Prosecutors’ Offices: There Are Big Differences

While both the U.S. attorney’s office and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office prosecute criminals, the differences between them are enormous--both in substance and style.

The district attorney’s office has seven times as many lawyers, and handles a staggering load of about 261,000 cases a year--including about 56,000 felonies.

In contrast, assistant U.S. attorneys have the luxury of selecting only the most important and complex federal investigations to prosecute--about 1,000 to 1,200 criminal cases annually.

While most federal prosecutors see their jobs as good training for future careers in private practice, the district attorney’s office attracts more career prosecutors. One reason is that the pay for deputy district attorneys is considerably higher after the first few years.

Salaries for assistant federal prosecutors range from $42,000 to $67,000, while the district attorney’s office has 150 senior prosecutors who earn $76,000 a year--$3,000 more than the annual salary of U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, in charge of hiring for the district attorney’s office, emphasized the experience level of the 748 deputy district attorneys in describing the district attorney’s office, noting that half have been prosecutors for 10 years or more.

Livesay also said the trial ability of his deputies is “at least” as high as that in the U.S. attorney’s office.

He added that the district attorney’s office is more “flamboyant.”

Many veterans of the U.S. attorney’s office agree with Livesay that top state prosecutors are both more colorful than most federal prosecutors as well as being their match in courtroom skill and savvy.

But they side with Bonner in the view that assistant U.S. attorneys are generally harder workers and are generally better at writing legal briefs and arguing complicated appellate issues.

“Most district attorney offices tend to be career-type positions,” Bonner said. “I think it’s important to have a nucleus of highly experienced assistants. I don’t think it’s desirable to have a majority. After awhile, they can lose the drive and turn into 9-to-5ers.”

Former Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander H. Williams III, who was appointed a Superior Court judge in 1984, agrees with Bonner that federal prosecutors clearly put in more hours on the job than most local prosecutors.

“The work ethic in the U.S. attorney’s office is dramatically higher than the entire state system. We used to know in the U.S. attorney’s office that we would be very lucky to ever find a D.A. in after 4 p.m.,” said Williams, a claim Livesay denounced as totally false.

John L. Kuray, 33, a graduate of the University of San Diego Law School, spent five years with the district attorney’s office before switching to the U.S. attorney’s office in 1984 to work on narcotics cases. He has just transferred to the narcotics and dangerous drug section of the Justice Department in Washington.

“I was mainly interested in doing complex narcotics investigations as well as prosecutions,” Kuray said. “Over there, it tends to be reactive prosecutions: the police bring in a case and the D.A.s file.”

Kuray said he tried “easily over 100 cases” as a state prosecutor, compared to a dozen as an assistant U.S. attorney. He added that he thinks most deputy district attorneys are “as good or better” than their federal counterparts in terms of trial tactics and techniques, but are too busy scrambling from case to case to focus very long on any single prosecution.

“The D.A.s are a looser group,” Kuray said. “The U.S. attorney’s office doesn’t seem to have the color. I think I had more fun in the D.A.’s office. I think I became a better attorney in the U.S. attorney’s office.”