Responding to a judge's complaint that white drug suspects get better deals from prosecutors than their black counterparts, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. is changing the way his office makes sentencing recommendations to court.
Zappala last week said he has set up a panel of supervisors that will vet more than 1,000 drug cases annually to determine if the office will ask a judge to impose a tougher mandatory sentence in a case.
The move means individual assistant district attorneys will no longer be the sole decision maker on particular cases, Zappala said.
Zappala made the change in response to comments made in October by Judge Joseph K. Williams, who is black, when he rejected a plea deal and accused a prosecutor of only offering deals to "white boys."
Williams reiterated that opinion earlier this month, when he suggested that Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Sachs was seeking a mandatory sentence in a drug case because the defendant, Guy Mitchell Jr., 19, of St. Clair Village, is black.
"This zeal that you have in prosecuting this kid -- next time you come in here and there is a little kid from up there in West Deer, down in Frazier or one of those little towns, I am going to expect the same advocacy that you exhibit here," Williams said. "I don't want any imbalanced justice."
When Sachs said he didn't understand, the judge minced no words.
"I am telling you the next time a white kid comes in that's 19 years of age, I want to see the same advocacy in your insistence in giving the kid the maximum amount of time that you are doing with this kid," he told the prosecutor.
Police had accused Mitchell of using a 14-year-old to help him sell drugs to undercover officers.
Williams convicted Mitchell in a nonjury trial of drug possession and corruption of minors, and sentenced him to 11 1/2 to 23 months in jail with 10 years of probation. Sachs had been seeking a higher mandatory sentence.
Williams said Mitchell had no prior felonies and possessed less than a gram of cocaine.
"I'll continue to do what I see is just," Williams said. "I try to be fair."
Zappala agreed that Mitchell's sentence was fair.
And that's the way it should be, regardless of a defendant's skin color.
Thankfully, Williams' criticism of the status quo is pushing the DA's office in that direction.
