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Lawmakers Consider Consolidating Some of Oklahoma's 27 DA Districts

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State lawmakers are looking at consolidating some of Oklahoma’s 27 district attorney districts.

Suzanne McClain Atwood with the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council told lawmakers the state’s 324 prosecutors average 359 new cases a year, which is on top of cases carried over from the previous year.

"You all expect a certain caliber of representation from your prosecutors' offices, and you also expect us to be able to recruit a certain caliber of prosecutor to those offices," McClain Atwood said. "I'm just going to tell you, I've been here 25 years — that's continuing to deteriorate. I am concerned about it."

The turnover rate among the state’s prosecutors is about 70 percent.

"They're in the courtroom all the time, so we are able to recruit young lawyers, get them in there, and then what typically happens is at year four or five, you're looking at, 'OK, I could go out to a private firm, make significantly more money and not have this kind of a workload,'" McClain Atwood said. "So, we lose them about about [year] four or five."

Part of the problem is funding. The state provides district attorneys less than half their budgets, and the DAs must generate the rest themselves.

Lawmakers think merging some busier districts with less-busy ones could equalize funding and help prosecutors do their jobs better.

Districts range from one to five counties in size and 35,000 to 650,000 in population. McClain Atwood said responsibilities are very different for urban prosecutors, who often specialize, and rural prosecutors, who are jacks of all trades.

"Trying a murder case today, a drug case tomorrow, a traffic ticket, DUI court and handling a wide variety of things, along with the county commissioner who walks in and says, 'I got a dead horse on the side of the road. What do I do?'" McClain Atwood said.

District 15 is one that lawmakers are looking at. It consists solely of Muskogee County, but felony filings are significantly higher there.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.