District Attorneys

An already-fierce race for Orange County district attorney has turned even more combative, with incumbent Tony Rackauckas under scrutiny for a mass mailing sent out at public expense and challenger Wally Wade drawing criticism from his former campaign manager.

The chief investigator for Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas is suing the state attorney general, further escalating a long-running feud between the two agencies. A lawyer for investigations chief Donald Blankenship said the lawsuit focuses on secret recordings conducted in the district attorney's office by a district attorney employee working for the attorney general.

Despite an unprecedented lobbying effort by district attorneys, the state Assembly is poised to approve sweeping child support reforms Monday that include removing the problem-plagued program from the control of California's prosecutors.

The detectives crouched low, guns in hand, sweeping the crumbling apartments, moving cautiously from room to room, barking at the two prosecutors to stay back, to watch out. The lawyers were children of the city, raised in ethnic neighborhoods by families of modest means. But the poverty here in central Harlem startled them. Some of the abandoned buildings served as shooting galleries, places where drug addicts congregated. The air was rank, the threat of violence palpable.

For many years, drug arrests at checkpoints on the U.S.-Mexico border have worked this way: Federal agents make the busts, then hand off the smaller cases--usually those involving less than 50 pounds of marijuana--to local district attorneys to prosecute. Now some district attorneys are backing out of the arrangement because the soaring number of drug arrests is proving too big a burden.

Gov. Gray Davis signed a battery of child support reforms Friday, stripping local prosecutors of their responsibility to collect money from deadbeat parents and laying the foundation for a new statewide system intended to turn around California's record of running one of the worst programs in the country.

Former state Assemblyman Rod Pacheco was promoted to Riverside County assistant district attorney Tuesday, an appointment that leaves him in a strong position to run for district attorney if Grover Trask retires at the end of his current term. Pacheco, 45, a Riverside resident and UC Riverside graduate who has served as a chief deputy district attorney since returning in 2002 to the office he worked in before his election, will begin supervising the Southwest Division near Murrieta on Jan. 9.

Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas has changed office policy to allow his staff to entertain politicians and lobbyists with funds earmarked for law enforcement work even though the grand jury recommended he ban the practice. The Orange County Grand Jury in June criticized Rackauckas for allowing a top official to use money from a special fund to buy alcohol and food at political functions.

After years of struggling to retain young lawyers, the Ventura County district attorney's office is losing three of its veteran prosecutors to retirement. Bob Calvert is stepping down this summer, Pete Kossoris expects to leave on his 64th birthday in October, and Don Glynn, though he still works part time, formally retired in June. Collectively, they have 82 years on the job, and have tried scores of homicide cases and sent seven men to death row.

In 12 years as Ventura County's top prosecutor, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury has come to symbolize law and order in the safest county of its size in the western United States. He has won a reputation among lawyers and judges as one of the toughest prosecutors in California. Many say he is also one of the most competent. "As district attorneys go, he's as good as any of them," said one former courthouse nemesis, retired Ventura County Public Defender Richard Erwin.