Democratic Maricopa County attorney candidate calls gun plea policy a ‘campaign ploy’
Sep 2, 2022, 10:00 AM
Democrat Julie Gunnigle, left, and Republican Rachel Mitchell are facing off in the race for Maricopa County attorney in the November general election. (Facebook Photos)
(Facebook Photos)
PHOENIX – Julie Gunnigle, the Democratic nominee for Maricopa County attorney, on Thursday called a new gun crime plea policy enacted by her opponent an unrealistic “campaign ploy.”
Earlier that day, Republican nominee Rachel Mitchell, the interim county attorney, announced a new policy requiring prosecutors in her office to include prison time in any plea offer for cases involving firearms.
“For those Maricopa County communities that are most impacted by gun violence, I think they will see this blanket policy as the campaign ploy that it is, and it isn’t based in the reality,” Gunnigle told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Gaydos and Chad Show.
“The reality is we need to be attacking gun violence at its root cause instead of just treating it after the fact.”
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Gunnigle is making her second run at the top seat in the nation’s third-largest prosecutorial agency. In 2020, she lost to Republican incumbent Allister Adel by under 2 percentage points.
Adel resigned after a tumultuous tenure in March of this year, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Mitchell to the lead the office on an interim basis on April 20. Adel died of health complications at age 45 on April 30.
Mitchell, a 30-year veteran of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, told KTAR News’ The Mike Broomhead Show on Thursday morning that the new plea policy would act as a deterrent amid a rise in gun violence.
“The word will get around. I’m confident of that,” she said.
Gunnigle doesn’t think the policy have the impact Mitchell says it will.
“Nobody goes out and commits an act of gun violence but first consults the county attorney’s book of plea offers and plea policies,” Gunnigle said.
She also questioned how well prison time itself works as a deterrent.
“The way our criminal legal system is set up is that prison does not provide real rehabilitation,” she said.
“So we have a recidivism issue where about half the time people just come back and reenter the criminal legal system, and this sort of policy only encourages that.”
