Carson City District Attorney details priorities for new term

The Carson City District Attorney’s Office must balance public involvement – visiting with community clubs, the Chamber of Commerce and others – with the need to protect the integrity of investigations, prosecutions and litigations. It’s a difficult but necessary balance, the way District Attorney Jason Woodbury described it.

“Our obligation is to let the evidence and facts guide us to appropriate decisions,” Woodbury said Dec. 5.

That means making decisions without personal, social or political bias.

“I’m proud that in Carson City, this office is a nonpartisan office,” Woodbury said.

The 49-year-old DA is entering his third term come the new year, and he and members of his office talked to the Appeal about challenges and priorities on the horizon, including victim-centered training for sensitive criminal cases, an overhaul of municipal code in the civil division, and making the office as transparent and efficient as possible.

The office handles between 2,500 and 3,000 criminal cases a year, a mix of felonies, misdemeanors and traffic cases. The latter, traffic cases, will be handled differently in the new year thanks to a change in state law.

Nevada Assembly Bill 116 changes some traffic incidents to civil infractions and grants courts discretion in adjudicating them. The change will save the local DA’s office about 16 employee-hours a week, Woodbury estimated.

“We have been looking forward to that for a long time,” he said.

Even with remaining criminal cases, Woodbury said he wants his office to process them efficiently. He estimated an average six-month time for misdemeanors and a year for felonies. Some cases take longer due to their complexity, he said, but he wants that percentage to be small.

Efficiency doesn’t mean impatience or insensitivity. In fact, the DA’s office started forensic-interview training on Dec. 5 with social workers from the state and members of the Carson City Sheriff’s Office. Provided by CornerHouse, a Minnesota-based child advocacy center, the training certifies those working with child victims on best practices for interviewing, so the information procured holds up in court.

As Chief Deputy DA Garrit Pruyt put it, this helps those working with child victims get a “full and complete account” of a crime without prolonging what can be a painful process.

Pruyt said the cost of bringing trainers to Nevada is minimal compared to flying attorneys and law enforcement officers across the country: under $600 per person compared to upward of $3,000 per person.

Woodbury added that he would like to see his office expanded with separate waiting and check-in areas for child victims.

It’s not an unrealistic goal. The Carson City Board of Supervisors has been weighing options to expand the courthouse, where the DA is located, for greater long-term capacity. In September, estimates for the expansion came in at $6 million to $10 million, though actual construction is years out. Woodbury said any renovation is an opportunity to design space “with victims at the forefront.”

In the meantime, the DA’s office is focusing on civil issues as well. An ambitious overhaul of municipal code has been ongoing and will continue into the new year.

“It’s a complex matter,” said Assistant DA Dan Yu, who oversees the civil division.

He and others have been combing through municipal code, searching for overlap, redundancies and areas that need to be updated to match evolving state law.

For example, Title 18 deals with land use and zoning and is currently receiving such an overhaul. Zoning categories and definitions are being reviewed and revised before being presented to the Board of Supervisors for approval.

Yu said the civil division wants to make code clearer and more consistent. Whether it’s members of the public reading the law or elected officials applying the law, the goal, Yu said, is to “understand what can and cannot be done.”

Woodbury acknowledged planning and zoning issues can be controversial. He said his office’s job is to “establish clear rules of the game.”

He also talked about thinking outside the box, in both civil and criminal matters. He pointed to “a very sensitive case” in 2020 involving the death of an individual and the office’s use of a coroner’s inquest and jury. The result was a finding of justified self-defense.

Earlier this year, Woodbury mentioned the coroner’s inquest when he announced he was running for re-election.

“That was the first coroner’s inquest here in decades, and it’s a procedure we plan to utilize in the future,” he said in a statement. “An inquest allows my office to present a full picture of the evidence in an open, public, 100 percent transparent proceeding.”

Talking to the Appeal on Dec. 5, Woodbury was transparent about something else: his support of the right of deputy district attorneys to organize into a bargaining unit as allowed under state law.

Last month, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to recognize the Carson City Deputy District Attorney Association. The group is comprised of more than half a dozen deputy attorneys in the DA’s criminal and juvenile divisions, representing more than 50 percent of employees in the bargaining unit. Those in the civil division are prohibited from membership, per state law.

The new association’s bylaws state no member or the association itself will strike against Carson City “under any circumstances.”

“There’s lots of common ground,” Woodbury said, adding the new bargaining group could lead to improvement.

Woodbury also noted the sheriff’s office’s relatively new car and body camera program. He said the footage can be valuable in court proceedings but also in investigating complaints against police officers.

“It saves officers a lot more than it hurts,” he said.

Woodbury emphasized that any decision his office makes will leave someone unhappy, such is the nature of law. Nonetheless, he said he is committed to transparency and public trust.

“There is nothing more transparent than a trial or public meeting,” he said.

For information about the DA’s office, visit https://www.carson.org/government/departments-a-f/district-attorney-s-office/carson-city-district-attorney.