Maura Phelan is the Republican candidate for district attorney in Travis County, Texas. She spoke to The Daily Caller recently about what she hopes to accomplish in office and her views on key national political trends.
Phelan is currently a partner at Lippincott, Phelan, Veidt, and she has 25 years of experience handling trials, including 12 years as a Travis County assistant district attorney. Travis County is home to Austin, and is a heavily Democratic county in solidly-red Texas. The last time a Republican won the Travis County district attorney race was 1873.
Sally Fernandez, candidate for Travis County Sheriff, has said if elected she wouldn’t honor federal immigration detainers. If you were to become DA, is there anything you could do about that?
Possibly. It depends on if the ICE detainers have actually been issued and she’s actively avoiding them. Because when she’s sworn into office, she swears to uphold all of the law. So it just depends how exactly that’s being done because there are – as you and I both know – there are ways to, in filing and things, to not have received them, before they’re released. So, it depends.
What do you make of someone running to be sheriff and already saying that they’re not going to follow immigration law?
Well, I’m running for a position to enforce the law. I believe in enforcing all the laws. My job, the job that is presently up for grabs, that you’re talking about for me and for Sally – for Sheriff and for DA – the job is to uphold the laws, not to make the laws. The guys who make the laws are the ones running for representatives, who are running for congress, who are running for senate. Those are the guys who get to make the laws. We don’t get to make the laws. It’s called nullification. We don’t want it in juries, you know. We swear to follow all the laws, of this state and of the United States.
What do you make of the past two years or so of continued civil unrest from police shootings and the harsh reaction against the police on the one hand and then the claim that these police officers aren’t facing justice?
Well, I think that the specifics of those situations we are not privy to in a lot of ways. But we’re seeing what the press is seeing. We’re seeing what comes across in that way. And we’re not seeing what’s in the investigation and what the witnesses say and we’re not getting to see the videotapes and the access to material that the people investigating are getting to see. And so commenting on someone else’s investigation without having that access would be irresponsible of me. But, I believe that every case, which involves a police office or a civilian, needs to be fully investigated and needs to be taken at its face value. And if there’s a violation of the law it needs to be pursued. But until that happens and is equally pursued against everyone, we don’t have justice. And without justice you’re going to have riots like this. Clearly there’s been issues, there’ve been conflicts between police and the civilians in those areas where we’ve seen shootings. Clearly what we’re seeing is a tipping point for many of these people, many of these areas, and it’s a tipping point for the attitudes of people in the United States as a whole. But each situation is a different and needs to be looked at individually and needs to be looked at specifically and needs to be dealt with specifically. But police officers aren’t allowed to violate laws either and it doesn’t matter if they’re angry, upset have things going on in their life. I mean you’re still not allowed to violate the law. But neither are the individuals who approach the police officers. So we need to be consistent in all of that. There have to be some absolute standards.
Austin is one of the safest cities in Texas, so going into being a DA, would you look to continue the current policies? What would you want to change if you were to change anything?
What am I looking to change? Well the district attorney’s office doesn’t affect how the police officers police, but it does affect the way that the cases that the police officers present to the district attorney’s office get handled and how those people are dealt with. There has not been and is not now any standards for plea bargain recommendations at the DA’s office. They don’t have any standards and none of the assistant district attorneys are given any orientation about any type of standards. It’s my belief that without such standards this is why we get such a huge disparity between two guys with the same offense and similar backgrounds get completely different sentences. And I just don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that reflects what our community wants to have happen, and I don’t think that’s justice. And I think that there needs to be some standards; and that’s something that they do in counties our size and larger. And it needs to be done here, because without any consistency and transparency there can be no accountability, and without accountability there’s no justice. So I want to change that. I also don’t believe that our district attorney office is putting its resources where it should. Right now we have a huge backlog… our DA’s office handles the mental health docket when they’re first arrested – and it’s not being handled. They have 10,000 cases and one attorney appointed. And so our jail is full of mental health issues and that’s not the place for them. That’s not helping anybody and it’s making our jail more dangerous and more full and cost more. That needs to be resolved. We also do not have a sexual assault team in place in the District Attorney’s office, even though all of our reporting agencies do. And so in 2015 we had 900 sexual assaults that were turned over to the DA office with victims who were ready to go forward; and they only accepted 153. When the standard nationwide is that 95 percent of all cases where the victims are ready to go forward are found to be true – that’s a ridiculous number. That in 2015 the DA’s office only disposed of 12 cases as sexual assault is ridiculous.
Would you endorse or support some sort of reform for drug crimes? Do you think the current punishments are suitable or not?
Well, I think that drug crimes, like any addiction crime, is something that, especially if caught early on, before it leads to other offenses and a huge criminal history that you can’t get beyond because of the laws in place, that, if possible, it needs to be dealt with as an addiction. Because that’s the only way to resolve the issue so that we don’t have further offenses and we don’t create a person who is now a danger to society. The job of the office is to see that justice is done and to keep society safe. And by just taking the small drug crimes and throwing them in jail so that all they do it commit more drug crime; what you’re doing is creating a menace on society. So I do believe in diversion when it’s appropriate and when it’s possible to try and fix the problem rather than creating a problem.
Why is there a push for changes to lower criminal sentencing when crime has been plummeting?
Well, because it’s PC [laughs]. It makes news. But I think we need to do what’s right for the individual and what’s right for the community. I mean that’s the job and I don’t think that every offense needs to not be an incarceration. I think that incarceration as a punishment works. The district attorney’s office doesn’t have any effect on the punishment, while we can object the parole, that’s not a big part of what the office does. So how long they spend is not actually up to us; but the punishments passed out are determined by what the community wants to have happen. What they’ve done in other jury trials, what they’ve done in this particular jury trial. And so I don’t think that’s a decision for me to make for everyone, that’s not why I’m being elected.