As midterm elections approach, the fight for Onondaga County’s district attorney seat has brought two newcomers challenging longtime incumbent William Fitzpatrick. 

Chuck Keller, an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and criminal defense attorney, is running against Fitzpatrick as a Democrat. Gary Lavine, who works at a Syracuse law firm, has been endorsed by the Conservative Party. 

“No one else in our society has the power over life, liberty, and reputation that a prosecutor does,” Lavine said. “The first order of business is having the self-awareness that there is a higher calling. The higher calling is to do justice and tell the truth.” 

The three candidates disagree on how the future district attorney should apply them to a well-established judicial system. 

In a given county, the district attorney oversees the prosecutor’s office and is responsible for considering, investigating and potentially charging active cases in coordination with law enforcement officials. The DA also presents evidence to grand juries and makes recommendations to a presiding judge for a defendant’s bail, charges and length of prison sentence.

District attorneys are elected for four-year terms by popular vote in a general election. This year, voting will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 5 in Onondaga County.

The Onondaga County Democratic Committee has endorsed Keller, whose campaign has mainly focused on bail reform and prison alternatives. He hopes to increase scrutiny toward Fitzpatrick’s management of bail reform through consistent review while in office.

Echoing Keller’s calls for systemic changes within the judicial system was Syracuse native and Republican Lavine, who currently serves as counsel to Bousquet Holstein PLLC. Lavine is also a member of the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics. 

Lavine said his campaign, which is endorsed by the Onondaga County Conservative Party, is focused on “restoring integrity” to the position Republican incumbent Fitzpatrick has held for 27 years. 

Lavine said that Fitzpatrick covered for former DA investigator Peter Rauch years before he drove while drunk and killed a teenager. Lavine referenced the alleged cover-up on campaign mailers, according to Syracuse.com.

The alleged incident is one of several matters of controversy Lavine said he felt deemed Fitzpatrick an unethical prosecutor.

Throughout his seven terms in office, Fitzpatrick has been challenged three times, according to Syracuse.com. 

Since taking office in 1992, Fitzpatrick said the platforms and policies of district attorneys across the nation have changed for the better. Initially, prosecutors ran on popular platforms that emphasized conviction rates and longer prison sentences. Now, national trends have since shifted to embrace more progressive outlooks that favor decriminalization of lower-level crimes, he said. 

While Fitzpatrick said he’s glad prosecutors are no longer follow the “tough-on-crime” approach, he said he doesn’t fully support progressive decriminalization. 

“I know we call them ‘progressive,’ to me they’re frankly regressive,” he said.

Instead, Fitzpatrick said he has focused his career on identifying underlying factors that contribute to crime and conviction rates. He also emphasized his role in facilitating transformation at the local level. Fitzpatrick promoted eight diversion programs — which exclusively handle cases dealing with adolescents, people experiencing mental illness and other at-risk groups — during his tenure.

Ideally, an understanding of the factors behind crime and conviction rates, applied to the county’s diversion programs, would continue to lower New York’s already-low incarceration rates, he said. 

“Is that a system that cries out for reform? I think that’s a system that cries out to be replicated,” Fitzpatrick said.

Recounting his over two-decade-long career as a defense attorney, Keller claimed the diversion programs are currently ineffective because a defendant’s participation in them is dependent upon them first entering a guilty plea. 

Keller said issues relating to justice should not rely on partisanship, but accountability. Lavine echoed this, expressing his hopes that the election’s votes will reflect a lack of partisanship. Fitzpatrick said at the end of the day, the DA’s primary responsibility is to ensure safety and justice for both victims and defendants.

Having challengers in the DA’s race provides a means of achieving that goal, Lavine said.

“I personally cannot look the other way,” Lavine said. “Indifference and inaction lead to tyranny, and that’s what we have in this county now.”

Published on October 20, 2019 at 10:11 pm

Contact Marnie: ammunozc@syr.edu