Democratic challengers say Johnson County DA office needs to change. Can they flip the seat?
The two Democrats competing for Johnson County district attorney both say the office needs to change, arguing there have been workplace culture and retention issues under Republican incumbent Steve Howe.
But they offer different views on how they’d address those concerns as Johnson County’s top law enforcement official.
One candidate is more of an insider, Vanessa Riebli, a longtime prosecutor who spent more than two decades in the Johnson County DA’s office but left over frustrations with leadership. She says she can bring the most experience to the job and restructure the office to maintain quality attorneys and improve case outcomes.
The other is an outsider, Zach Thomas, a criminal defense attorney, who is campaigning on having a fresh perspective, and pushing for expanding diversion programs to reduce prosecutors’ workloads. It’s his second attempt at the office, after earning 48% of the vote in the 2020 general election, to Howe’s 52%.
It’s a rare competitive Democratic primary for Johnson County district attorney, as both candidates compete for a chance to flip the seat long held by Republicans. The primary winner will advance to the November election to have a shot at the seat, in a county that was once a GOP-stronghold but continues to trend more blue.
Seeking a fifth term, Howe faces Republican primary challenger David Greenwald, a top Douglas County prosecutor, next Tuesday.
In 2008, when Howe first won election to the office, registered Republicans in Johnson County outnumbered Democrats two-to-one. Republicans continue to have an apparent edge among voters affiliated with either party, but that gap is shrinking. This year, the election office reported 148,000 registered Democrats, 188,000 Republicans and 120,000 unaffiliated voters.
And Democrats now see a fighting chance in what is the most competitive election Howe has faced since taking over the office 16 years ago.
Thomas hopes to build on his last campaign by framing himself as a change agent.
“I feel like I’m the only candidate that best embodies democratic values and wants to make sure the DA’s office is moving forward,” Thomas said. “My opponent’s platform wants to keep the status quo or go back to something we were doing prior that simply didn’t work. What I believe the public wants is someone who will bring change to the office.”
A Lenexa native, Thomas works as an attorney for the Roth Davies law firm in Overland Park. Since 2020, he said he’s been focused on gaining more prosecutor experience by taking on work as a municipal prosecutor for the city of Gardner and as a special prosecutor for Linn County.
Riebli disagrees with his assessment. She’s painted herself as the candidate who knows the ins-and-outs of the Johnson County DA’s Office, saying her time there has shown her what needs to change, including issues that drove her to leave.
“I spent 21 years as a prosecutor working in the trenches every day. I’ve received calls at 4 a.m. that shots were fired. I’ve worked search warrants, determined what level of homicide was going to be charged. I’ve spent years prosecuting cases,” she said. “I was a supervisor in the office. I also have an accounting background so I understand the budget process. ... He was in the public defender’s office for two years, and is a part-time municipal prosecutor. It’s a completely different level of experience.”
Riebli began her career in Johnson County, working her way up to lead the economic crime unit. She said she’s tried 75 jury trials in her career. She left the office in 2021 to join the Bath and Edmonds law firm in Leawood.
Early voting has started in Johnson County, allowing registered voters to cast ballots in person until Aug. 5, except on Sundays. On Aug. 6, polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Should prosecutors be more specialized?
The candidates both feel internal changes are needed, but differ on how they would set up the DA’s office to tackle cases.
Before Riebli left, she said she was frustrated by Howe’s restructuring of the office. Attorneys were previously assigned to specialized units, such as traffic or sexual assault cases. But Howe moved to a new system of assigning attorneys to different courts, where a group of prosecutors would tackle the caseload under a specific judge, from drug cases to homicides.
“It’s the theory of jack of all trades, master of none. I went from running the economic crime unit and specializing in those cases, to creating spreadsheets for court assignments and having low-level drug cases,” she said. “It really diluted the caseloads so that everybody had a little bit of everything and there was no specialization. And you can see it in court with the lack of subject matter expertise by attorneys supposed to be assigned to these units.”
Howe said he made the change as his office was dealing with a backlog of cases from court shutdowns during the pandemic. He said he has kept heads of each unit, but the trial team system made it so prosecutors didn’t have to run to different courts, and “allowed us to survive the double caseloads and backlog that we experienced. It’s really proven to make us more efficient in handling cases.”
Riebli believes the change has made it harder for attorneys to excel and move up, attributing the restructuring, along with pay inequity in the office at the time, to an exodus of staff members in past years. She said her pay was not in line with similarly experienced male prosecutors, an issue that Howe was criticized for in the last election. He has since bumped pay.
Both Riebli and Thomas have criticized Howe over a loss of section chiefs and experienced prosecutors, citing issues with the workplace culture and a lack of training. Howe has called it natural turnover, especially during the pandemic, and said all 42 of his attorney positions are filled.
If elected, Riebli said she would once again assign attorneys to specialized units, which she feels will let them master skills, build better relationships with witnesses and victims, leading to fairer outcomes. And she is pushing for more training for attorneys, to promote professional development and offer more opportunities for advancement.
“You don’t have specialties, you don’t have core training, you can see how that leads to dysfunction,” she said.
Thomas disagrees with going back to the previous structure.
“I’ve spoken to a number of assistant district attorneys, and they truly fear going back to the specialized unit model,” he said. “From a simple efficiency standpoint, if you’re in the drug unit and prosecuting cases, you may be in front of one judge one day, and at the same time have another defendant with a hearing in front of another judge.
“The benefit of the division system is you have four or five attorneys per courtroom, who know the docket and if they don’t have a hearing pending, they can be in the office working on cases and getting things done.”
Thomas said the units still exist and for higher level crimes, such as a significant sex crime, which would be prosecuted by the special victims unit. And he argued the new system is working based on conviction rates increasing following the change.
He said prosecutors’ workloads and the office’s priorities “are out of whack.” He argues the office should be relying on more alternative methods, such as sending more low-level defendants to diversion and expanding the county’s drug and behavioral health treatment courts, which he pushed for in 2020 and were launched last year.
He believes there are workplace culture issues that need to be addressed. He also ran on that in his last campaign, along with the pay disparities in the office.
“The work culture is absolutely terrible,” he said. “You have an environment that plays favorites where there are individuals denied promotions. That causes issues within the workplace. How do you fix that? You’ve got to work with them, know who is working with you and open up communication to make sure you’re hearing those complaints.”
The need for mental health treatment
Both candidates are pushing for the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office to make mental health, including the use of the new treatment courts, a higher priority.
The drug and behavioral health courts allow defendants with lower level crimes such as drug possession to receive supervision and substance abuse treatment as an alternative to incarceration.
Riebli said in her private practice, about 60% of her clients have mental health or substance abuse issues, and many of those cases require a more nuanced approach than typical litigation.
“One thing I’ve encountered with the district attorney’s office is that they have plea guidelines that are not really taking into account each individual’s circumstance,” she said. “What does that felony conviction do versus the misdemeanor, as far as treatment and supervision? We need to allocate more resources to make sure we’re properly addressing individuals who are accused of crimes and suffer from mental health and substance abuse issues. By doing that, we can help prevent them from coming back into the system.”
Thomas pushed for the treatment courts back in 2020, while Howe voiced skepticism about them being a “miracle elixir.” He argued that his campaign helped move the needle on the issue and feels diversion programs and treatment courts should continue to be expanded.
He also is pushing for Johnson County to “treat kids as kids,” criticizing charging decisions that he feels are leading to a “school-to-prison pipeline.”
“There are so many cases where kids don’t need to be charged in the first place. It’s an issue with school that is handled with suspension or restitution so something is made right. And then they are brought into our court system later on. It makes zero sense,” Thomas said. “And there are issues of overcharging where a child might be guilty of a crime, but then are unnecessarily overcharged and over-prosecuted.”
Both Riebli and Thomas agree there should be stronger leadership and greater transparency in the DA’s office, criticizing Howe for not releasing as much data on cases as he could.
Common themes in their platforms show what are expected to become major talking points in the November election, as the primary winner advances to face either Howe or Greenwald, his Republican challenger.
Democrats hope that recent success in Johnson County will translate to the district attorney’s race, despite the seat being long held by Republicans.
The county’s blue shift hit home in 2020, when Johnson County voted for President Joe Biden, breaking its tradition of support for Republican presidents and after narrowly backing former president Donald Trump in 2016. The county provided crucial votes in reelecting Gov. Laura Kelly in 2022. And voters elected Mike Kelly, a Democrat, as Johnson County chairman.
Democrat-backed candidates swept Johnson County’s nonpartisan local elections last fall, winning all of their races on the Johnson County Community College Board of Trustees, the water board, the county’s largest school districts and in several city council contests. The exception was in Prairie Village, where council candidates backed by the GOP saw more success in the city zoned in on local housing issues.
This story was originally published July 31, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
