The race for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s seat has
turned into a contentious battle with both contenders calling into
question the ethics of their opponent.
The race for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s seat has turned into a contentious battle with both contenders calling into question the ethics of their opponent.
This June, voters will decide between incumbent District Attorney Dolores Carr and one of her employees, Deputy District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who has taken a leave of absence from the DA’s Office during his campaign against his boss.
While Carr is running on her record as DA, citing accomplishments in crime prevention, an increase in the accessibility to and efficiency of her office, and greater emphasis on community outreach, Rosen points to “a series of unethical decisions and poor judgments” made by Carr as impetus for a change in leadership.
Rosen, 42, faulted Carr, 56, for eliminating the Office’s Cold Case Unit, getting caught up in a conflict of interest in a homicide case that involved her husband, and boycotting a Superior Court judge.
“I’m running to restore ethics and integrity to the Office of the District Attorney,” Rosen said. “The problem is not the office. It’s the District Attorney.”
In a section titled “Setting the Record Straight” on her website, Carr addressed several of these issues.
The family of a man murdered in May 2008 in a bank parking lot hired Carr’s husband, a retired San Jose police lieutenant, as a consultant in a civil lawsuit against the bank for its failure to maintain safe premises, Carr said.
When police arrested several suspects and brought the criminal case before the DA, Carr informed an assistant DA of her husband’s involvement and removed herself from the case, she said. Shortly after, her office handed the case over to the Attorney General’s Office. Her husband returned the money he had been paid as a consultant and Carr addressed the potential conflict and promised that it wouldn’t happen again in the future.
“I’m not perfect,” Carr said. “But if I make a mistake, I own up to it and I make it right.”
Rosen said the conflict never should have happened in the first place.
In addition, Rosen said he didn’t agree with the “blackballing” of Superior Court Judge Andrea Bryan that’s taken place since the judge freed a convicted child molester in January. Carr defended her move to use a peremptory challenge against Bryan, saying her office lacked faith that the judge would consider cases fairly and that her challenge was preceded by the filing of similar challenges by several of her deputies.
Rosen also criticized Carr for cutting the Cold Case Unit while hiring two public information officers and attaching her name to a billboard campaign against workers’ compensation fraud, instead of just the name of her office.
“My priority is going to be public safety and not my public image,” Rosen said.
Although he lacks Carr’s 30 years of experience, Rosen cited his successful prosecution of 50 child molesters and rapists, his success in almost all of the 65 jury trials he’s tried, and the partnerships he’s cultivated with police officers and the community as some of his greatest accomplishments.
A graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, Rosen has been a prosecutor for 15 years. He is married with two daughters.
His list of endorsers includes the Santa Clara County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, the Santa Clara County Bar Association, several of his colleagues and nods from various elected officials, including retired District Attorney George Kennedy, State Senator Elaine Alquist and two Gilroy city council members – Bob Dillon and Cat Tucker.
Meanwhile, Carr’s list of supporters includes Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, State Senator Abel Maldonado, Gilroy City Councilman Dion Bracco, the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, the Gilroy Police Officers’ Association and many of her employees.
In an effort to steer clear of tit-for-tat politics, Carr said she’s focussing on running a positive campaign. Still, she called Rosen’s ethics into question.
“I have a record and I’m proud of my record,” Carr said. “What my opponent has is the ability to sit on the sidelines and criticize when he’s never done the job or anything close to the job. It’s easy as a challenger to throw stones at an incumbent who has actually done something. His platform is attacking me.”
As DA, Carr manages an $85 million budget and more than 500 people and has worked to rid the office of the “win at all costs” culture that posed ethical dilemmas in the past, she said.
“Voting for my opponent is a return to the old days because he is a part of that culture,” she said.
According to Carr, Rosen was flagged for prosecutorial misconduct and still hasn’t apologized publicly. Rosen responded that his unintended violation of a judge’s order in a sexual assault case by asking a witness a question the judge had forbidden was “harmless” and that even the defense attorney involved in that case, Damon Silver, has endorsed his candidacy.
Carr also said Rosen’s use of victim’s stories in campaign videos on his website was “shameful” and questioned his acceptance of contributions from bail bonds companies.
“I made it a policy not to do that,” she said, adding that “it’s an inherent conflict” to accept money from bail bonds companies and then discuss bail as it’s related to cases.
Rosen said he’s only accepted about $2,000 from bail bonds companies and that, as with any other contribution, the source of the money only creates a problem if the recipient promises a favor in return. While Carr may not have accepted direct contributions from bail bonds companies, a bail bondsman who is now supporting Rosen threw her a fundraiser, Rosen said.
During her tenure as DA, Carr worked to reign in gang violence after the gang homicide rate spiked in San Jose in 2007, she said.
“We’ve been not only aggressive in terms of prosecution but in prevention,” she said. She credited her office’s Parent Project, which aids parents of young adults in keeping them out of gangs and away from other criminal behavior, as a successful tool in combating gang violence.
Bringing accountability back to the office by training supervisors, setting standards and reaching out to the community with the help of two public information officers are other accomplishments, she said.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Carr graduated from Southwestern University School of Law. After returning to the Bay Area in 1981, she clerked at a private practice before being hired as a deputy district attorney. In 2000, Carr was elected as a Superior Court Judge. Six years later, she began her term as Santa Clara County’s first female district attorney. Carr and her husband currently live in Almaden Valley.
