When Seth Williams took over as District Attorney a few years ago, he pledged to raise the city’s dismal conviction rate. His plan was to force police to collect more and more evidence, appropriately fit the charges to the crime, and go to trial with solid cases more likely to get convictions. The restult? “His office last year brought 17 percent fewer violent-crime cases than the number brought in 2009, the last year Lynne M. Abraham was in office as D.A.,” according to the Inquirer. Williams has not yet put together and publicized an actual conviction rate, but some people aren’t that happy with his style, such as the FOP (the local president said, “Short of getting caught with a smoking gun in your hand, it’s tough to get them to arrest”). You can read the whole article over here (all 11 pages of it, damn Inky), but the gist is this: Williams changed things, took less cases to trial, and maybe got more convictions. As a criminologist from Carnegie Mellon told the Inky, “His job is finding those cases that he can responsibly convict, rather than just charge.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 11:26 am.