Seven finalists still in the running to take over the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office gave their pitches to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
With supervisors expected to make their final decision during a special meeting next week, it was the only scheduled public hearing during which all of the remaining applicants would be interviewed by the board.
During the roughly six-hour meeting, the prospective district attorneys gave opening statements and answered questions on a wide variety of topics, including juvenile justice, alternatives to incarceration, racial bias in jury selection, boosting the morale in the reportedly fractured office and interacting with immigrant defendants, witnesses and victims, among other things.
Annie Esposito
“I stand apart from everybody else because I can hit the ground running,” said Annie Esposito, Contra Costa County assistant district attorney and former senior assistant district attorney in Alameda County under former district attorney Nancy O’Malley, who has publicly endorsed her for the job.
Esposito, a first-generation Chinese American, said she would ensure that deportation isn’t used as an added punishment for most crimes, would strike a balance between alternatives to incarceration and public safety, ensure law enforcement personnel are held accountable for criminal behavior and run a transparent office.
Venus Johnson
Venus Johnson, chief deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, grew up in Oakland with a father who was an Oakland correctional officer.
Johnson is also the former director of Oakland’s Department of Public Safety, a former legal and policy advisor to Kamala Harris when she was state attorney general and a former chief assistant district attorney in Contra Costa County.
She said she operates a state office with a $1.3 billion budget and 5,000 employees so she knows how to lead an organization. She said she has helped prioritize diversion programs for mentally ill defendants accused of low-level crimes, updated the immigration policy in Contra Costa County in response to community concerns and has aggressively prosecuted retail theft rings.
“Please don’t mistake the daughter of an immigrant and a correctional officer from West Oakland as someone who would use this as a steppingstone,” Johnson said. “My village and my momma raised me better than that.”
Ursula Jones Dickson
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ursula Jones Dickson was raised in a high-crime neighborhood in Carson in Southern California.
“You live in the hood, figure out how to do well in school and get out of the hood, and that’s what I did,” Jones Dickson said.
She said the current office has 48 prosecutors hired by ousted district attorney Pamela Price, many of whom didn’t have previous prosecutorial experience and may need additional training. She would hire a forensic accountant to review the budget and take steps to address the divisions in the office and also said she would “rebuild” the victim/witness program and repair relationships with victim advocates, law enforcement and other stakeholders.
Latricia Louis
Latricia Louis is the deputy county counsel in Alameda County and former Alameda County assistant district attorney who said the job requires bold leadership, a dynamic vision for the future and a comprehensive, balanced approach to public safety.
“People feel unsafe because all too often they are unsafe,” Louis said. “Once selected, I will immediately address the significant issue of enforcement. That means a return to the core mission of the District Attorney’s Office to prosecute public offenses and protect the public safety.”
“People feel unsafe because all too often they are unsafe.” Latricia Louis
She said she would support rehabilitation when appropriate, work to reduce burnout in the office, center victims’ and survivors’ experiences and use a data-driven analysis to review the effectiveness of alternative justice programs like the county’s “collaborative court” system.
Yibin Shen
Yibin Shen is the city attorney for the city of Alameda, where he also prosecutes crime in a somewhat unusual arrangement for someone in that role.
Shen said he has experience managing a difficult budget process and helped bring his office’s spending in line while expanding services. He said he’s proud of the work he has done on wage and fair housing enforcement and the transparency with which he runs his office.
He said his leadership style is “collaborative, transparent and fiscally responsible” and he is enthusiastic about public engagement.
“I am committed to implementing the board’s vision of finding diversion and restorative justice programs,” Shen said. “I’m committed to implementing the board’s vision of reducing barriers to reentry and to find support and wrap around services so that we can find ways to keep people out of the criminal justice system, especially for low level offenders and when it comes to youth especially.”
Jimmie Wilson
Jimmie Wilson is a deputy district attorney in Alameda County who grew up in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood and went to law school while working as a union plumber.
“Over the last 20-plus years, no one has tried as many cases that I have in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said Wilson, who ran for the district attorney position in the 2022 election.
He said he believes that it’s possible to implement criminal justice reform and keep the community safe, that it’s illegal and unethical to charge a defendant more harshly because of their immigration status, and that he has aggressively prosecuted people who engage in chronic retail theft.
Elgin Lowe
Elgin Lowe is a senior deputy district attorney in Alameda County who has been with the office for 28 years, longer than any other applicant.
Lowe said he would start working on the budget as soon as possible and will bring fairness, accountability and trust back to the office.
“Accountability means we will take a holistic approach to determine what justice means in each individual. This does not mean the same thing in every case,” he said. “You have to look at facts, the law, the defendant, criminal history, any of the mitigating factors and, in some cases, justice may be in the drug court to deal with the drug issue or using another court like mental health court, but let me be clear — if justice required that a person be incarcerated for an extended period of time, I will not hesitate to do so.”
The supervisors generally seemed impressed with all of the candidates’ demeanors and experience during the interview process but didn’t indicate who they might favor for the job.
They are scheduled to deliberate and make their selection at a special meeting on Jan. 28.
Video of Tuesday’s meeting and full interviews with the candidates is available from the county’s website.