Here are excerpts from the interview.
- Olivia Biagi
Regarding figures on court outcomes, Abraham said: "You can make figures say anything you want. Those figures that you sent to us can make people think anything they want.
". . . You can lie about the number of cases. You can lowball your cases. You can raise the conviction rates; you can do anything you want with them. But those figures don't necessarily tell the story of this office."
In her opinion, Abraham said, justice should not be based on numbers. "I'm a true public servant. I don't do justice by numbers.
". . . Every day we walk into court ready to do the right thing, to give victims and accused a fair trial, and while we're concerned about crime rates and we're concerned about having the right outcome, the right outcome is not done by numbers.
"The right outcome is done by doing the right thing and having the proper result."
Abraham said that by focusing on the numbers, a prosecutor might become motivated by just getting convictions, regardless of the quality of the "wins."
"There's a terrible price that we pay for prosecutors who want to please the media, or please their electorate, by saying, 'Oh, um, we had a 98 percent conviction rate. Isn't that great?'
"I can do that. I can tell you how I can do it: I just don't charge crimes that the person is really culpable of, I plead them out to something or anything just to get the right numbers. I can have a 100 percent conviction rate, or maybe 98."
To do that, she said, a district attorney would merely say, "I'm going to charge less, plead down most, make deals, raise your conviction rate. Problem solved."
When asked how she thought she and her office should be evaluated, Abraham was clear that it shouldn't be by numbers.
