosecutors refuse to do justice, then we the people will do it for them. (18/18) #yeson805 #massincarceration #criminaljustice #justicereformok
For your convenience, here's a downloadable PDF of Colleen McCarty's October 17, 2020, thread.
In the other thread, dated January 17, 2021, Colleen McCarty complains about proposed legislation that would make it harder to put leftist policies on the ballot. "Since Oklahomans have used the initiative petition process to pass many significant law changes in the last five years (including criminal justice reforms (SQ780/781), Medicaid expansion (SQ802), and medical marijuana (SQ788)) this is something that should concern all of us." (Downloadable PDF. )
MORE: On the occasion of her promotion to Deputy Director of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, Colleen McCarty wrote a personal reflection. She speaks of "the carceral system" and "the overwhelming scale of our state's incarceration crisis." She demands, "It is imperative that we center the voices of BIPOC communities who are over-policed and overrepresented in our legal system." She cheers budget-busting Medicaid expansion.
May 3rd, 2021Re: Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform Deputy Director
Dear Advocates and Stakeholders,
I began my career with Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform in 2018 as a legal intern helping to commute excessive sentences for crimes that are now misdemeanors. The experience opened my eyes to the overwhelming scale of our state's incarceration crisis. I learned injustice is the rule rather than the exception in Oklahoma. As I continued through law school and worked within the justice system, stories of Oklahomans trapped in the carceral system stuck with me.
As Policy Counsel, I have worked with our team, coalition members, and advocates across the state to move legislation that addresses Oklahoma's overreliance on incarceration.
Today I am excited to announce that I have accepted the position of Deputy Director for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform. I am thankful for the opportunity and for the groundwork laid by my predecessor, Clint Castleberry, who will continue his amazing work at the Department of Corrections as the state begins to implement Medicaid Expansion.
We will continue to advocate for Oklahomans caught in the carceral system. We do this by fighting for reform and elevating public safety to the forefront of each conversation. It is imperative that we center the voices of BIPOC communities who are over-policed and overrepresented in our legal system.
I'm excited to see all we can do together. Let's get to work!
Colleen McCarty, Esq.
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