Democrat El Paso district attorney candidates call for sweeping changes in DA's office

The El Paso District Attorney's Office is currently in a "dangerous" state as the office deals with understaffing and the aftermath of the resignation of the previously elected district attorney, candidates vying for the seat said during a debate.

Nancy Casas, James Montoya and Alma Trejo — the three Democrats running for the El Paso district attorney position — made their cases as to why they should be elected to the highest law enforcement seat in West Texas during a Thursday, Jan. 18 debate hosted by the El Paso Chamber.

Current District Attorney Bill Hicks also was invited to the debate, but declined. Hicks, the only Republican candidate seeking the office, said he felt it was inappropriate to join debates until the Democratic party had selected its candidate for the general election.

The three Democrats will face off in the March 5 primary election to determine who will face Hicks in the November general election. Early voting for the primary election runs from Feb. 20 to March 1.

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More than 40 El Pasoans, including many prominent leaders in the legal community, attended the hourlong debate held at the Sundt Construction Offices, 909 Texas Ave., near Downtown. The debate was moderated by El Paso County Attorney Jo Anne Bernal.

El Paso District Attorney's Office in "dangerous" state, lacks community trust

In stark contrast to 2020 election debates, this group of candidates touted its close ties to previous District Attorney Jaime Esparza, who led the office for more than 28 years before not seeking re-election in 2020.

The majority of candidates in the 2020 election campaigned on a need for change from the nearly three decades of Esparza's leadership. Yvonne Rosales, who won the 2020 election, campaigned strongly attacking the Esparza administration and won the seat in a runoff election against Montoya, a top prosecutor in the Esparza administration.

However, after Rosales resigned from office amid allegations of incompetency, including the mishandling of the El Paso Walmart mass shooter case, the 2024 election candidates focused on their experience working for Esparza and the need to return to programs he created under his tenure.

"If there's one thing I need you to know before you go home tonight is that the district attorney's office here is in a dangerously precarious situation," Montoya said. "I don't mean to be an alarmist, but it is not an understatement to say that the DA's office right now is barely getting by to this day. The DA's office has never fully recovered from Ms. Rosales' mass terminations in 2021. To this day, the office remains critically understaffed and the lawyers that are there are undertrained and they're overwhelmed."

The candidates focused on Rosales not retaining more than 25% of the previous administration's staff as soon as she took office. A backlog of thousands of cases has also plagued the DA's office because of the staffing cuts by Rosales and Hicks' alleged inability to hire and maintain attorneys, the candidates said.

"I was one of the attorneys that was not retained by the last elected administration," said Casas, currently an assistant county attorney and who previously worked as an assistant district attorney under Esparza. "The three initiatives that I need to do when I go to the DA's office is making sure that we address the backlog that still continues and that we recognize, retain and recruit staffing, attorneys specifically, but also staff members. The third thing is making sure that we collaborate more with the community because all of those things have been lost."

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Trejo, who served as judge for the El Paso County Criminal Court #1 since 2002 until she announced her bid for district attorney, said her focus would be actively recruiting staff and "thinking outside the box" in hiring, including part-time or contract employees. Trejo also worked as a prosecutor for Esparza from 1993 to when she was elected as a judge.

"The number one problem facing the district attorney's office is the lack of ADAs (assistant district attorneys)," Trejo said. "I can tell you, I've had a front seat to the criminal justice system for 31 years. I can tell you that the last time that I had two prosecutors, which is what's necessary in order for cases to proceed, was during Mr. Esparza's administration. What that means is courts have had to cut down their dockets by half. If you only have one prosecutor, you can only do 50% of the job."

Leadership, management of district attorney's budget, staff

When questioned about the district attorney's handling of a $20 million budget, the three candidates argued over whether the role was more of an administrative or a litigation position.

Trejo said the district attorney position is more of being an administrator with "95 percent" of the job focusing on managing a budget and gathering resources for the office. She stressed her experience of managing high-profile offices and budgets.

"My time as the local administrator judge, I handled a $6 million budget," Trejo said. "I was responsible for making sure that every court had resources and if there was not enough resources as in staffing, then I would have to go to commissioner's court. And we actually did that. We started data metrics. And why is that important? Because how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you're at? The judiciary has been using metrics since 2015, and that's why I honestly think we have one of the best judiciaries in the state. I've had to reclassify employees. I've had to hire employees. I've had to fire employees. I've had to evaluate employees.

" These are the things; everything that the DA does, I've done before. I do not need training wheels on day one. I do not need a team to come and carry me and show me what to do. I am the team."

More: District Attorney Bill Hicks making progress on Walmart case, but case backlog lingers

A generalization of the position as mostly administrative, Montoya argued, is what led to the issues under the Rosales administration.

"With what the DA's office does, it is not enough to be an administrator," Montoya said. "What the office needs now is a leader. For someone to say 'I can do it by myself' is dangerous because that's the same mentality Ms. Rosales had when she let go of all these folks, 'I can do this by myself.' Anybody who's operated an organization of 200 employees with a budget of $20 million knows you need people, a team of people to come in and help you.

"You're not running around doing it all by yourself. When you think about what the president does, does the president do the budget himself? Is he running around? No. You bring in a team of folks to help you delegate. I'm not a budget expert by any means. Thank God the county has a budget department, has a fiscal department. Those are folks that I intend to rely on. I'm not ashamed to say that, but what the office needs is a trial lawyer to lead an office of 90 trial lawyers. That's what you need."

Casas focused on creating a team to tackle the issues to better serve the community.

"After 19 years of doing criminal law, I started doing general counsel work, and at the time, I wasn't sure how I was going to pivot," Casas said. "Now that I'm running for district attorney, I realize how important those 18 months were because now I realize the importance of the budget, going to the commissioner's court, doing contract review, asking the county attorney for advice on going forward.

"I have been on boards and understand what the fiduciary duty is. You bring in teams. I had a team and it was maybe a small team, maybe not 190, 178 people, but I had 14 staff members who all had different cultural backgrounds. You have to learn how to work together as a team, have to understand one another to see how we can better make each other more efficient and what is best going forward."

Candidates find common ground on criminal issues facing El Paso

All three candidates said they would focus on violent crimes, work with law enforcement and other agencies to address crime-related issues impacting El Paso and work on addressing mental health issues in the criminal justice system.

They all pledged to bring back prosecutorial units to the district attorney's office, which were created under the Esparza administration but removed by Rosales. The units include prosecutors dedicated to handling victims of family violence and sexual assaults. The candidates added they would prioritize crimes against women and children.

Aaron Martinez may be reached at amartinez1@elpasotimes.com or on Twitter @AMartinezEPT.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Democrat El Paso district attorney candidates face off in debate