SEATTLE — Jenny Durkan’s office put away a lot of criminals — terrorists, cartel operatives, killers — during her five-year tenure as Seattle’s top federal prosecutor.
Montez Cornelius isn’t one of them.
A former Navy medic who served three tours in Iraq, Cornelius caught a break after he was charged with defrauding the government by lying about the distance he traveled to Veterans Administration appointments. Instead of being sent to prison, he entered a program Durkan pressed to create, one of the nation’s first federal drug courts. He received addiction counseling, complied with court requirements and graduated without a conviction.
“It is a life-saving program,” said Cornelius, who is now working on a master’s degree. “I had never heard of prosecutors and judges having any kind of heart for people going through the system.”
Durkan’s decision to ask U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo S. Martinez to establish the program exemplifies the sort of initiative she exhibited as U.S. attorney — a record that has some suggesting she could replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder.
“I made my voice clear to the White House,” said former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, who tapped Durkan as her personal lawyer years ago. “She is the perfect person to be named attorney general. She has provided significant leadership in the Department of Justice. We are well into the president’s second term, and we need someone who can get in and hit the ground running.”
Durkan’s chances are unknown, but Gregoire planned to make the case again when she met with Vice President Joe Biden in Boston on Thursday. Durkan’s name has also been pushed by national gay rights groups eager to see the appointment of the first openly gay Cabinet member.
“That my name is being mentioned at all is obviously an honor and a privilege, but what it’s a real testament to is the work of this office,” Durkan said in an interview before stepping down last week. “We are not only aligned with what I think the department’s priorities have been, we’ve led the way in a lot of ways.”
Among them: civil rights, including efforts to reform the Seattle Police Department. Before becoming U.S. attorney, Durkan served on police oversight panels and was concerned about what she considered recurring problems.
Following an officer’s fatal shooting of a Native American woodcarver in 2010 and other questionable uses of force against minorities, the DOJ launched an investigation, finding officers were too quick to be physical, especially in low-level situations.
Durkan and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division pushed the city into a settlement that overhauled the police department’s training, procedures and record-keeping, all aimed at reducing unnecessary uses of force, curbing biased policing and improving citizens’ trust in officers. Under the agreement, all officers are to be trained to better handle those suffering from mental illness or substance abuse.
“I don’t think you can compare the scope of a Ferguson or New Orleans to Seattle,” she said. “But I think the underlying issues we saw simmering here, we were quick to address them. The way we did the investigation, the way we invited the city into the process, and the speed with which we did it is really the new model for the Department of Justice.”
Durkan was known as a formidable litigator before being picked in the first wave of President Barack Obama’s U.S. attorney appointments. She was on the team that successfully represented the state Democratic Party when Republicans challenged the results of the 2004 election, which Gregoire won after two recounts. She delivered her closing argument just days after her father — powerful state senator and lobbyist Martin Durkan Sr. — passed away.
After being confirmed, Durkan was named to a select group of U.S. attorneys advising Holder and chaired the DOJ’s cybercrime subcommittee. She made the prosecution of digital crimes a priority and testified before Congress on cybercrime threats, which she considers “the single biggest issue looming on the horizon.”
She helped shape the department in other ways, too. She and other U.S. attorneys pushed for the FBI to begin recording interviews of suspects, a change that took effect in May.
Working at DOJ satisfied what she described as her bone-deep belief in the justice system: “I can’t think of any other job that every day you get up and that’s your job: to do the right thing.” It’s a philosophy that prompted her to call a reporter and suggest a story when automatic federal spending cuts were devastating public defenders — the lawyers who represent poor people accused of federal crimes — around the country.
Among her biggest challenges, she said, were hiring freezes that pushed the vacancy rate in her office near 20 percent. She said she tried to keep morale up by focusing on targeted initiatives that would make a difference.
That included offering to help the King County Sheriff’s Office clean up a troubled neighborhood south of Seattle and seizing crime-ridden motels in Tukwila that will now be redeveloped.
“They gave us the legal guidance and support that we needed,” Tukwila Police Chief Mike Villa said. “We’ve had a 30 percent reduction in service calls in that area. We continue to have citizens thank us.”
Two long-running investigations under Durkan ended without criminal charges: one into Washington Mutual’s collapse, the largest bank failure in the nation’s history, and the other into an explosion at an oil refinery in Anacortes that killed seven workers. The evidence in neither met the bar for prosecution, she said.
As for the drug court, which started small by design, Martinez said it’s had seven graduates so far, saving the Bureau of Prisons around $300,000 in incarceration costs.
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