Thomas
By Elizabeth Turnbull
One candidate to replace King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg who is set to retire after four terms knows the office well and says he would bring a focus on equity combined with public safety to the role.
Stephan Thomas says that he also brings something to the table that others can’t — professional and personal experience of the criminal justice system.
“You’re not going to have a candidate in this race that’s going to be able to talk about growing up on the South side of Chicago, being a survivor of crime, joining a gang when I was thirteen,” Thomas tells CHS. “But then I also have professional experience, I’ve been in the prosecutor world for ten years. You know six of those years I was in the trenches, trying cases.”
Thomas studied at Seattle University School of Law. In 2010, he worked as a Rule 9 intern at the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The next year he became a full-time deputy and went on to spend six years as a trial attorney, doing rotations in “General Felonies, Domestic Violence, and Sexual Assault.”
Satterberg eventually promoted Thomas to Director of Community Justice Initiatives for King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office—a role which he kept until 2019.
Ultimately, he left the office after he felt like it wasn’t receptive to changes he wanted to make and because he suffered the loss of loved ones at the same time—several family members died and his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, among other things.
“It’s difficult and tiring to keep knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking and not seeing any changes. I was done… On top of that I had a lot of personal tragedy in my life.,” Thomas said. “And so I left the office, my wife and I quit both of our jobs, we sold our house, we bought one way tickets to Asia, and took a sabbatical.”
For four months, Thomas traveled through places like Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where he says he began to think about changes for the prosecutor’s office. After their time in Asia, he began working as the director of strategy and implementation for an organization that trains prosecutors called Prosecutor Impact.
He and his wife moved to New Orleans so that she could study to be a hospital chaplain. In October, 2020, they moved back to Seattle and Thomas began working as an adjunct law professor at Seattle University.
Cut to the present day and Thomas is running for prosecutor, alongside Leesa Manion—the current Satterberg’s chief of staff, King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski, and Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell. CHS plans to speak with each of the candidates leading up to the August primary.
The county prosecutor’s race for the office that handles the most serious felony crimes in Seattle and across King County comes amid turbulent times for law and order in the area. In Seattle, 2022 brought significant change as Pete Holmes lost his bid for a fourth term leading the City Attorney’s office. CHS reported here on the early changes to the office from new City Attorney Ann Davison as she embarks on meeting her campaign goals of overhauling Seattle’s approach to prosecuting lower level misdemeanor crimes and its civil litigation. More recently, she has launched a new initiative promising to speed up the prosecution of the city’s misdemeanor crimes to help clear a backlog of cases from the pandemic.
Friends, I am proud to announce I am running for King County Prosecutor! I am running to be the next King County Prosecutor because it is time to transform how we do justice in King County. Join our movement by sharing this video, and donating today at https://t.co/SbgOrkE7aJ pic.twitter.com/QuzpLCTBmb
— Stephan Thomas for King County Prosecutor (@stephanthomaskc) February 1, 2022
Thomas is only beginning to build his campaign to change things at the county level. As of last week, Thomas said he has raised roughly $40,000 in fundraising.
Thomas’ campaign is highlighting issues like gun violence, transparency and public safety, while also pushing for an end to cash bail, and fighting homelessness.
His support includes State Senator Joe Nguyen, and State Reps Tara Simmons, Jesse Johnson, and Jamila Taylor, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, and Lisa Daugaard of the Public Defenders Association.
After his experience in the prosecutor’s office, Thomas is also hoping to implement certain metrics called Prosecutor Performance Indicators as well as hoping to redefine what success means in the office. For Thomas that means focusing on bringing justice to the victim and looking deeply into what caused the behavior of the perpetrator before making a legal decision.
“If you are a victim, you’re provided with the resources that you have to heal and you’re coming back and sharing that story of healing, hope and how you were able to move forward,” Thomas said. “[And there will be] redemption for people who have committed crimes and harmed people.”
Thomas hopes to get people who need mental health care or addiction relief with services they need and to connect them with community organizations. At the same time, he believes that the prison system should still be used for people who are proving dangerous.
“If we’re talking this is an addiction issue, this is mental illness, you’re going into a store you’re stealing something, yeah that’s going to be something that a community-based organization could be all on top of that,” Thomas said. “Quite quite different scenario right if you’ve raped ten people, you’re harming children, you’re running a criminal enterprise and so I really want people to really begin to separate out people.”
With a political split in Seattle between those who want to dismantle the police system for the sake of racial equity, and those who believe their city is a dangerous place where crime is under-addressed, Thomas says that he is the candidate for both sides.
“Fundamentally if you dig down deep into it they’re all saying the same thing, just coming at it from different angles,” Thomas said. “Everyone wants to have a healthy, safe and thriving community.”
Many have criticized the current state of the prosecutor’s office as being a “revolving door” for crime, for leaving criminal cases remain unaddressed and allowing offenders go on to commit the same crimes after being discharged. Thomas believes his approach combining prosecution with services and diversion could help resolve some of the underlying issues that cause people to cycle back into the system and reoffend.
“I don’t think the answer to that is to leave people in jail for longer and longer because eventually, the vast majority of people are coming back at some point in time. And when they do come back, what are we going to do?” Thomas said. “What are the resources that are going to be set up so we make sure we actually care for them and set them up for success? Those are the conversations we need to be having.”
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What a nightmare. We need a moderate prosecutor, not an ideologue. He sounds like Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco prosecutor that is being recalled for decriminalizing crime.
It’s all code for going easy on criminals. These people are blinded by their fanatical ideology. The irony is most of the people victimized by increasing chaos are the same people these fanatics pretend to care about.
I used to be lockstep with the left on every issue. Over the last couple of years a huge divide has opened up between my views and how the local left talks about and manages homelessness and public safety. I don’t think I have changed, rather they have gone off the rails in response to right wing extremism. It is time for a course correction and for reasonable people to speak up against extremism in all its forms.
Unfair, dismissive attitude. Both of you. Thomas has a great vision and very well equipped and qualified for this position.
Crime is more unfair to the victims James
Could you please also profile a prosecutor candidate running on a more moderate platform? This guy sounds like NTK-lite.
Turnbull with a great article. Stephen Thomas is aligned on almost all my views. I would love him to run and win!
At this point, I will support the candidate with the most aggressive prosecutorial stance.
What progressives miss: It’s not even about whether locking some individual up will (or won’t) reform them. It’s about sending a message to the other criminals – “maybe think twice, because there will be consequences now”. You can have lenient policies for a while, and those might actually help some people. But if you do it for long enough, criminals realize it’s open season and act accordingly.
NTK II. God help us.
These comments puzzle me. I don’t see a hint of anything that could reasonably be termed “extremism” in this person’s profile. On the contrary he seems to strike a good, thoughtful balance between public safety and the recognition that the traditional lock-em-all-up mentality can never be made truly fair and doesn’t serve us well in any case. (If prosecutorial leniency were really the problem, then cities with the most aggressive prosecutors would be the safest ones — and they’re not.) Whether or not I vote for Thomas (it’s way too early to decide that), this article indicates he’s a welcome addition to the race.
As long as there is poverty, there will always be crime. We can lock up half of the city of FW and there will be crime. Lets address poverty and maybe crime will be reduced.