WASHINGTON — The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia fiercely defended his office Thursday. The move comes as Matthew Graves is under fire for prosecution rates that dropped to 33% in fiscal year 2022.
“I don’t focus on the criticism,” Graves said. “I’m more worried about what is happening on our streets.”
Graves' prosecution numbers are now on the rise hitting a 53% prosecution rate in the fourth quarter of this year. Additionally, 5.3% of cases were transferred for prosecution with a different agency, bringing the overall number to 58% for the fourth quarter of this year.
According to a press release from Graves' office, the prosecuted cases included charges for kidnapping, carjacking, robberies of commercial establishments, firearms, and murder.
“Our top priority has been to prosecute the drivers of violence in both District Court and Superior Court, to remove the threat posed by those individuals, and to give the neighborhoods they terrorize time to heal,” said Graves.
Overall for the year, prosecution rates sit at 44%. That’s still well below prosecution rates in 2017, which were 65%.
“Some percentage decrease was intentional to find cases that were fundamentally flawed and as a necessary consequence of that would be some percentage decrease,” Graves told WUSA9. “Some of the decrease in fiscal years ‘21 and fiscal years ‘22 was very much not intentional.”
Graves' office later added that it continues to charge 90% of the most serious violent crimes, such as homicide, carjacking, and first-degree sexual abuse, at the time of arrest.
Graves blamed the impact of D.C.’s Department of Forensics Science losing its accreditation in April 2021, making it difficult for prosecutors to test evidence needed for trial. He said his office has now found stopgap measures to increase evidence testing.
“We must do everything we can to vigorously prosecute crime particularly the violent crime that’s currently plaguing our community, and we are doing that,” Graves said. “Prosecution is necessary but not sufficient.”
As for the reasons Graves' office doesn’t prosecute crimes, the U.S. Attorney for DC said it’s most often because witnesses don’t want to cooperate, followed by a lack of evidence or the defendant having a reasonable justification like self-defense.
Seven percent of cases Graves' office decides not to prosecute are at the discretion of prosecutors, likely because prosecutors decided the crime wasn’t that serious or the defendant lacked a criminal history.
“We’re doing everything we can in our lane to attack the crisis that we’re seeing,” Graves said of the crime epidemic in the District.
Regarding the epidemic of underage crime in D.C., Graves said charging a juvenile as an adult comes down to whether there is a larger pattern as opposed to an impetuous bad decision. But he did not provide data breaking down those decisions.
WUSA9 investigative reporter, Nathan Baca, sat down with US Attorney Matthew Graves to ask him why.