Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Two progressive challengers unseated incumbent Democratic prosecutors in northern Virginia, notching another win for the national movement for a more compassionate criminal justice system.
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a veteran criminal defense attorney serving as legal director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, defeated Theo Stamos, who presently serves as Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney, or what is usually called a district attorney in other states’ counties.
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In neighboring Fairfax County, Steve Descano, a former federal consumer protection attorney, unseated commonwealth’s attorney Raymond Morrogh.
Having secured the Democratic nomination in a solid blue county just outside Washington, Dehghani-Tafti and Descano virtually assured a victory in the general election.
Their wins “represent the real power that issues like criminal justice reform have among voters across the political spectrum but especially Democrats and more progressive voters,” said Quentin Kidd, dean of social sciences at Christopher Newport University. “It not only pushes criminal justice reform higher up the agenda in Virginia, but I’d also imagine it will encourage similar challenges from progressives in other parts of the state.”
Dehghani-Tafti ran on a platform of significantly reducing incarceration in Arlington by, among other things, ending prosecution of marijuana possession and barring the use of cash bail for nonviolent offenders. She argued that Stamos’ tough and racially lopsided prosecutions of low-level offenses have put Arlington out of step with politically comparable counties. The challenger noted that, notwithstanding declining crime in the county, its jail population is 2.5 times the size of neighboring Fairfax County.
Dehghani-Tafti, whose husband is African American, also spoke about the implications of criminal justice reform for her family.
“When I think about why our justice system needs change, I think about my kids,” Dehghani-Tafti says in a video advertisement as her multiracial children appear on screen. “I want to live in a world where the color of their skin doesn’t affect their odds of an arrest.”