Denver District Attorney Beth McCann is leaving her post. Now voters will weigh in on who will be the city’s next chief law enforcement officer.
The winner of the state race for the 2nd Judicial District will oversee the team of lawyers who prosecute — or decide not to prosecute — the city’s biggest crimes, from sexual assault and drug dealing to police who use excessive force.
The official general election to replace McCann won't happen until November, but that vote will be nearly inconsequential.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary, on Tuesday, June 25, will win the seat.
🗳️ Not every voter will have a say in the race.
Voters participating in the Republican primary won’t get to vote, and it’s not just because Denver has veered bright blue.
Nobody from the GOP made the ballot.
Voters registered in third parties also don’t get to participate in a primary by state law.
Only Democrats and unaffiliated voters in the Democratic primary will choose between Leora Joseph and John Walsh, the two candidates who made the ballot.
🗳️ What are the big issues in the Denver district attorney race?
Denverites have been dealing with higher rates of crime citywide, from catalytic converter and car theft to a spike in overdoses to gun deaths.
In recent years, downtown has been the focus of dozens of headlines about safety issues. (That's despite how crime in the city center has dropped, even as it has risen citywide.)
The city is having a robust debate about how to handle drug addiction, mental health crises and homelessness, and whether the criminal justice system should play a role in solutions. And if so, what sort?
Meanwhile, across the city, many have lost faith in law enforcement after multiple high-profile law enforcement killings and excessive force cases that have cost the city millions in settlements.
In short, the next DA has to satisfy demands that all crime is investigated, prosecuted and reduced —and that law enforcement is not allowed to violate the law with impunity.
Denverite spoke to both candidates about their vision for the District Attorney’s Office, where they fall on the big issues and more.
🗳️ District Attorney Candidate Leora Joseph
Leora Joseph spent more than 20 years in urban district attorneys' offices, including long stints in the Boston and Arapahoe County district attorneys' offices and a few months in the Denver District Attorney’s Office.
She’s worked on sexual assault and domestic violence cases and in one of the first human trafficking units in the United States.
She currently works in Gov. Jared Polis’ administration, leading the Office of Civil and Forensic Mental Health, an agency with roughly 1,800 employees and a $350 million budget.
From that work, Joseph realized: “We're in a massive mental health, public health crisis that's manifesting as a public safety crisis.”
So what’s the fix?
“We have to get back to basic criminal justice, accountability,” she said. “There needs to be consequences. And that applies to serious gun violence, fentanyl distribution, but also auto theft, and what I call lifestyle crimes, people who are throwing a brick into a building, into a business, into your car. Those kinds of things are making everybody feel a little unsafe, a little dysregulated.”
But consequences don’t necessarily mean just incarceration.
“That does not mean 100 years in prison for everybody, because we know that does not work,” she said.
Though the U.S. spends tens of billions a year on the correction system, “no one feels safer. So we've got to do things differently.”
For her, the district attorney’s office should “create pathways to treatment” for substance and mental health issues. People who are dysregulated in public will have to choose: jail or follow a pre-arranged treatment plan monitored by a civil judge.
She pledges to bring “massive change” to the District Attorney’s Office. That starts with creating a specialized unit to handle only sexual assault, along with dedicated prosecutors working on serious gun crimes so that they can be prosecuted more quickly.
“Victims deserve really focused care, really focused prosecutors who are experienced in those areas,” Joseph said.
Specialized units will be trained and focused on working with specific types of victims, including those who have been sexually assaulted. She’s also interested in reorganizing the office to focus on “community prosecution.” Prosecutors aligned with various police districts would form relationships with the police in those communities, along with nonprofits, schools, businesses, faith communities and advocates.
Joseph plans to hire a community member, not an attorney, to be present for all conversations regarding law enforcement accountability and excessive force. The idea would be to give the department a new lens into such cases.
She’s committed to what she calls “vertical prosecution,” in which the District Attorney and the police department work on a case from the beginning, ensuring the investigation is conducted in a way that is prosecutable. Endless handoffs between lawyers, as she sees it, cause needless trauma for victims of violence and slow down prosecution.
Joseph has experience prosecuting police officers for domestic violence and sexual assault, and she’s willing to hold officers accountable for their crimes, she said. But she’d like to focus on preventing excessive force cases from happening to begin with.
She said that in many cases, police are being called for things that don’t require their presence and that unnecessarily lead to arrest rather than more appropriate solutions. She supports expanding and creating alternative emergency response programs to bring alternative responders to incidents that don’t require an armed officer.
Joseph has been endorsed by the Denver Police Protective Association, the police union, Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, House Speaker Julie McCluskie, Senate President Pro Tem James Coleman, and the Pipefitters Local Union, among many others.
🗳️ District Attorney Candidate John Walsh
John Walsh has mostly lived in Denver since he was 12.
As an attorney, he has tried large cases against banks and pharmaceutical companies, advocated for sentencing reform, and served as a federal prosecutor in President Barack Obama’s administration.
He represented President Joe Biden’s campaign, winning an election challenge case in Michigan. He’s also worked in the private sector throughout his career.
“I ran the United States Attorney's Office for six years, which is one of the longest terms of any U.S. Attorney in Colorado's history during the Obama administration,” he said. “And that meant not just managing a big office, which is what the [district attorney’s] job is, but also managing the relationships and collaborating with other agencies over which I didn't have direct authority, but which I needed to influence.”
Walsh says the district attorney's fundamental job is to protect community safety and improve the criminal justice system.
How would he measure success? He’d like to see crime drop — and not just from prosecuting more cases but also by working with the community on crime prevention programs and development programs for youth.
“The best thing a district attorney could do is to reduce the need for a district attorney and the prosecution function by making sure the city is safer overall,” he said.
While Walsh promises incremental changes to the District Attorney’s office, he’s impressed by much of what McCann accomplished, from greater data transparency to “laying a strong foundation for criminal justice reform,” through restorative justice and diversion programs and a human trafficking unit in the office.
He says the city needs a, “refresh in leadership to deal with the current circumstances we have.”
He’d like to create a Violent Crime Taskforce to address high rates of violent crime, more aggressively prosecute drug dealers and offer more treatment options for drug users to address the rise in fentanyl deaths.
Walsh would also like to strengthen the drug courts and expand diversion courts, using prosecution to lead people toward mental health and drug treatment.
On the campaign trail, he’s heard many residents complain about high rates of catalytic converter and car theft, and he plans to focus energy on prosecuting such crimes.
Walsh has experience prosecuting federal law enforcement for violent cries, but he’d prefer to stop excessive force cases before they happen. Part of his strategy would be to train the police department on the law and on best practices in community policing.
He acknowledges that prosecuting police can be particularly challenging for the district attorney’s office, which works so closely with the department.
“It's very important for the district attorney’s office to maintain that independence and neutrality to be able to make a decision,” he said. “And in my eyes, that means that we should have a designated set of senior, very experienced prosecutors who not only have responsibility for that set of issues but also get the best training on how to do those cases.”
Among Walsh’s endorsers are three Denver district attorneys, including current DA McCann and former DAs Mitch Morrissey and former Gov. Bill Ritter.
Walsh also has the support of the Denver Area Labor Federation, Senator Michael Bennet and former mayor, governor and now Senator John Hickenlooper, former mayors Wellington Webb and Federico Peña, and councilmembers Darrell Watson and Jamie Torres, among many others.
