by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
State Attorney Angela Corey has more than settled into the job.
She met last week with the Northside Business Leaders club and talked about her first 16 months in office.
“People continue to call it the ’new’ administration. I think we are past the honeymoon,” she said.
Corey said the biggest disappointment is the attitude of young criminals.
“The most disappointing thing is we can’t convince young people to stop picking up a gun and using it in a crime. We can’t get them to focus on the ramifications of a crime,” she said, adding interviews with young criminals are eye-opening.
“It’s stunning. They don’t give reasons (for the crime) and they don’t apologize,” said Corey.
“If you spent a day in the courtroom, you would be shocked. You would be stunned by the types of cases we deal with.”
Aside from the day-to-day job, Corey said the biggest challenge is her budget. Her office is funded primarily by the State and she could ask the City for money, but hasn’t and doesn’t plan to.
“I’m happy to say we didn’t ask the City for one additional penny. We knew the City had enough to deal with, so we are doing more with less,” she said.
Corey was sworn in Jan. 6, 2009, and began making changes immediately. She hired Dan McCarthy as her chief assistant and brought in State Rep. Mike Weinstein to serve as another top assistant.
Outside of staff changes, Corey also looked at how the office functioned. One of the things she noticed was the large amount of paper being used every day and an office that wasn’t taking advantage of modern technology.
“We are in the process of going paperless,” she said, explaining that every day such things as the daily list, the jury list and jury records were being printed many times over for distribution. “The fun part of the job is using the technology that’s available.”
Corey said technology played a major role in a recent murder trial in Clay County.
“Not a single hard copy photo went back to the jury room,” she said. “They had a disk, they had their own computer and that benefits the taxpayers.”
She’s also excited about moving into the new County Courthouse in a couple years and defended the bridge that will be built to connect the new building and the old Federal Courthouse that will house her office and staff.
“An additional duty I inherited was working on the new building. The bridge is for safety and efficiency and it makes sense,” she said. “Trust me, for a variety of reasons it was a necessity. It came out of the existing budget. There was no new money.”
Corey’s office consists of 100 attorneys and 225 support staff that includes investigators, advocates, paralegals, diversion specialists, clerical and administration. They handle essentially eight types of crimes and Corey has developed a division for each of those crimes.
Corey and her staff have been busy in the courtroom, as well.
“Last year, we had 320 jury trials. The good news is we tried a lot of bad people on gun cases,” she said. “We are on the same path this year. We are trying tough cases, but we don’t win them all. We are screening our cases more carefully.”
Corey also is working closely with two of the primary groups that helped her get elected in August of 2008: the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Fraternal Order of Police.
“The major issue was there was no communication between the State Attorney’s Office and the officers working the case when the State Attorney’s Office wanted to drop the case,” said FOP President Nelson Cuba.
“If we have concerns the case should be prosecuted, they listen now and that’s all we ask for. We just wanted them to hear our point of view before they dropped a case.”
Cuba said there are times when a prosecutor will approach an officer about dropping a case. Often, the prosecutor will change his or her mind after hearing from the officer. However, even when the police and attorney disagree, Cuba is pleased the line of communication is open and he attributes that to Corey.
“We may not always agree, but at least we are heard,” he said. “In some instances Angela gets involved. She is very hands-on.”
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