I’ve never really understood the wisdom of term limits. I suppose the idea is that experienced public officials should be replaced, as often as possible, with less experienced ones to avoid some ambiguous sense of “entrenched” leadership. Or something like that.
Anyway, my sense is that term limit supporters usually target high-level political offices such as governors and members of Congress. I didn’t realize term limits had also been applied to positions such as district attorneys.
Alas, they have, and this week the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved system of term limits for criminal prosecutors. As a result, 13 of Colorado’s 22 district attorneys will lose their jobs within a year, not because of job performance or budget cuts, but because they’re experienced at what they do.
This is utter madness.
I’m not a lawyer, but I can appreciate the fact that district attorneys have a difficult and important job. They are responsible, in short, for putting the bad guys in jail. Do the voters of Colorado seriously believe it’s in their interests to replace qualified, veteran DAs with new lawyers with fewer skills and less knowledge?
On second thought, I don’t care whether or not Colorado voters think it’s in their interests. It’s not. If they believe it is, they’re wrong. Yes, this may sound undemocratic. You know what? I don’t care.
In Colorado, prosecutors are elected. It’s not as if the public would have no say in replacing a DA whose performance was unacceptable. They could simply vote him or her out of office.
The point here, and the real flaw in term limits, is that voters will no longer have a choice. Under the guise of improving democracy, these term limits will ironically take power out of the hands of voters.
An experienced prosecutor with a phenomenal record will have his or her career cut short, regardless of whether or not the voters want that prosecutor to stay in office. An artificial mechanism will kick in after the DA has served two four-year terms, telling that prosecutor to find a new career. Thanks for convicting all those criminals; we want someone who doesn’t have your experience and institutional knowledge to replace you now.
Bill Ritter, a Denver DA since 1993, is one of those who’s about to lose his job.
“We all came out of the prosecution community,” Ritter said. “We started as deputies and became chief deputies. By and large, we’ve devoted our entire professions to prosecution.”
And now that professional career will end because of some stupid political gimmick.
Bob Miller, a former Colorado district attorney and former U.S. attorney in the 1980s, told the Denver Post he feared that the ruling would destabilize DAs’ offices and potentially drive talented people out of government service.
“I was one of those people way back when who thought that term limits were good for all offices,” Miller said. “I’ve changed my mind. I think they are good for none, and I think they are particularly not good for DAs.”
Miller said that given today’s employment market for lawyers, the eight-year limit will discourage many bright lawyers, especially in rural areas, from seeking public office.
Miller added that he believes only one group will really benefit from having less experienced prosecutors in courtrooms — veteran defense lawyers and their clients. As Pete Weir, executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council, said, “Criminals and public defenders aren’t term limited. But now prosecutors are.”
Dennis Polhill, co-chair of the Colorado Term Limits Coalition, nevertheless thinks this is all terrific.
“[Prosecutors] should be accountable to voters,” Polhill said. “The DAs do set policy. The voters might decide they disagree, and they should be able to change that.”
[That sound you hear is my head hitting my desk in frustration]
Under Colorado’s old system, prosecutors are “accountable to voters.” They have to seek re-election. If voters “decide they disagree,” as Polhill put it, Colorado residents can simply vote for someone else.
I will never understand why a state’s voters would voluntarily choose to weaken their own criminal justice system.