3 days Ago
District Attorney Hillar Moore speaks during a press conference regarding a drug bust at Baton Rouge Police Department Headquarters on Thursday, August 15, 2024. At the start of September, East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore's office had nearly 15,000 active cases. It's a large load for his 65 or so attorneys, Moore said.
But there is no money to hire more, and he struggles to hold onto the talent he has due to the relatively low salaries his office is able to pay. Moore thinks it is starting to affect cases. "We try not to let money stand in the way of doing justice, but sometimes it does," he said.
Calling his office "historically underfunded," Moore said it is time to consider options to increase funding — like a voter-approved sales tax or help from the state Legislature. Keeping up with demand While the wheels of government can move slowly, crime rates often do not. In the first half of this year, Baton Rouge saw an increase in homicides while most of the rest of the country saw a decrease in killings.
"There's always constant demands," said Jon Daily, CPA for the DA's Office. "So a budget for an agency that's charged with representing the state in all criminal proceedings should be responsive to the demands of crime." Although he represents the most-populated parish in the state, Moore says his office is given less funding at the state level than his counterparts in Orleans Parish.
The state awards each DA's office a certain number of warrants each year to pay assistant district attorneys. Each warrant pays a $50,000 salary. Moore's office receives 55 such warrants — though it employs 65 ADAs.
It must make up the difference in salaries from the city-parish's general fund. Though Orleans Parish is less populated, its DA gets 83 warrants, and with additional money from its parish receives about 20% more than Moore's office. Moore acknowledges that New Orleans sees more homicides each year.
But he also notes the city is made up of multiple parishes, meaning New Orleans murder cases are tried by multiple district attorneys' offices. Newly announced BRPD Chief Thomas Morse talks with District Attorney Hillar C. Moore, III, after the announcement was made on Thursday, December 21, 2023 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Funding also hasn't kept up with a changing landscape of criminal investigations in which new technology that can make a stronger case often demands more time from investigators, Moore argues. "We've gone from fingerprint now to DNA," he said. "And as good as that DNA is, it takes so much longer than a fingerprint analysis.
" Getting information from inside password-protected cellphones takes much longer than many might think, "sometimes years," Moore said. Trying cases used to rely on reading police reports of an incident. While not as rigorous, reading a report was much quicker than reviewing police body camera footage, which demands more of his staff's time.
In the office's current state, Moore's CPA said he constantly feels as though he is operating in crisis mode, making sure investigations are funded and hours are available to devote to them. "It's like you're having to fill in gaps and move puzzle pieces around just to try and keep up, just to try and stay afloat, much less keep everyone happy and keep morale in a place that's manageable," Daily said. Moore said his office recently has experienced a high volume of witnesses in need of witness protection that it is unable to keep up with, forcing some of his staff to pay out of their own pockets to make sure these people are housed safely.
"They're at risk to be shot or killed. (Housing them) is not an official part of our job and not in the job description, but we need living witnesses to build cases and prosecute people. So we're just kind of taking that on," he said.
DA tax approved in WBR In seeking outside funding, Moore said he can go to the state Legislature for help and possibly receive more warrants — not just for his ADAs, but also for other employees like investigators and victim assistance counselors. But another method he is considering is proposing a sales tax to parish voters, as 18th District Court District Attorney Tony Clayton did in West Baton Rouge, Iberville and Pointe Coupee parishes. Experiencing similar funding woes, Clayton put a quarter-cent sales tax on the ballot and voters approved it, equating to an estimated $7 million to $8 million annually in additional funds for his office.
"It's all about neighborhood safety and protection of our families and our children," Clayton said about voters approving the tax. "Folks just believe that, you know, they work hard all day. When they come home, they want peace and the sanctity to know that their families are protected.
So it's a small price to pay ...
but it allows them to have some comfort." He said an underfunded DA's office is "absolutely an issue of public safety," as it serves as the mouthpiece to fighting crime and the organizer of evidence against offenders. "We are the last line of defense in convicting these criminals," Clayton said.
"In my opinion, you ought to call us district attorneys and ADAs public defenders, because we're the ones who truly defend the public." Clayton said the additional funding has paid off in a big way, allowing his office to utilize new technology to comb through offenders' social media and flag relevant posts. It also has allowed him to hire more investigators to listen to hours of jail phone calls, something he did not have the staffing numbers to do at the same level he can now.
"Everybody has a right to remain silent, but most of these bad actors don't have the ability to do it," Clayton said. "So we've got to be on top of it with the technology to make sure that we were listening." In East Baton Rouge, Moore is quick to note that he understands his office is far from the only one that some might deem underfunded.
With any sales tax he proposes, he would want to include funding for the public defender's office too to avoid any unfair advantage. "I want to be a team player," he said. A proposed tax could be packaged with funding for the parish prison too, something many believe is in dire need of increased funding.
Local voters are always wary of a tax proposal of any kind, Moore said, and any effort would need a pricey campaign to go with it. If approved, it also would come with risk, as the city-parish could come back and say "Look, you don't need as much of our money anymore," he said. For 2024, the DAs received about $9 million from the city-parish's general fund, nearly all of which goes to salaries and benefits.
Despite the risks involved and likelihood that many voters would be apprehensive, Moore thinks a tax is worth exploring. Like his counterpart across the Mississippi River, Moore also sees his office's funding shortage as a threat to the public. Alongside the struggle to keep up with technology and the manpower to investigate at full force is the fact the DA's Office is hemorrhaging talented young attorneys to private firms or other agencies able to pay them more.
While Moore is not able to guarantee his ADAs even the smallest of raises each year, places like the State Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney's Office and others come in and offer his staff members positions at $20,000 to $50,000 salary increases, he said.
"If I could somehow get money to add ADA positions, that would stop the bleeding right now," Moore said. "I'm not talking about a lot, just being reasonable for what's needed and necessary to keep up.".
