From The Kansas City Star, October 18, 2024. Read the full article below and at https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article294156129.html
Sometimes, in choosing which candidate to endorse, this editorial board has a tough choice to make between two good options, or two not-good ones. This is not one of those times.
In the race for Douglas County District Attorney, the heavily favored candidate, Democrat Dakota Loomis, a Lawrence defense attorney, has never prosecuted a felony case, and seems to think that his willingness to show up will suffice.
He has clearly not put in the work required to be ready to restore order to a courthouse that has essentially been on fire throughout the tenure of the current DA, Suzanne Valdez.
We say that because in our interview with him, he showed a particularly worrying lack of knowledge about sexual assault cases. Again, after all Douglas County has been through in recent years, the last thing it needs is another underprepared DA.
It doesn’t have to settle for one, either. Because Mike Warner — until May a registered independent, now running as a Republican — is an experienced prosecutor known for his high ethical standards. He put in 15 years as a state prosecutor in Kansas and another 15 total as a federal prosecutor in Kansas and Missouri. He can be trusted to know what he is doing because, unlike his opponent, he has actually done it.
That’s even more important than usual in this race.
Warner’s record of ethical behavior is another strong point in his favor.
History of criticizing disciplinary system
Warner, who has lived in Lawrence for 35 years, has regularly spoken out against problem prosecutors in the state and has harshly criticized the disciplinary system for those who cheat to get convictions. After it came to light that federal prosecutors in the Kansas City, Kansas, office had kept recordings of confidential phone calls between defense attorneys and criminal defendants at a privately run prison in Leavenworth as far back as 2011, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson’s scathing 188-page ruling raised questions about Barry Grissom’s oversight of the office.
Grissom’s assurances that the scandal did not reflect on his leadership of the office were undercut by Warner, his former first assistant U.S. attorney, who testified in an evidentiary hearing that Grissom was “very much aware of complaints and problems about heavy-handed, for lack of a better word, unfair prosecutorial patterns, behaviors in the Kansas City, Kansas, criminal division.”
Warner did not testify that Grissom or other senior officials were aware of the attorneys’ access to confidential phone calls, but accused Grissom of refusing to confront prosecutorial misconduct. “It was essentially an inmates-run-the-jail-type office. And that’s why I quit,” he testified at the time.
He told us, “I don’t like prosecutors that hide the ball with evidence, prosecutors that demonize defendants or demonize defense attorneys,” and he has the track record to back that up.
So he wants to restore order, but the right way: “Almost weekly” right now in Douglas County, “there are plea agreements in cases involving serious crimes — sex offenses, gun violence, beatings and even homicides that are pled in what looks like extremely defendant-favorable ways. What I would do obviously is try to make violent crime a priority and make sure those cases are investigated completely, fully and readily charged.”
Prosecuting KU athletes?
If Warner were elected, he would actually be in the courtroom, leading by doing, and mentoring assistant DAs. “Prosecutors want to work for a prosecutor,” Warner told us, “not an office manager.”
We’re not confident Loomis would be either; in our interview, he mentioned how important experience running an office would be in this job. But then, when asked about his own experience doing that, he said he has been a solo practitioner and mentioned his experience running intern programs.
He also touted his “40-plus years of experience” in Lawrence nonprofit and “local community work” that will allow him to “start from Day One with that base.” He did grow up in Lawrence and has many family connections, since his late father was the respected KU political scientist Burdett Loomis. But at age 44, he really should not say he’s been working at anything for 40-plus years.
Asked his thoughts on prosecuting KU athletes, should that ever be necessary, he rightly said that would depend on the circumstances. But then he volunteered that it was not fair to put alleged victims in situations where they’d be exposed to pushback from the community.
Aren’t victims always vilified, particularly when the accused is a sports figure? He said again that it’s not fair to put them in a situation like that unless the case has a strong chance of succeeding. Historically, that was the rationalization for bringing almost no such cases.
That doesn’t mean all allegations are true, of course, or that all cases should go to court. NBA player Terrence Shannon, then a player for the University of Illinois, was acquitted of rape in Douglas County last summer after only two hours of jury deliberations.
Shannon was accused of digitally penetrating an 18-year-old at the Jayhawk Cafe, but the defense suggested that a different, already similarly accused athlete might have been responsible, and showed the jury texts between the woman and her friends using dollar-sign emojis.
This was a highly unusual case, one that Valdez was suspected of bringing for political reasons months before her primary after failing to successfully prosecute other, stronger rape cases.
But Loomis seemed to be saying that the Shannon case would guide his thinking in the job: “One of the things that’s hard to I think recognize when you’re just going into the situations and start charging cases with high-profile folks is that you’re dragging in a family, you’re dragging in, oftentimes a survivor who didn’t sign up to be in the newspaper every single day and didn’t sign up to have the details of their life splashed across the front page.”
In the Shannon case, he said, there were so many hateful social media comments about the alleged victim “and that concerns me greatly because I think you’re revictimizing often.”
‘He said-she said’ in rape cases
It’s true that victims are routinely reviled, no matter how solid the case, so what’s the answer other than not prosecuting these serious crimes? “Don’t charge cases that are clear losers and don’t put someone through that situation unnecessarily.”
Not so long ago, of course, nearly all rape cases were seen as clear losers. So what does a clear loser look like to Loomis?
He said he was talking about “he said-she said” cases, without a confession or third-party witnesses or DNA. There is almost never a witness to a rape, and DNA doesn’t prove lack of consent. But particularly in the social media age, all kinds of other corroboration is possible. Which is why the whole “he said-she said” construction is generally considered an anachronistic way of looking at rape cases. Or rather, as an excuse for not looking at them.
A decade ago, Loomis was fired from his job as communications director for the Kansas Democratic Party for insulting small towns in southeast Kansas in an online forum. He was not a kid, but was 34 at the time, and a communications professional. Surely, he’s grown since then.
Today, he says he’s the better candidate because Warner, who is 71, has been retired for so long that his experience is no longer relevant. Warner retired three years ago, and since then, as we said, has been pushing for prosecutorial accountability in Kansas.
Warner answers that “my main reason for ‘un-retiring’ was to help prevent another inexperienced, under-qualified person from becoming DA just because they were” someone with “a bunch of money.”
Loomis does have much more money but Warner does have much more know-how.
