photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Dakota Loomis, Tonda Hill and incumbent Suzanne Valdez appear at a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP on Saturday, June 29, 2024, at Watkins Museum of History.

District Attorney Suzanne Valdez passionately defended her administration at a candidate forum Saturday, denouncing “haters” who have criticized her, while her two opponents in the Democratic primary laid out reform strategies that they said would better serve Douglas County.

“The Douglas County community, no matter the haters in this room, is a model for criminal justice reform across the country,” Valdez insisted, while her opponents — Dakota Loomis, a local defense attorney and Baldwin City prosecutor, and Tonda Hill, a Lawrence resident and prosecutor in Wyandotte County — critiqued Valdez’s record, sometimes indirectly and sometimes head on.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

District Attorney Suzanne Valdez appears at a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP on Saturday, June 29, 2024, at Watkins Museum of History.

The standing-room-only forum, moderated by NAACP President Ursula Minor at Watkins Museum of History, was hosted by the Lawrence NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Lawrence and Douglas County.

For nearly an hour the three candidates took turns answering questions they had received in advance about how they would lead the embattled Douglas County District Attorney’s Office.

All three candidates said that they supported alternatives to incarceration like behavioral health and drug courts. Loomis insisted that the programs needed to expand to include more people earlier in the process, while Hill said that those programs needed more personal oversight. Valdez said she had already been working to make those things happen during her administration.

“The DA’s office is but one piece of it. One piece of it. To be arrogant enough to say that you’re going to be making all these changes and you can do this and you can do that. Believe me there is a price to pay — because you know what? I have been paying it,” Valdez said.

Valdez said that despite the “distractions” her office has endured in the last three years she has been “getting it done.”

“I want to reimagine the criminal justice system. It hasn’t worked. It’s been embedded in racism and sexism and all the things that are not OK,” Valdez said.

Candidates were asked what policies and programs they would focus on once elected that could reduce crime and increase public safety in the community.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

DA candidate Tonda Hill appears at a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP on Saturday, June 29, 2024, at Watkins Museum of History.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

DA candidate Dakota Loomis appears at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP on Saturday, June 29, 2024, at Watkins Museum of History.

Loomis said that one of the first things that he would address in the office is staffing and how it has affected case outcomes.

“I would recruit, retain and train experienced and ethical prosecutors,” Loomis said.

He said that prosecutors in the office needed to be prepared to prosecute high-level cases involving violent crimes. He said that while the majority of cases the DA’s office prosecutes do not fall into that category, not having qualified staff can detract from the whole process. He said experienced prosecutors could better negotiate with defense attorneys and interact with the court and are better prepared to prioritize cases and resources.

Hill said that she wants to see the DA’s office following the law, specifically in regard to people committing crimes with firearms. She also said that she is concerned with crimes of sexual assault resulting in acquittals at trial.

“It is very troubling when you have individuals doing crimes with firearms and they receive probation. It’s also troubling when you have violent offenses like rape and murders and they are acquitted at trial,” Hill said, an apparent reference to the trial record of Valdez’s office, which has suffered a string of losses recently, including at two murder trials and multiple rape trials.

Hill said that she decided to run for the office after seeing so many plea agreements in Douglas County that resulted in probation. She said that as a prosecutor in Wyandotte County she has worked with federal prosecutors to make sure that people who have committed offenses with guns near schools and other crimes are being appropriately prosecuted since a number of those crimes may fall under a federal statute that could result in different punishment than what state law allows.

Valdez said that she has taken a strong stance on guns and that she is working with the school district in the coming weeks to address that violence and other issues among Douglas County youths.

“After COVID we have had absenteeism, we’ve had truancy, where our kids are not going to school. When they are not going to school they are engaging in shenanigans. Things that are violent. So we need to figure that out,” Valdez said.

The candidates then addressed racial disparity within the Douglas County Jail and in court.

Hill said that the solution to racial disparity in the courts starts with law enforcement on the streets.

“The district attorney receives cases from law enforcement. We can’t prosecute on our own,” Hill said.

She said that what the district attorney does with those cases is what makes the difference. Hill shared an anecdote about a man who had been arrested for a large amount of marijuana and that man’s mother hoped the arrest would lead to a lifestyle change for her son but instead the charges were dismissed, meaning the help and services that the mother thought her son needed would not be available. Hill said that not only was that failing to prosecute a violation of Kansas law but that it was also a failure of the prosecutor’s office to help a member of the community.

“This is an example of how sometimes discretion is being used to prosecute some case over another,” Hill said.

She said that following a policy without consideration for consequences can lead to more problems in the community.

Loomis said that he believes there is a great disparity not only with the number of Black individuals in the local jail but also with the amount of time they are held. He said that Black men are being held in jail three times longer than any other race. He said it couldn’t be explained away by the charges themselves. He said that he would use a “blind charging” process under which race, age and other identifying factors would be removed from the charging equation.

He said that on the streets police officers needed to be instructed to eliminate “pretextual stops.”

“Pretextual stops often happen to young men of color. Making sure that we work with law enforcement to discourage that practice is a key step to keeping people out of custody for other offenses,” Loomis said.

Loomis said that intervening at an earlier stage is crucial to helping people get out of the system, and he mentioned “pre-charging diversion” as one way to accomplish that because it would connect people to services immediately after contact with law enforcement instead of, for example, waiting months for drugs to be tested.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

It was standing-room only at the district attorney candidate forum Saturday, June 29, 2024, at the Watkins Museum of History.

Valdez said the jail population was a “fluid” issue that she has little control over. She said the most recent number she saw was that only 31% of the inmates in Douglas County were Black and that the majority of people in jail overall were there for failing to appear, which she has no control over.

“The DA’s office has no part of it,” Valdez said. She said the people in jail under her purview are in jail for violent offenses.

Valdez and Loomis exchanged some barbs during the forum after Valdez said she is not putting people in jail for marijuana or things like stealing bikes. Loomis said that he recently represented a nonviolent client who was convicted of stealing a bicycle and the DA’s office was seeking to put the man in jail for 162 months, or 13.5 years. Loomis’ comments were met with gasps from the crowd.

Later Valdez went on the attack and claimed that there is a police officer in Baldwin City, where Loomis is a prosecutor, who has been accused of stealing and lying. She said she won’t work with that officer on cases because he is Giglio-impaired — that is, she deems him a dishonest witness. She claimed that Loomis continues to work with the officer in cases in Baldwin Municipal Court.

Hill’s final comments alluded to some of the conduct by the DA’s office in the last week with the abrupt departure of Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, who donned a costume and publicly mocked a man, Justin Spiehs, who is involved in multiple lawsuits against local government entities. Valdez, who was seen on camera laughing at Seiden’s performance, has avoided questions about Seiden’s departure and her relationship with him.

“Douglas County, you deserve to elect a competent leader that has unmatched trial, criminal law and professional experience… (who) would never mock any member of this community…that doesn’t applaud or sympathize with the current administration nor should they have close, personal, relationships of trust that could cause conflict for future prosecution… Whose actions, not their words, have demonstrated a commitment to public service,” Hill said.

Spiehs attended Saturday’s forum holding various signs and booing every answer Valdez gave, prompting several members of the crowd to try to shush him or ask him to leave. Spiehs said in an email after the forum that he had filed a police report against one of those people.

Two of the candidates, Hill and Loomis, met with residents after the forum for the full 30-minute visitation period while Valdez appeared to chat briefly with a couple of people before quickly leaving the building.

The primary election is on Aug. 6. Whoever wins that contest will face former federal prosecutor Mike Warner, a Republican, in the general election on Nov. 5.