How to throw a Circuit Court judge under the bus…

…without actually throwing a Circuit Court judge under the bus. Shameful.

We’ve got a race for Commonwealth’s Attorney in Halifax County between incumbent interim CA Mike Freshour and challenger Tracy Martin. Freshour is the interim Commonwealth’s Attorney because Kim White ascended into a Circuit Court judgeship (which was highly deserved). Those two candidates are both excellent choices for the job and the race is close to a toss-up at this time.

It’s time in the election season for the community forums (we’ll never have actual debates) where the candidates answer Nick Long’s usual non-controversial questions. If you know how the real court system works, you’ll know that plea bargains are a routine part of the process because actually going to trial is expensive and a giant pain in the ass most of the time. Unfortunately, you’ve got voters who actually believe that the system is just like the TV show “Law & Order” where the prosecutor starts the trial on the half-hour and gets the conviction in 25 minutes. Those same people are ones who believe that plea bargains are travesties of justice (they’re not) and that judges who suspend most of people’s sentences are the fault of the prosecutor (it’s not).

Mike Freshour has trumpeted his 43% increase in criminal charges under his one year of leadership, which seems to imply that the previous leadership (Circuit Court Judge Kim White) sorta um… mailed it in for seven years?

Tracy Martin was quoted by the Gazette-Virginian as saying…

“According to the Virginia Supreme Court statistics of all the cases that went to circuit court in 2012, only eight percent went to trial. That means that 92 percent of the cases in 2012 were noll-prossed which means dropped by the commonwealth or dismissed or pled out. That means the results you see in the paper about suspended time that causes so much dissatisfaction in the county more than likely was agreed to by the commonwealth. It’s too many plea bargains. We lack consistency and fairness. The problem with the idea of increasing charges by 43 percent is that it’s an election year. What were we doing the last seven years? Either it was a woefully inadequate job before or we have an artificial show for the public in an election year.”

I translate that into SouthsideCentral language as “Kim White mailed it in and Mike Freshour went along with it.”

I’m saying shame on both candidates for this line of indirect knife-in-the-back of a damned good Commonwealth’s Attorney who knew exactly what she was doing. Both candidates should have the guts to directly tell the voters that plea bargains are usually the best way to keep the court system moving right along and that there’s not a damned thing wrong with them. If the voters are too stupid to understand that and to have a real knowledge of how the court system actually works, they’re too stupid to vote for either of these two candidates.