Abraham thinkin’: DA Lynne Abraham answers reporters’ questions at a recent press conference.
May 10–17, 2001
cover story
DA Lynne Abraham says she’ll win because of her record — and the voters who like her no-nonsense style.
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Abraham thinkin’: DA Lynne Abraham answers reporters’ questions at a recent press conference. | |
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham emerges from the dimly lit synagogue, where she has just addressed families of murder victims gathered for a candlelight memorial, into the brightness of a spring afternoon. The cat hairs dotting Abraham’s navy suit pants glimmer in the sun. She takes a few steps toward the baby blue Crown Victoria waiting for her on North Broad Street.
But before the district attorney reaches the car, an African-American woman dressed entirely in purple — from her wide-brimmed straw hat to her pumps — approaches her, offering a tentative hug. The woman explains that her pregnant daughter and grandson were killed in a fire and, she laments, the arsonist who lit the blaze has not been snared.
Abraham listens with a sympathetic gaze and tells the woman to hang in there. "It will make you a stronger person," she assures with a pat on the shoulder.
Seconds after the purple-clad mourner moves on, an African-American woman stopped at a red light on Broad Street rolls down her car window. From across two lanes of traffic, the driver shouts her support to Abraham, who is still making her way down the sidewalk.
The district attorney replies with a wave and a mandate. "Take care of that little person sitting next to you," she yells, as the woman and her baby speed away.
Finally, Abraham turns back to the reporter standing beside her.
"You were asking me if I’ve lost support in Philadelphia’s black communities? Do you want to ask me that same question again?"
During her 10-year reign as Philadelphia’s district attorney, Abraham has experienced her share of ups and downs. Her ultimate achievement, and the one Abraham insists matters most, is that Philadelphia is safer than it was when she took office in May 1991. What you won’t hear Abraham bragging about, however, is the reputation she has acquired as a politician whose policies create racial divisiveness.
As her opponent Alex Talmadge never lets you forget, the District Attorney’s Office pressed assault charges against three black George Washington High School Students, but not the white students involved in a racially motivated fight. She charged African-American 11-year-old Miriam White — who suffers from severe psychological problems — as an adult after she stabbed a white neighbor to death. This occurred around the same time that the District Attorney’s Office charged three white teenage boys as juveniles for raping a black girl at Veterans Stadium. And Abraham twice dismissed murder charges against police officer Christopher DiPasquale after he shot an unarmed black man named Donta Dawson (DiPasquale was ultimately charged with manslaughter).
As Philadelphia’s chief law enforcement officer, Abraham is responsible for the prosecution of more than 70,000 criminal cases annually. For this reason alone, Abraham says, "Not everybody is going to agree with every decision I make."
But the perception of racial bias — regardless of how insignificant Abraham would like you to think it is — has allowed Talmadge to seriously challenge her. Talmadge’s qualifications for district attorney are lackluster, but enough black and liberal white voters are disenchanted with the status quo that Abraham can’t ignore him.
For the most part, these voters became disenthralled with Abraham in January 1998. That’s when she — and the other executive committee members of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association (PDAA) — opposed President Clinton’s nomination of Common Pleas Court Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson to the federal bench. Massiah-Jackson would have become Philadelphia’s first female African-American federal judge. But Abraham and her PDAA colleagues criticized Massiah-Jackson for her "unusually adversarial attitude toward police and prosecutors," and said her record demonstrated "a tendency to be lenient with respect to criminal defendants." Massiah-Jackson bowed out under all the pressure.
A poll taken in early 1998 found that 49 percent of blacks in Philadelphia approved of Abraham before she derailed Massiah-Jackson’s nomination. Prior to that episode, just 14 percent of blacks said they disapproved of the district attorney. After opposing Massiah-Jackson’s nomination, her popularity among blacks took a nosedive: 28 percent said they approved of Abraham, compared to 59 percent who didn’t.
These stats may mean little when weighed against the fact that the city’s most politically powerful African American, Mayor John Street, is intimately involved in Abraham’s campaign. While Street is politically bound to endorse Abraham — she rallied for him during the mayor’s race, and Street’s rivalry with NAACP President Jerry Mondesire rules out the possibility of him backing Talmadge, anyway — the mayor’s support transcends mere obligation.
He reportedly sits in on strategy meetings but according to the latest company finance reports, he hasn’t contributed anything yet. As of April 30, Abraham’s campaign was reporting a total of $260,274.79 in the bank.
Street views the District Attorney’s Office as a vehicle to further his own agenda, says Eleanor Dezzi, Abraham’s campaign director. The first day Street took office, she adds, he began forging "a partnership" with Abraham.
"I think Mayor Street’s relationship with Lynne is based on similar philosophy," Dezzi says. "They both see the neighborhoods as real lifelines back to Philadelphia."
Michael Sklaroff, who serves as chair for Abraham’s re-election committee, says that Street is reciprocating the help Abraham gave him during his run against Republican Sam Katz. But, Sklaroff adds, Abraham and Street share a common interest in protecting the safety of Philadelphians.
"The mayor is her most important supporter and advisor," Sklaroff says.
He wants to be certain voters recognize this.
Abraham’s palm card and radio ad feature the district attorney standing beside two smiling Philadelphia mayors — Ed Rendell and Street.
Members of the building trades unions ushered Street voters to the polls in November 1999, and these same guys will certainly be put to work for Abraham later this month.
How the unions’ political machine stacks up against U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah’s — the Congressman endorsed Talmadge late last month — remains to be seen, but a lot is riding on the outcome.
Even if Talmadge loses but loses by a respectable margin, the opposition — including local players Mondesire, attorney Charlie Bowser, John White, Jr., and City Councilwoman Marian Tasco — will have achieved a victory. Abraham foes will point to a close election as a referendum on her policies.
Tasco is "terribly angered" by many of the district attorney’s recent decisions. Not surprisingly, Abraham began to fall out of her favor in 1998.
"She had no business campaigning against Frederica," Tasco says.
Since then, Tasco has disagreed with a number of Abraham’s decisions. The councilwoman, who recently sponsored a bill to stop predatory lenders from bilking homeowners, insists the practice wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent if Abraham’s office cracked down on it. Tasco also echoes a charge made by Talmadge — that it was unjust to charge 11-year-old Miriam White as an adult.
But Abraham stands by these decisions and everything else in her record. In media interviews immediately following Massiah-Jackson’s decision to pull herself out of consideration, Abraham stressed she felt a moral obligation to keep the judge off the federal bench. When asked last month if she would handle the situation differently today, the district attorney was less adamant but not apologetic.
"One thing you learn in life is that you can’t rewrite history, so I don’t dwell on it," says Abraham, who turned 60 in January.
And if some Philadelphians back Talmadge as a result of the Massiah-Jackson controversy, "That’s a poor reason to support somebody," she adds.
Anti-death penalty advocates are using the district attorney’s race as a referendum on capital punishment. Talmadge claims he would call for a moratorium on executions while the fairness of the system is studied.
There are nearly eight times as many blacks from Philadelphia on Pennsylvania’s death row as there are whites, according to state Department of Corrections statistics. Of Pennsylvania’s 134 death row inmates prosecuted in Philadelphia, 111 are black, six are Hispanic, two are Asian and 15 are white.
Seventy-four of these death row inmates from Philadelphia were convicted after Abraham took office in May 1991. (Their racial breakdown is: 62 blacks, seven whites, one Asian and four Hispanics.).
It is figures like these that led the New York Times Magazine to run the headline: "America’s Deadliest DA" on its cover in 1995, in reference to a profile of Abraham. Abraham insists the article can only be viewed as a "caricature" of who she really is.
A sizable number of potential voters also say Abraham lost their votes immediately following the Republican National Convention. The District Attorney’s Office pressed forward with hundreds of flimsy — at best — cases against political protesters and requested astronomical bails of up to $1 million.
Of 192 defendants charged with misdemeanors who opted for Municipal Court trials, 97 had their cases dismissed, 50 were acquitted, and the prosecution withdrew charges in 22 other cases.
Another 31 RNC protesters were charged with felonies. Not a single person has actually been convicted of a felony, however — some defendants were acquitted, others had their charges dropped or remanded to misdemeanors.
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You talking to me? Abraham looks on as Talmadge speaks during the debate. | |
Abraham is pressing forward with an appeal of a judge’s decision to throw out felony charges against three activists accused of assaulting Philadelphia police officers, including Police Commissioner John Timoney.
Abraham says the District Attorney’s Office "looked at the evidence" from arrests made during the Republican Convention and determined charges were warranted. She brushes off the possibility that prosecutors overreacted. The low percentage of convictions does not reflect excessive charges, she contends.
"If we didn’t have strong cases, we dropped the charges," Abraham says. "The honorable thing to do was to drop the cases."
Kris Hermes, spokesperson for the R2K Legal Collective, believes the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is anything but "honorable."
"[Abraham] practiced malicious and frivolous prosecution," he says. "It is true the DA offered plea bargains at the beginning, but with regard to the felonies, there was little willingness to plea bargain."
Abraham denies her office "targeted" any activists for prosecution, as some civil rights attorneys have alleged. "We didn’t arrest anyone — the police did," she says.
Hermes says the district attorney cannot shift responsibility for 420 prosecutions onto the police. For instance, when 70 so-called "puppetistas" were arrested in a West Philadelphia warehouse, they were held on a sheriff’s bus for more than eight hours, Hermes says.
"I would speculate the police were negotiating with the DA to determine whether to prosecute these people," he comments.
Ultimately, Judge James DeLeon threw out the charges against everyone arrested in the warehouse.
