Prosecutor Bill Mason to Address Issue of Drug Case Disparities
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Leila Atassi
10/21/2008
During a debate at the City Club of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Bill Mason, states that he is now willing to look for solutions to racial disparity in his office.
Former federal prosecutor Annette Butler, who hopes to unseat Mason in November, challenged the prosecutor using stories that ran Sunday and Monday in The Plain Dealer, analyzing the outcomes of hundreds of criminal cases since 2004. The investigation found that black defendants were more likely to be convicted of felonies than their white counterparts who committed similar crimes.
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[Mason] highlighted a report produced in 2004 by the Denver-based Justice Management Institute, which extensively studied the county court system and provided 36 recommendations to improve its efficiency. The Justice Management Institute recently returned to evaluate the county’s improvement and rated it a B+.
Mason and the justice system reform council, however, have not done enough, Butler said. Mason has ignored the institute’s suggestions to adopt open discovery, she added. The practice would require prosecutors and defense attorneys to share evidence with one another.