PORT ANGELES — Larry Freedman and Deb Kelly are proving that statistics can prove anything.
Among other things, the two candidates for Clallam County prosecuting attorney have differed on the incumbent’s conviction rate at trial.
Kelly, 57, faces Freedman, 72, in the Nov. 2 general election. Ballots for the all-mail election go out on Wednesday.
Kelly, the Republican incumbent, has campaigned on state statistics that show her office has achieved a 91 percent conviction rate over the last four years, saying these numbers show convictions at trial.
She compares that success with her predecessor’s 74 percent conviction rate before she took office in 2003.
But Freedman, a Sequim attorney and Democrat who claims that high turnover and other problems in Kelly’s office are causing delays in the criminal justice system, checked the case reports and came up with his own numbers.
“When she started making these claims, I went back in and compiled a list of every case that went to a jury in the last five years,” Freedman said.
“I went back and checked the files on every one of them.”
Freedman said Kelly’s use of the 91 per cent conviction rate in the campaign is “misleading” and “inappropriate.”
“I think somebody gave her that number and then she got defensive about it,” Freedman said.
“She produced all these written materials saying it, and now instead of correcting it and saying ‘No, I made a mistake,’ she digs in her heels and claims that it is correct when it isn’t.”
Freedman’s investigation found:
• 39 percent (37 defendants) were found guilty as charged.
• 24 percent (23) were found not guilty.
• 37 percent (35) were found guilty of a lesser offense.
“Her failure rate at trial is 61 percent,” Freedman told Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce members last month.
“That success is only successful 39 percent of the time.”
Kelly said she got her figures from Washington Courts, a state database.
According to the yearly caseload reports for criminal trials in Clallam County, there were 160 convictions and 15 trials that resulted in acquittals during Kelly’s second term — from January 2007 to August 2010.
That’s a 91.4 percent conviction rate.
“I think the numbers are solid and they speak for themselves,” Kelly said.
“Frankly, the reason I picked the numbers I did is because you can look at them over time and look at them compared to other counties.”
Kelly said the state numbers show her office has done a good job compared to other counties. She said the data is collected the same way in every county.
The statewide conviction rate was 85.8 percent — using Washington Courts’ data for “Criminal Case Resolutions After Trial Commencement” — during Kelly’s second term,
Kelly said that the 91 percent conviction rate includes some convictions on lesser offenses than originally charged.
“I’ve said this in some of the forums,” she said.
“I think the numbers are solid as I define them — criminal case resolutions after commencement of trial. That includes bench trials and jury trials.”
But Freedman said Washington Courts’ data doesn’t tell the whole story.
“This Washington Courts, they get information piecemeal from the court systems around the state and they put it in there,” Freedman said.
“It’s almost never totally correct.”
Freedman said he defines success as a conviction on the crime that a defendant is charged with.
A Peninsula Daily News survey of Superior Court records found that Kelly’s office achieved a 60.2 percent conviction rate at jury trial from 2005 through 2009.
The case list was provided by Clallam County Superior Court administrator Lindy Clevenger. Clevenger said the list contains all criminal jury trials in Clallam County Superior Court for the five-year span.
Many of the 128 cases that the PDN reviewed contained multiple counts. A defendant who was found guilty on one counts but not guilty on another was considered “convicted by jury” in court records.
The results:
• 77 were convicted by jury (60.2 percent).
• 22 pled guilty at trial (17.2 percent).
• 12 were acquitted by jury (9.4 percent).
• 9 trials were dismissed (7.0 percent).
• Two were convicted by the court, two were sent to diversion and two case were unresolved.
• One was acquitted by the court and one resulted in vacation of conviction.
Asked how his numbers could be so much different than Kelly’s, Freedman said: “Because there was some mistaken information in this [Washington Courts] web site that she extrapolated from two or three different sources to make it look like it was 91 percent.”
“There’s got so many errors in there,” he said.
“If she had said we get convictions in 91 percent of all of our cases, I couldn’t have argued with that, necessarily, because 91 percent would include District Court. It would include Superior Court when there is just straight up pleas without going to a jury or anything else.
“But she didn’t do that. She said that it was 91 percent of jury trials.”
“When I challenged her on it, she dug in her heels and got more definite.”
The 91.4 percent conviction rate from Washington Courts’ annual reports are for Superior Court only.
Another comparison Freedman used was 2009. He said Clallam County had 32 trials and 10 acquitted/not guilty outcomes.
According to the list that Clevenger provided to the PDN, there were 19 criminal jury trials in 2009.
Of those, nine were jury convictions, four were guilty pleas and two were acquitted by jury.
One trial resulted in a court conviction, one was acquitted by the court, one was a vacation of conviction and one case was dismissed.
The Washington Courts caseload report for 2009 shows four acquittals in 27 Clallam County trials in 2009.
However, there were 10 acquittal/not guilty outcomes in Washington Courts’ “Criminal Counts Resolved by Result Category” data set.
“I don’t know all the ins and outs of how they collect [the data],” Kelly said.
“They don’t always match up the figures from one category to the other.”
Freedman said: “That’s why it’s so confusing.”
“That’s why I went back and checked it.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.