Get to know the candidates for NYC’s district attorney primaries

As the debate over how to keep New Yorkers safe while also reforming the criminal justice system continues to divide many city residents, voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to choose the person tasked with making many difficult public safety decisions: the district attorney.

In the Bronx, a progressive defense attorney is challenging incumbent DA Darcel Clark, a Democrat who has led the office with a mix of reform-mindedness and a tough-on-crime approach. In Queens, a public defender and a former judge are running against incumbent DA Melinda Katz, a career politician with a war chest that dwarfs the campaign contributions of her opponents. There are no Republicans running for district attorney in either borough this primary season.

In Staten Island, Richmond County DA Michael McMahon, a Democrat, is running unopposed.

Next Tuesday’s primary follows a third round of rollbacks to the 2019 state legislation that prohibited judges from setting bail for many crimes. The race also comes amid ongoing frustration from district attorneys about discovery reform, a 2019 state law that imposed stricter deadlines for prosecutors to turn over evidence to defense lawyers.

The candidates in the two contested races are all Democrats who generally agree with the basic tenets of criminal justice reform. But their stances fall at different points along the political spectrum, and their visions for the role of top prosecutor vary.

Gothamist interviewed all the candidates and reviewed their campaign materials. We also asked them about their stance on three recent changes to state criminal justice laws: bail reform, discovery reform and Raise the Age, which prevents 16- and 17-year-olds from being prosecuted in adult court in most cases. Here are some key facts you should know before casting your vote:

Incumbent DA Darcel Clark calls herself a “daughter of the Bronx” and has said she is taking a “holistic approach” to public safety, which includes investing in programs that serve people at risk of committing crimes, providing support services to people who are arrested, prosecuting those who break the law and working with a local task force to help people re-enter the community after they’ve been incarcerated.

“I’m not going to apologize for standing up for victims of crime, but I’m not going to do it at the expense of violating the rights of the accused,” she said in an interview. “I know better than that.”

Clark was first elected in 2015, becoming the first woman to lead the Bronx DA’s office and the first Black woman to be elected DA in the entire state, according to her official biography. Before that, she worked as an assistant district attorney and served on the bench for more than 16 years.

Clark said it’s the DA’s job to “hold people accountable that bring guns and gangs and drugs and sexual assaults and robberies and murders.” But she also advocates for alternatives to incarceration, including a program she launched for people who are arrested on a first-time gun possession charge, which provides them with de-escalation classes, mental health counseling and job training in exchange for a lesser conviction upon completion. Clark also advocates for solutions to address the underlying causes of crime, like food insecurity, homelessness, mental illness and substance use disorder.

But the DA has not been shy about her criticisms of recent criminal justice reforms at the state level, especially changes to the discovery laws. Since changes to the discovery rules took effect in 2020, the office’s conviction rate has plummeted, according to state data. In 2018, 46% of cases with a felony top charge led to a conviction and sentence, compared to 26.9% in 2022, while the percentage for cases with a misdemeanor top charge dropped from 30.9% to 14.5% during the same time period. At the same time, dismissal rates have jumped. Clark attributes the pattern to shortcomings in the law. Similar patterns have played out citywide.

Clark said she wants additional funding for technology to sift through and share discovery materials and more money to pay her assistant DAs. High attrition rates have plagued the office for years, and anonymously emailed threats of a walkout last year led the office to bring in detectives to interrogate line prosecutors, The City reported.

Because Rikers Island is also part of the Bronx’s geographical jurisdiction, Clark opened a satellite bureau on the jail complex to investigate crimes that occur there. She said her office’s Public Integrity Bureau also investigates allegations of official misconduct in the jails.

Clark’s stance on:

• Bail reform: Says she took steps to reform her office’s bail policies and send fewer people to jail even before changes took place at the state level. But says the law isn’t “perfect” and supports recent changes to the law that give judges more discretion to set bail for people who are repeatedly arrested.
• Discovery reform: Supports the changes in theory but thinks the “artificial timelines” to turn over evidence are too cumbersome, given how long it takes for prosecutors to gather and share materials.
• Raise the Age: Also supports this law in substance but wants tweaks to make it easier for prosecutors to address youth gun possession cases in criminal court — not just cases when a teen has displayed or shot a gun. “For me to have to wait for them to display the gun, it’s too late,” she said.

Tess Cohen

Tess Cohen is a criminal defense and civil rights attorney running on a progressive platform to the left of Clark, the incumbent. The former narcotics prosecutor said she would focus her office’s resources on the most serious crimes, like sexual assaults and homicides. She has said she would use the district attorney’s office not only to prosecute people who break the law, but also to invest in programs that work to prevent violence and to find ways to send fewer people to jail.

Cohen has pledged to take a more proactive approach to the crisis on Rikers Island, which falls within the Bronx DA’s jurisdiction. She said she would regularly review the cases of those held in jail pretrial to re-evaluate whether they should be released and that she would open a grand jury investigation into conditions in the jail complex, which she says would allow the office to regularly request information about deaths and violence on the island.

“I think that the DA’s office stepping in on Rikers Island is a moral imperative. It just has to be done,” Cohen said in an interview with Gothamist. “We can’t be locking up people in conditions that are so horrific that we have high rates of overdose and suicides and deaths and violent instances and slashings, because that makes us all less safe.”

Cohen has said she would also work to build more trust in the DA’s office, by better supporting victims, assigning a liaison to every neighborhood in the bureau and increasing staff numbers in the unit that investigates potentially wrongful convictions. As someone who has been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, Cohen said law enforcement and criminal justice reform don’t have to be in tension.

“Our justice system, and law enforcement in general, only works when communities have faith in the system,” she said. “If you don’t trust the police officer, if you don’t trust the prosecutor, we’re going to have sort of a breakdown no matter what.”

Cohen’s stance on…

• Bail reform: Thinks bail reform has “worked” but that more money should be spent on programs to support people awaiting trial, like mental health services. She also opposes the most recent rollback of the law, which made it easier to set bail in some cases.
• Discovery reform: Says that prosecutors have overblown the challenges posed by discovery reform and that she was able to establish systems to handle large amounts of records for complex cases when she worked in the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor.
• Raise the Age: A “huge supporter” of keeping youth cases in family court, with a carveout for violent crimes. “I’m strongly of the opinion that we have to treat children like children.”

If you’re a Democrat voting in Queens:

Melinda Katz

Incumbent DA Melinda Katz says her priority is to keep Queens residents safe through a “community-based approach.” Katz says she is focused on holding accountable the “drivers of crime,” including people who are trafficking guns from out of state. She also says she wants to balance keeping communities safe while keeping people out of the criminal justice system who need services, including veterans and those who need substance use or mental health treatment.

“We need the rights of the defendants, the justice for victims, and we need the innocents to go free,” Katz said in an interview. “That is the balancing equation of a good DA’s office.”

District attorney is the latest in a long list of elected offices Katz has held over the years, including her time on the state Assembly, the City Council and as the Queens borough president. In the 2019 Democratic primary for DA, she eked out a narrow victory over progressive challenger Tiffany Caban, winning by a margin of just 60 votes.

Since taking office, Katz has launched a Conviction Integrity Unit to re-examine potentially wrongful convictions, which her office says has vacated 99 cases. She has also formed a Violent Crime Enterprises Bureau, a Cold Case Unit and a Human Trafficking Bureau, according to her office’s website.

Like all the city’s DA’s offices, the conviction rate has dropped substantially in the Queens DA’s office since discovery reform took effect in 2020 — the same year Katz was inaugurated. For cases with a felony as the top charge, the percentage of cases that resulted in a conviction and sentence went from 63.4% in 2018 to 38.7% in 2022, while convictions for cases with a misdemeanor as the top charge went from 47.1% in 2018 to 22.5% in 2022, according to state records. Meanwhile, case dismissals have climbed.

Katz’s stance on:

• Bail reform: Does not like the concept of cash bail but thinks judges should be able to hold someone pretrial who poses a risk to the community or a flight risk.
• Discovery reform: Believes in discovery reform and thinks defense attorneys should have access to all the same records as prosecutors but says the laws, as they’re currently written, “have caused an enormous burden on the way the criminal justice system functions.” Thinks there should be more leeway to prevent cases from being dismissed for minor discovery violations.
• Raise the Age: Thinks prosecutors should have more discretion to keep cases in adult court when 16 or 17 year olds possess a gun, even if they don’t display it.

Devian Daniels

Devian Daniels is a defense attorney who wants to make major changes in the Queens DA’s office. She’s calling for a public database of the office’s success rates on its website, additional measures to prevent prosecutorial misconduct and a staff that better reflects the diversity of the “world’s borough.” In 2019, the Queens Daily Eagle reported that more than two thirds of prosecutors in the office were white and non-Latino, while just a quarter of the borough’s population is white and non-Latino.

Daniels grew up in the South Bronx and now lives in Jamaica, and notes that the two neighborhoods account for disproportionate shares of the state prison population. She thinks incarceration should be reserved for people who commit serious crimes — like murder, gun trafficking and child abuse — but not fare evasion and other low-level offenses. Daniels also wants to create diversion programs for teens, people arrested for the first time and those accused of nonviolent crimes.

“If we don’t address the cause of their crime, it could be a cycle where they come back to court for other crimes,” she said in an interview. “And it’s really expensive to keep somebody in prison in New York state.”

Daniels has pledged to root out misconduct in an office where judges have found that at least 10 current and former prosecutors illegally blocked people from serving on juries based on their race or religion. She said she would also invest more resources in the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews old cases that might have resulted in a wrongful conviction. While similar teams in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan have each overturned hundreds of cases in recent years, the Queens unit has only vacated 99 cases, according to the DA’s office.

“Queens is sorely behind,” Daniels said. “We need more lawyers in that office.”

In addition to violent crimes, Daniels wants to use the office’s resources to prosecute crimes that affect low-income people, including deed theft and the stealing of people’s SNAP benefits.

Daniels’ stance on:

• Bail reform: Thinks that holding people in jail who can’t afford bail while letting those accused of violent crimes go free if they can pay doesn’t make communities safer.
• Discovery reform: Supports the law and thinks it’s important for all parties to have all the evidence in the case. Doesn’t understand why prosecutors are struggling to meet deadlines to turn over materials and says if they haven’t already gathered all the evidence, they should wait to bring a case.
• Raise the Age: Thinks teens, particularly those who have experienced trauma, should get the services they need to be rehabilitated. Says “it makes no sense to lock someone up for 50 years for something they did when they’re 16 or 17,” and notes that many of them are Black and Latino youth who didn’t get the support they needed before they were arrested.

George Grasso

George Grasso is a former NYPD officer who served in a range of positions within the department, from foot patrols in southeast Queens to deputy police commissioner. Grasso also went to law school while working on patrol, and after rising through the ranks, he left the department in 2010 to accept a judicial appointment from then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

As a judge, Grasso created the city’s “CourtStat” system to reduce the amount of time between arrest and arraignment. He also helped to develop programs to divert teens from the court system and worked with Bronx DA Darcel Clark to form the Overdose and Avoidance Recovery Court.

Grasso said he is “nerdish” when it comes to improving the court system — including finding ways to keep people out of Rikers and connecting defendants with mental health and substance abuse treatment.

“I don’t want you to end up with a criminal record. Or if you have to go to jail, I want the minimal amount of time in jail,” he said in an interview. “But here’s what I need from you: If you have one of these myriad of problems, I need you to work with the court. I need you to work with the DA. I need you to work with your lawyer. I need you to work with the service providers.”

Grasso considers himself a progressive and calls himself the “program judge,” because of all the programs he championed to support people passing through the criminal justice system. He says he wants to create a mental health bureau to better support people with behavioral health challenges who come into contact with the court system. But he also wants to use the office to prosecute quality of life crimes, like drug dealing, shoplifting, trespassing and auto theft.

Grasso’s stance on:

• Bail reform: Agrees with the law in concept but says there were unforeseen consequences, including taking away the leverage that has traditionally made it easier to get people into treatment courts and other pretrial services. He also wants a “dangerousness” standard, which would allow judges to set bail for someone they believe poses a public safety threat.
• Discovery reform: Says he “absolutely” agrees with the concept but thinks the law needs to be improved to reduce the number of cases that are dismissed due to missed deadlines for turning over evidence.
• Raise the Age: Thinks judges should have more authority to keep cases in adult court for 16 and 17 year olds who present “a clear risk to public safety.”

Early voting is already underway. Election Day is Tuesday, June 27. Voters who are registered to vote in the primary can learn more at vote.nyc.