An interview with Susan Krones, running for re-election as District Attorney
It is exceedingly difficult to navigate arguments surrounding the District Attorney election. The two candidates cannot seem to agree on terms to speak about each other on. Depending on who you ask, Anthony Farrington has both no experience in criminal law and a substantial amount of experience in criminal law. Varied word-of-mouth assessments of Susan Krones paint the contradictory picture of an excellent District Attorney and one that is unambitious. In order to gain some clarity on capabilities of the two candidates, I conducted an interview with each of them. I asked each of them similar questions, in order to offer metrics of political comparison that have some integrity to them. Most press surrounding each candidate mostly concerns itself with their character, and trite “He doesn’t/She doesn’t” finger-pointing arguments. While good character is undoubtedly an important quality to have in any elected official, questions of character should not come at the expense of thorough and non-biased questions about each candidate’s skill, expertise, and vision. I hope the two interviews I’ve conducted offer some neutral clarity on the ambivalence of this election.
Q: How did you develop an interest in politics?
A: Well, I wouldn’t call it politics. I’m not a politician.
I’ve wanted to be a prosecutor and lawyer since I was a teenager. So I followed that path and went to college, and then law school. After I graduated and passed the bar, I went into the military as an attorney. So I’d always wanted to be a lawyer, and leaned toward the field of criminal law. But I never wanted to be a politician. I ran for DA four years ago because the DA in my office was running for judge, and no one stood up to fill his position. As the one person that was running for the position at the time had no experience as a prosecutor, I felt I had to do something and stepped up to run for the position.
Q: What was practicing law in the military like?
A: It was really interesting! The experience was varied. I was a defense attorney in Germany for a time. I was a prosecutor at the Presidio of San Francisco, and also served on the medical board. I was also the head of the 7th corps civil division. The military provided a wide variety of training for me. Military justice code is somewhat similar to criminal code in various states, but there are unique features of military justice code, as well as unique procedures. And a military jury is not a jury as most people know it to be—- it’s a panel of officers and enlisted military members, rather than elected jury members.
Q: So it’s like military-based jury duty?
A: Right. Everyone serving on the jury is in the military and is appointed by the commander of the base.
Q: Does any case you worked on during that time stick out in your memory?
A: I prosecuted a doctor that had been pretending to a be doctor in the military for several years without anyone’s notice. I’ve prosecuted a number of child sexual assault cases, and sometimes had to defend individuals that were charged with that. I’ve also prosecuted murder cases.
Q: What does the job of the District Attorney entail? What sort of responsibilities does the office hold?
A: We prosecute criminal cases in Lake County. We sometimes have attorneys help investigate cases, but we primarily prosecute cases. We get cases from all the offices of county jurisdiction— from the Clearlake and Lakeport Police Departments, to the Sheriff’s Office, to the Department of Fish and Wild Life. We receive cases, review them, and, if we have sufficient evidence, we bring them to court and prosecute them. A significant amount of cases don’t go to a jury trial. We plea bargain when we can, but cases often have to go to a jury trial. We also investigate officer-involved shootings and related incidents to minimize the conflict of interest of an agency investigating itself.
Q: Is the District Attorney him or herself the manager of all of the attorneys working on the cases the office receives?
A: Yes. As DA, I supervise and manage all of the attorneys in the office, the investigators, office staff, and the victim-witness office. I also have a chief deputy who assists me in the management of all those people.
Q: What aspects of the District Attorney’s office would you like to improve, if re-elected? Can you speak to your longterm vision of the office?
A: The office is currently short-staffed. We’re currently down by about five deputy attorneys. The shortage is somewhat due to the pandemic, but not entirely. During the pandemic we weren’t doing very many jury trials, the courts were closed for many months, and we had limited court appearances. I want to build back the office. DA offices across the state are understaffed. They’re not able to recruit deputy attorneys like they used to— we’re getting fewer applications than ever before. I think this because a lot of individuals want to practice private law, or have an interest in practicing something besides criminal law. In regard to recruitment, it’s true that Lake County has the disadvantage of being rural and not paying as much as some of our neighboring counties. But, we also have the lake and recreational facilities, we don’t have traffic, and our crime-rate is relatively low, compared to other counties. I want to attract more individuals into the county and recruit deputy attorneys into the office. I would also like to create a mental health court. We currently have a veteran’s court. If a veteran pleas guilty to an offense that they can verify they committed as a result of something like PTSD, they join a veteran’s court. In that court, they’re among other veterans and have access to drug and mental health rehabilitation programs that can give them the help they need.
Q: If Anthony Farrington won the election, what might his first four years in office look like, compared to your first four years?
A: He would have to learn on the job. This would prove to be a huge difficulty because when you become the DA, you’re supposed to be the top prosecutor. But he doesn’t know criminal law— he’s never sat through a criminal jury trial, never prosecuted anyone, and has never sent anyone to jail or prison.
His only experience in a criminal case is as a defense attorney, which is entirely different from being a prosecutor. As I mentioned before, we’re currently understaffed, with a few attorneys about to entire retirement. If he’s elected, he’ll have to find a lot of people to fill their positions. And it would be hard for the people he hires to have the person in the top position telling them what to do when he himself doesn’t have any experience in criminal jury trials. Because of the staff situation, I’m what they call a working DA— I’m constantly in court, handling cases. Mr. Farrington would have to assume the same sort of role if he were elected, and without me or my chief deputy attorney in the office, Mr. Farrington won’t have anyone with experience working with him. This would make the clarification of procedural questions and references to past cases much harder to answer. This would put the office in pretty bad shape.
Q: At the Clearlake Breakfast forum a few weeks ago, you said that one of the biggest challenges facing the District Attorney’s office concerns securing more legal rights for victims of criminal cases and catching up on the backlog of trial cases. How do you plan to go about addressing these challenges, if re-elected?
A: We’re making some headway with backlogs. For a time, we weren’t holding any jury trials. To reduce the backlog of misdemeanor trials, I’d like to do what we did back in 2021: We ordered a bunch of defendants and defense attorneys to the fairgrounds, and we spent all day coming up with depositions right then, instead of waiting for a designated court date to do so. We also had Behavioral Health and Work Service employees there. This way, if they were going to sign up for probation or a drug rehabilitation program, they could do so immediately. If we host another event like that, we can clear up a lot of pending cases from 2020 and 2021.
In regard to victims’ rights, a lot of current legislation surrounding criminal cases is beginning to allow for convicted criminals to get out of jail before their sentence ends. This often proves to be problematic for the victims of criminal cases. In order to combat early prison releases that negatively affect victims, my office will continue to sit on parole hearings and not advocate for their early release.
Q: To close, what’s one question you’d like to ask Mr.Farrington?
A: I’d like to know what his real motivations for running for District Attorney are. I don’t believe that he thinks crime is increasing in Lake County, and that he’s the only one that can fix it. I imagine he has higher aspirations, like running for Judge, but I don’t understand why an individual with no criminal law prosecution experience thinks that they should be the top prosecutor.