A ‘death spiral’: Why Shasta prosecutors are leaving the county

About six and a half years ago, Nolan Weber moved with his wife from Los Angeles to Shasta County to work as a prosecutor at the district attorney’s office. 

He and his wife quickly fell in love with the area and decided to stay. A year and a half ago as they were considering having their first child together, Weber, who was prosecuting violent crime, began pushing for better health insurance options from the county. But he said his request wasn’t successful. 

It was the start of a more than year-long battle with the county to improve benefits and pay for Shasta’s attorneys. After little to no success, Weber — along with five other prosecutors — have decided to leave Shasta for what they see as better opportunities elsewhere. 

Weber is one of several of Shasta’s attorneys leaving for the Butte County District Attorney’s Office, which offered major pay boosts for a lower caseload, Weber said. Now, the county is facing a “critical” prosecutor shortage. 

The DA’s office will soon be left with only 16 out of 28 prosecutor positions filled, leaving the office operating at 57% capacity. Shasta’s elected District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced earlier this month that the staffing losses will necessitate a temporary reduction in the number of cases the office files, prioritizing cases that involve significant public safety threats. 

Shasta’s prosecutor shortage is part of a nationwide problem that’s driven in part by financial factors. Adam Gershowitz is a law professor at William & Mary Law School who has written multiple research papers about the nationwide prosecutor vacancy crisis. Speaking about Shasta, he emphasized the importance of appropriate compensation. 

“If you want folks to keep doing those jobs,” he said, “you have to compensate them correctly.” 

‘The only thing they’ll listen to now is pain’

Two deputy district attorneys who spoke to Shasta Scout for this story, including Weber, said Shasta County has been struggling with a shortage for years that’s largely caused by the county’s uncompetitive pay. The shortage — combined with the high number of cases local law enforcement agencies bring to the DA’s office — has made workloads enormous, Weber and others have said. 

During his interview for his new role, Weber said Butte’s DA called this situation a “death spiral.” 

Law professor Gershowitz made the same point with a different analogy, explaining that when prosecutors quit, their cases get reassigned to other prosecutors, making their workloads even higher. 

“That makes the job less attractive for that person and makes it more likely that that person is going to quit,” he said. “It’s like a hamster wheel that keeps spinning in the wrong direction.” 

At Butte, Weber said he’ll be getting an about $80,000 pay raise along with a smaller, more manageable workload. 

“Why would I stay?” he asked. 

The Shasta DA’s office has repeatedly pushed the Shasta County Board of Supervisors for more funding to increase pay and retention bonuses, as well as to add more positions. But a board majority voted for only minimal changes to the DA’s budget last year, adding a single position and a job reclassification.

DA Bridgett has described the DA’s office as the bottleneck of the criminal justice system, saying law enforcement agencies such as the Redding Police Department and Shasta County Sheriff’s Office bring in a high number of cases for the DA’s office to prosecute. She’s pointed out that counties with a similar workload have 50 prosecutors on average, which is about triple Shasta’s current prosecutor workforce.

Weber was on the bargaining team for the DA’s office, which negotiates with the county for higher pay. Last year during bargaining sessions, he said the county only offered very minor raises and wouldn’t compromise with the prosecutors when they asked for raises that would be more competitive with other counties. 

According to Weber, when the attorneys emphasized that the county has a prosecutor retention and recruitment issue, the board of supervisors called their characterization of the county “offensive.” 

The board’s failure to budge largely occurred under the direction of Supervisor Kevin Crye, Weber said, referencing negotiations in closed session. He attributed a substantial portion of the failed pay raise attempts to Crye’s leadership. 

“We tried to attack this from all angles,” Weber said. “… They were just completely stone-headed to the point where the only thing they’ll listen to now is pain, which they’re now going to inflict upon the community, as victims will get less justice, they will not see their cases filed on time, they will not see restitution orders generated in time.” 

Several Shasta prosecutors have been featured in videos on Redding City Council member Erin Resner’s campaign Facebook page over the last week. She’s running for Crye’s seat on the county board. The videos have specifically targeted Crye, holding him accountable for the pending pain of a prosecutor shortage. Resner said the prosecutors approached her, asking to make the videos for her campaign.

“Under Kevin Crye’s leadership, Shasta County is losing the prosecutors that put violent criminals behind bars,” said Theo Workman in one video. He prosecutes violent felonies and home invasion and car theft cases and is one of the prosecutors leaving for Butte.

Crye did not answer questions regarding the statements made against him by the prosecutors. 

He and others on the board decided against offering more significant funding to the DA’s office in the past, not only through pay raises, but also when it comes to adding new positions, improving office infrastructure and acquiring new equipment to assist in investigations.

During budget hearings last year, current board of supervisors Chair Chris Kelstrom compared his review of the DA’s office’s funding requests to looking through a Toys-R-Us catalog with his five-year-old daughter for Christmas, saying “much to her chagrin, she found out that not everything is free.”

Weber said the county’s failure to increase funding for the DA’s office is at odds with its prioritization of public safety, explaining that prosecutors are a major component of local law enforcement. 

Earlier this month, Supervisor Matt Plummer posted a video on Facebook addressing the prosecutor shortage. He said he can’t blame the attorneys who are leaving for Butte. 

Plummer thinks that the county needs to institute a retention bonus for the prosecutors who are still here, along with reducing their workload and increasing their pay. He also explained why he’s been hesitant to go down this road, noting the county’s overall lack of funding. 

He said the board may have to pull from other sources, such as the jail infrastructure fund or other public safety agencies, to pay for better compensation for prosecutors. 

“We probably should’ve done something more seriously in the past,” he said. “We did a little bit last year. The problem, and I’ll take responsibility for it in part, is that we didn’t have this other funding source to look to, aside from pulling from the jail infrastructure fund. But this is something we’re probably going to have to do at this point.”

During this past Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, Supervisor Allen Long said he recently met with the DA’s office to discuss the prosecutor shortage, calling it a significant issue for the county. 

“We’ve got obviously kind of an existential crisis in our hands,” he said, “and we’re going to have to creatively look at ways to bolster and recruit and retain district attorney prosecutors.” 

‘Cases are not going to be prosecuted’

Noah Kincaid prosecutes domestic violence, sexual abuse, child abuse and stalking cases for the DA’s office. He’s planning to stay at the office for the foreseeable future, but he said he doesn’t blame other attorneys for leaving. 

He said a major reason why many prosecutors seek better pay is because they have a lot of debt from law school that they need to pay off. When that’s a consideration, along with starting a family and buying a home, a competitive salary is an important factor, he said. 

He also explained that the prosecutor shortage is more than just a numbers problem, saying the DA’s office is losing years of specialized experience. 

Because of Shasta’s comparatively low starting salary, only entry-level prosecutors would be interested in working here, Kincaid believes. New attorneys typically start with prosecuting misdemeanors, he said, then work their way up to felonies and other specialized cases if they make it past an initial trial period, which can take around a year.

Since Shasta is losing prosecutors with specialties in subjects like drugs, violent felonies, arson and murder, it’ll likely take years until their experience can be replaced, Kincaid said. He added that if the county doesn’t pay a competitive wage, it won’t get competitive applicants. 

“You’re losing specialized people that other DA’s offices, such as Butte, see the value of,” he said. “… We’re not in a position to hire the cream of the crop. The only place we’re in a position to, is to hire somebody who has no experience.” 

Kincaid also pointed out that some misdemeanor cases have a limited timeline for prosecution, meaning those cases could time out before they’re even looked at by a prosecutor with high case loads. 

“It’s not just a matter of, like, ‘Oh well, there’s going to be a backlog,’” he said. “Cases are not going to be prosecuted.” 

Gershowitz, the law professor from William & Mary, said this is a concern for both the victims of crimes and those charged. 

He raised the additional point that some people who are arrested aren’t guilty. If prosecutors are too busy to look at that individual’s case and they can’t afford to post bail, he said, they could lose their job or housing from being incarcerated as they wait through delays in the justice process. 

“There’s just a sort of litany of problems that cascade when the prosecutor cannot look at the case quickly and determine whether it’s really a good enough case to move it forward,” he said.

Gershowitz added that there are several factors today that contribute to the prosecutor vacancy crisis that didn’t exist years ago. For example, police body-worn cameras have been implemented in recent years, and prosecutors usually have to watch the resulting videos when reviewing cases, which can add several hours for each case. 

At the end of the day, Kincaid said he’s not feeling optimistic. 

“We haven’t felt the impact yet of people leaving,” he said. “It’s coming.” 

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