Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. is facing one of his toughest reelection campaigns since he took office in 1998 — from an opponent who spent much of his career as a public defender and has never been a prosecutor.
Beginning in 2007, Matt Dugan rose from the ranks of trial attorney in the County Public Defender’s Office to chief public defender in 2020. He resigned from that post in July after winning the Democratic nomination for DA. Mr. Zappala has said Mr. Dugan lacks the prosecutorial experience to be the county’s top prosecutor. The two are headed for a Nov. 7 general election rematch, after Mr. Dugan beat Mr. Zappala in the May Democratic primary but Mr. Zappala won enough Republican write-in votes to become the GOP nominee.
Legal experts and political observers said it’s not unusual to see candidates run for DA without having been prosecutors, including in Allegheny County.
Candidates from the recent wave of progressive criminal justice reformers like Mr. Dugan are among them. For example, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner was a criminal defense lawyer before becoming the city’s top prosecutor. In 2019, another attorney from the county public defender’s office, Turahn Jenkins, unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Zappala in the Democratic primary.
David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said Mr. Dugan and Mr. Zappala both have considerable experience in the judicial system, just from different perspectives — and that both are qualified to face voters.
“Anyone who has been in the trenches in the criminal justice system has a front-row seat to all the issues and problems in the system. … The choice is between people with experience deep in the system,” Mr. Harris said. “Dugan on his record as chief [public defender] and what he says he’ll do… and Zappala on his record.”
In some ways, Mr. Dugan and Mr. Zappala have similar backgrounds.
Mr. Zappala had never been a prosecutor either before he was appointed by a panel of local judges in 1997 to replace the previous DA, who had resigned to become a county judge. He beat out a few other officials from the district attorney’s office, including the county’s chief homicide prosecutor at the time.
Ron Schuler, a Pittsburgh-based attorney who wrote a book published in 2019 about the history of the city’s legal community, said it’s not uncommon for DAs to have limited prosecutorial experience. He noted that former longtime DA Robert Colville was a Pittsburgh police superintendent before resigning to run for top prosecutor in 1976.
What’s different is Mr. Dugan’s extensive career in the public defender’s office, he said. That doesn’t mean he lacks the qualifications, Mr. Schuler said, but a victory in November would be unprecedented locally.
“That is a bit different than the backgrounds of some of the other folks,” Mr. Schuler said. “Which is not to say [Mr. Dugan] doesn't have trial experience, it just says that he's been on the opposite side of the line.”
How lawyers specialize what they do has also changed over the decades in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, legal experts said. Now more than before, some attorneys focus solely on prosecution, while others focus on defense.
That wasn’t always the case, according to Joe Mistick, a law professor at Duquesne University who was chief of staff to former Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff. Mr. Mistick said Mr. Dugan would probably face a learning curve if elected as the county’s top prosecutor.
Attorneys in Allegheny County used to work on both sides of the criminal judicial system more often, Mr. Mistick said. That continued until the late 1960s to early 1970s, he said.
“There was a time when criminal lawyers would linger in the halls outside courtrooms and have to answer the call of a judge if they needed a prosecutor in a courtroom or defense attorney in a courtroom,” Mr. Mistick said. “And you'd walk in, pick up the file, and try the case. … Since then, it's more likely that attorneys develop a concentration for either prosecution or defense.”
He and other political observers have said the choice for voters is clear-cut in November — either Mr. Dugan, a progressive reformer, or Mr. Zappala, a law-and-order-style Democrat running for a seventh term.
Prosecutorial experience is only one part of the job of district attorney, legal experts and political observers said. It also includes managing hundreds of employees and a budget of over $22 million.
Michael Sances, a political science professor at Temple University, said that because the job is part bureaucratic and part technocratic, candidates without a lot of experience as prosecutors or managing such large offices can face hurdles to winning elections.
“It's feasible that they could do the job, but you have to sort of overcome that argument that even though you've been in a courtroom, you don't have the experience of actually prosecuting a case, which is arguably very different,” Mr. Sances said.
The Democratic primary also showed a clear split even between Democratic voters over whether to support a progressive reformer like Mr. Dugan or a more traditional prosecutor like Mr. Zappala.
Even if Mr. Dugan does not prevail in this year’s election, it’s possible he, or another progressive candidate like him, will prevail in a future election. The national Democratic Party’s views on criminal justice are leading to more DA candidates running on political positions further to the left, Mr. Sances said.
When Mr. Dugan and Mr. Zappala face each other at the polls again, voters won’t just weigh their experiences that are different, but also their basic social philosophies, legal experts said.
“I have some students whose DNA is to be a defense attorney, or to be a prosecutor,” Mr. Mistick said. “And so you know, your values have a lot to do with which side of that equation you choose. The truth is, you can play a role in seeing that justice is done, and people are treated fairly in both roles in both positions. But some people are just, because of their makeup, more inclined to be on one side of the other.”
First Published: October 17, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: October 17, 2023, 4:40 p.m.