Orlean's Parish District Attorney Jason Williams on criminal justice reform

stop them right at the source. When you mass produced convictions, you compromise on accuracy, and that is what has left us the city of New Orleans in the same Louisiana with an outside percentage of people who are factually innocent ritting away at jail. What do you think that percentage is? God, there's no way for us to calculate the number of people who are buried at a pine box and ango of State penitentiary who are factually innocent, but we will

never hear their story. Now, as the newly elected d A of Orleans Parish, he intends to not only make the changes necessary for better outcome in the future, but also to make good for the many wrongs of the past. Orleans Parish District Attorney, former board member of the Innostance Project of New Orleans. Jason Williams right now on Righteous Convictions.

Welcome back to Righteous Convictions today. I'm smiling as I'm going to introduce you to one of my favorite people, Jason Williams, who is the brand new d a of the most incarcerated county in the most incarcerated city and the most incarcerated state in the most incarcerated country in the world, Orleans Parish in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jason, Welcome to Righteous Convictions. Thank you for having me on the show. Man,

It's going to be with you. Jason is a chronic overachiever who has done some really incredible things and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. And Jason is one of the most progressive da s in the country. Never was a prosecutor. But Jason, let's go back to the beginning. So you grew up in New Orleans, right, I actually grew up in two places, Atlanta, Georgia and New Orleans. My parents got divorced and I was about one, and so I spent summers in New Orleans and the school

year in Atlanta. And what was it like growing up? But I guess that was what the early nineties, right or late eighties, early nineties, But yeah, it was a tale of two cities for me. In Atlanta, I went to a private school where, you know, my day was pretty much filled from morning until almost bedtime because of

all the extraricular activities. Any police officer I met in Atlanta, at least in my neighborhood was generally a planned encounter or a good encounter, Whereas in the city of New Orleans it was a very, very different scenario because there wasn't the same type of organized school activities, organized sports the same way that it existed in the city of Atlanta for me, and so it was very easy to see what the lack of attention to young people combined

with the over policing of communities could really give folks a very different experience. And you mentioned it, Jason, New Orleans is ground zero for unfairness in the criminal legal system for a variety of different reasons, and I was able to kind of see that dichotomy growing up. So let's talk about your journey to Lane law, right, and then you are now the district attorney, but you never

were a prosecutor, and that's really unusual. You know, I'm gonna just say it's wonderful because we need d a's who come from that side of the bar, who have a different kind of understanding. And let's not forget you about ten years on the board of the Innocence Project of New Orleans, an incredible organization, So take us through

that trajectory. You know. I started off handling cases that to in and broad while I was still in law school through the Criminal Law Clinic with the supervising attorney. She was amazing. She's about four ft tall. Name is Betty Cole, and she just was a our house in terms of standing up for people's rights, and that stuck with me. Soon after graduating, I started my own practice.

The problem for me was the rate that this system was churning through black, brown, and beige bodies defending these cases one case at a time just was not having a significant impact on stopping mass incarceration and wrongful convictions here in the city of New Orleans. I started working pro bono with the Innocence Project and then I joined the board to help grow the organization so that it

could help more people. And then eventually I was appointed to be a judge by the Supreme Court and two thousand and three, and then I ran for the City Council because I saw an opportunity to change the dynamic about what we thought needed policing in the city of New Orleans. So we engage the municipal bail reform, reducing our pre trial jail population. We endeavored to decriminalize marijuana so that now we were writing summons is for folks

rather than putting people in jail and arresting them. Trying to figure out ways that we could combat three hundred years of over police and over prosecuting certain people is what I've done and others have done in the city.

And to be honest with you, the one actor that was most responsible for architecting this amount of injustice and mass incarceration, in my opinion, was a d A. And so I began challenging some of the choices that he was making, like putting rape victims in jail to make them testify against their perpetrator, and putting domestic violence survivors in jail to make them testify. What do you mean

they were locking up victims? Who locks up victims? People find it hard to believe until they actually see the case. And hear from the person, but rape and domestic abuse survivors who had decided that they were too traumatized to testify and were reticent to testify. He was asking for material witness warrants and actually jailing victims and survivors to

force and compel their testimony in court. And in one instance, in particular, domestic abuse survivor was jailed longer than her abuser because even though after he was convicted, he got probation, and so she was jailed to compel her testimony at his trial. And when he was convicted, he didn't even get as much time as she served. So if that's not a perverse view of the role of a prosecutor, I don't know it is. It's beyond. I don't have the right words for that, um, but that ain't that

ain't gonna be happening under your watch. I took him on politically from the City Council, and I've ran on a platform of ending mass and crosceration, putting a stake in the ground saying this office will no longer be a Jim Crow office, and it will treat victims and survivors with respect, and it will also treat defendants with respect, and that's something that has been missing for a very

long time. So before you spend time in the bench as a judge and served as president of the City Council, you had had a winning record as a defense attorney and often did pro bono work for the Public Defender's Office, which a couple of years back was in a serious crisis where they refused to take on any violent felony cases.

I saw a piece about it at sixty Minutes because they simply didn't have the financial or physical bandwidth to handle this crazy onslaught of cases right, twenty cases a year. So can you give us any insight into that crisis and the role that you played from your seat on the City Council. Basically, what you had was a d A's office getting funding from the city at a rate much higher than the Public Defender's Office was getting, but

they were handling roughly the same amount of cases. So it just meant that you know, they have the investigations of the police department. Of course the d A's Office did, but you really were setting up people for failure because you had lawyers that were overworked out gun from a resource perspective, and the Public Defenders Office basically was saying, look, we're not going to take more cases because we cannot

handle them effectively. And that position forced the judges and the city and others to figure out how to correct the inadequacies of the system. And one of my last pieces of work on the City Council was to take money away from the office I now sit in and to deliver that to the Public Defender's Office to increase their budget and to finally try to achieve some degree

of parity between prosecution and defense. And I'm now working within a drastically reduced budget and we're successfully meeting the needs of the office. It's extraordinary when you just do

the math. Right, If if these lawyers were handling four cases a year on average, and there's only three or sixty five days, and the course aren't open on weekends, so they're handling more than one case at day, So you don't have to be illegal scholar to understand that they can't possibly mount an effective defense for almost any

of their clients. So that ends up with please and and in fact, we know it was not uncommon for their lawyers not to even show up, absolutely not because they're lazy, but because they're tied up down the hall in another section of court, and you can't be too places at one time. And when they're finally they're they're

encouraging a person to plead guilty. And oftentimes it's because it just hasn't been enough time to do a thorough investigation, and because of the up charging, charging someone with a crime that is far more severe than the offense, and then the threat of the multiple bill, meaning you're you're really facing a year in jail, but because of the use of multiple offinder law, you're now facing up to

twenty years. So people believe that they're doing the right thing about telling a client or if you plead guilty today, they're not going to file the multiple bill, which puts an innocent person in the position of weighing the rest of their life versus being exonerated for a crime they did not commit. Most people would take the choice of saying, you know what, let me just lead guilty, because I can't take the chance. I have kids, I have a life, I can't spend the rest of my life in prison.

I don't think we can appropriately or accurately describe the magnitude of what you described, because this isn't one person in court that is having this conversation, It's multiple people in twelve sections of court all day having this conversation. And then you can very easily see how we became

the most incarcerated place in the world. The city of New Orleans has been ground zero for the unfairness of the American criminal legal system in every way, whether it relates to misdemeanors, to traffic, to bail bonds and cash bail, and wrongful convictions. It's not just the big cases, it's everything, including the school to prison pipeline. What do you say to people who say, wow, this is is Jason william Sky

or Larry Crash. Crime is gonna go crazy? Of course, we know, like in San Francisco, where chessa poutine has produced the jail population. By and corning to the sfpd s own statistics, crime is down in San Francisco thirty five point nine percent. So that would certainly fly in the face of those arguments. But I'm sure you must get hit with that. You know, what are you gonna do to protect us? You don't want to lack all these people up, do you hear that a lot, and

what's your answer to that. It came up a lot during the campaign that some of the folks running against me were really from that school of tough on crime, prosecute as many people as you can, arrest as many people as you can, and then try to give them as much time as you can. But when you look at the nineties to today, how many people we've churned through the system, we have had the poorest public safety outcomes,

murder rate sky high, arm robbery rate sky high. When you look at those things, there's been a direct correlation between the over policing and over prosecuting with increases in crime. And when you talk to sociologists the scientists, it is clear that you do not make your city safer by putting more bodies in jail. You actually make it less safe,

and you reduce trust in the system. Then witnesses don't want to come forward and they don't want to participate when that trust is severed with the public, and this has been shown again and again, they will not call the police because they have every reason to fear that if they do, the situation is going to deteriorate further and faster. So crime goes up, you start looking at retaliatory crime because people are not using the legal system

to resolve these issues. They take it upon themselves, and so you have retaliation going back and forth from family to family or block to block. But it happens throughout

this country. I think the public made it very clear in my election that they agree that the things that have been tried in the past weren't working, and they are prepared and ready for us to finally be smart on crime, right, to confront the sins of the past, to maybe invest in people in the front end, and our young people get better outcomes out of them before there is ever a victim. So now, by some sort of miracle of the universe organizing itself in the correct way,

you now are the man right. What's your plan in order to create real reform. It's important that we bring the best and brightest local and national talent into this office. My first appointment was Emily Mall as chief of our Civil Rights Division. She's a former lawyer in the Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Johnson's office, former director of our Innocence Project here in New Orleans. I've appointed Ben Cohen as the Chief of Appeals. Coming in from Ohio, Ben

is one of the most respected appellate litigators. He's brought four cases to the United States Supreme Court. He's won three of those. He has served as a lead attorney, and Ramos versus Louisiana toppling Jim pro era laws that have been on the books in this state for far too long. Appointed to Nay Felix as chief of our Juvenile Division. To Nay is a former attorney with LCCR Louisana Center for Children's Rights. I'm not the only person who has worked on the other side of the aisle.

It gives you a very unique perspective about what a good case is, what a bad case is, how to build stronger cases. One of our first areas that that we're standing up is this Civil Rights Division so that we can correct the sins of the past. First, I recognize the previous administration absolutely have calls harm to this community, whether it was on our watch or not. It's certainly our job to address the harm and injustices so that we can instill some trust in the system in our

office and respect back into the office. When you mass produced convictions, you compromise on accuracy, and that is what has left us the city of New Orleans in the St. Louisiana with an outside percentage of people who are factually innocent riding away in jail. What do you think that percentage is? God, it's high. The accurate number is far

higher than anything we can calculate. We because there's no way for us to calculate the number of people who are buried in a pine box and then go state penitentiary who are factually innocent, but we will never hear their story. I often tell our listeners on our other podcast, Wrongful Conviction, that if they're ever picked up and brought to the police station for whatever reason, the only thing they should say is their name and I want a lawyer and then stop talking. Is there some piece of

useful advice you could give? Yeah? I mean you're given um graded advice, Jason. I have never seen anyone successfully talked their way out of an arrest. That's an urban myth, so there's no reason to even try. Right, it is a job that is best left up to competent council. Right. So the only advice I would ever give it the same advice I give to my fourteen year old, my

fifteen year old now I just had a birthday. Is to be respectful, to not make any sudden moves and allow the fate to be handled in a court of law rather than a police station or on a street court. Yeah, that's good advice too, and I know it's it's it makes me sick to think about how many fathers, Black fathers have to have that same conversation with their children.

I feel like people are starting to understand the gravity of the problem that we are on the virtual change and it's it's obviously true because there you are, against all odds. A defense lawyer is now the District Attorney of Orleans Parish in New Orleans, which is just fucking great. But I have to say so, it's just fucking great because this is top of the funnel ship, right, We've got to stop it at the top of the funnel, and people like you are going to be such an

important part of that solutionist. So you're diverting more cases, you're keeping juveniles out of adult court, ending the use of the pitual offender statute that allow for sense increases. There's so many more. We can talk about it all day. For people who are listening and inspired by your words and your course of action. How can they join you? What can they do to be part of the change. I encourage people to follow us at Run with Jason, follow us with O. P. D A on social media,

Listen to podcasts like yours, get involved. Realize that it is your tax dollars that are being misspent to achieve perverse goals. Right Locking people up is not making you safer, And get involved in how money is spent in your town so that we can spend it on prevention, investing in young people rather than trying to repair them after twenty or thirty years of hurt. Everyone has a role to play. Your tax dollars are involved in this thing.

So now return to our closing. First of all, thank you again for you know taking the time, I know it visit you are to be here on righteous convictions. The mic is yours, Jason Williams, this parish district attorney and Paul around. Thank you again Jason for for doing what you do. It is changing people's minds, and it's changing people's hearts, and it's gonna make the country a

safer and more equitable place. We are building the best team and putting them in this office, to correct the sins of the past, to disrupt the school to prison pipeline, and really laying a foundation that will allow us to be laser focus on violent crime, on domestic violence, on unsolved murders, on sexual assault cases. So a lot of people will tell you that criminal justice reform is an

experiment and that it is antithetical with public safety. And the truth of the matter is when you realize that you're focusing on people who are actually hurting people and creating the space and resources to do that better. The only way you do that is by getting rid of the riff raft and the overuse of the virtual finder

law and the failed war on drugs. That is what I call and that is what is being smart on crime using taxpayer dollars the way that you've heard people crying out for this past summer, right, investing in people, investing in better outcomes, and really going after the people that have hurt people. But we can't just do that from today on. You've got to look back at all the harm that's been caused and make sure that we're correcting those things and making sure that anybody that was

convicted with a Jim pro era. Jury gets a fair shot, and fairness will take us where we need to be. It is not antithetical to public safety. It will make us safety. Thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Awards. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction,

and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Righteous Convictions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one