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.” Continue reading →