Several months ago, the New York Times reported, "A leading Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, opened the season of annual bonuses . . . announcing that its first-year lawyers, most of whom began practicing law last fall at an annual salary of $125,000, would receive a year-end bonus of $35,000." This would bring their incomes for their first year as practicing lawyers to $160,000 -- $18,700 more than members of Congress receive and only $13,600 less than an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is paid.
Several weeks later, the Times Sunday magazine featured a story on Fred Capps, commonwealth's attorney of Kentucky's 29th Judicial Circuit. Capps was shot to death in his home in Burkesville by an automatic rifle-wielding man whom he was to prosecute in court later that morning on charges of first-degree sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl. As Capps lay dying, he killed his assailant with a .357 Magnum revolver, defending his family, his community and the rule of law. With only 1,800 residents, Burkesville is so small you will not find it in the World Almanac's list of Kentucky communities. Because it is a close-knit community, where everyone knows everyone else, Fred Capps's death was like a death in the family.
Although Fred Capps was the chief prosecutor for four adjoining counties in southern Kentucky, his job was part-time. His wife, Kathy, served as an assistant commonwealth's attorney, and both she and Fred shared the city attorney duties for Burkesville. The combined total of their income from all these jobs probably would not come close to equaling what a first-year lawyer at a Wall Street law firm will earn this year. In fact, Fred's prosecutorial salary probably was not much more than a first-year Wall Street lawyer's bonus.
Something bothered me about these two articles. Was there a connection there? Probably none in a literal sense. But look deeper and I think you'll find a troubling theme.
At the outset, let me say that no prosecutor or any other lawyer begrudges those first-year New York lawyers any salary their Wall Street firms choose to pay them. Their jobs, won after brutally intense competition, are not sinecures. And if they don't start producing substantial billable hours of their own after several years, they're out.
The story about those first-year lawyers in New York serves as a reminder that America's prosecutors, particularly the majority who serve medium or small jurisdictions, should receive salaries more commensurate with their responsibilities. I do not hesitate to say that America's prosecutors -- the peoples' lawyers -- are the nation's most underpaid public officials.
Regardless of whether a prosecutor serves one of the larger jurisdictions with hundreds of lawyers handling tens of thousands of cases annually, or serves a small jurisdiction with up to a half dozen lawyers handling several thousand cases a year, their responsibilities are the same -- and awesome.
The chief prosecutor for Burkesville, Kentucky, and the district attorneys of New York or Los Angeles are the chief law enforcement officers of their jurisdictions and the protectors of their communities. All are community leaders, working with civic groups, schools, churches and other law enforcement agencies to prevent and deal with crime. They must make decisions that affect the lives of many people, victims as well as perpetrators. In most cases they must run for election, seeking the approval of the people they serve. As public figures, they must bear intense media scrutiny, including unfair criticism, to which they often cannot respond because of judicial and professional restraints. And because of the culture of violence in our society, prosecutors face threats and violence, with the Fred Capps tragedy representing one of many examples.
The latest survey by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that of the 2,343 prosecutors' offices in the United States that try felony cases, 2,129, or 91 percent serve jurisdictions with populations less than 250,000. Of these, 613 prosecutors, 26 percent, are part-time. The median salary for the full-time prosecutors serving jurisdictions under 250,000 is $69,000. The median salary for the 613 part-time prosecutors such as Fred Capps, whose four-county jurisdiction has a population of approximately 135,000 and covers close to 1,500 square miles, is $36,000.
Additionally, an unscientific and random study of job openings listed in state association newsletters indicates that salaries being offered for assistant DAs' positions in medium to small jurisdictions range from around $31,000 to $45,000.
At the same time, prosecutors' workloads are soaring. APRI's recent workload study of Tennessee's district attorney generals' offices found that an additional 128 attorneys are needed in Tennessee to handle the existing prosecutor workload. (As far as we know, this is the most comprehensive statewide study ever made of prosecutors' offices.)
Obviously prosecutors are not in their profession for the money. If you ask them why they love their jobs, and we have, they'll tell you that it's a combination of several things. It is the privilege of serving and protecting their communities and the satisfaction of "doing good" that comes from seeking only one goal: justice. One prosecutor put it this way, "When I look at myself in the mirror at the end of a day, I can say, 'You've done something good for your friends and neighbors today.'"
But prosecutors shouldn't have to pay a financial penalty for doing so.
