Oklahoma District Attorneys Council

The District Attorneys Council was created by the Oklahoma Legislature in 1976.

In 2019, Steve Kunzweiler and member of the Council organized a DA breakfast "where they could all come together for the first time ever" to later "feel comfortable to pick up the phone and call one of the district attorneys if they have a question about proposed legislation" that would affect their work.[1]

The primary function of the District Attorneys Council is to provide a professional organization for the education, training and coordination of technical efforts of all District Attorneys of the State. The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council assists local DAs by providing financial, personnel, and other administrative services upon request. The Council is the administrative agency for the Crime Victims Compensation Board and the state administrative agency for several federal grants.

The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council does not have control over individual district attorneys. Its functions are advisory and administrative support only. The council does not have the power to investigate, stop, or otherwise prevent a district attorney from prosecuting an individual or group.

The District Attorneys Council is under the supervision of the Secretary of Safety and Security. Under current Governor of Oklahoma Kevin Stitt, Major General Thomas H. Mancino is serving as the secretary.

• District Attorneys Council
  • Executive Coordinator
    • Assistant Coordinator
      • Executive Division - serves as direct staff of the Executive Coordinator and to the Council
      • Information Technology Division - provides information to improve information technology services through efficient and effective execution of technological research, acquisition, and testing to local District Attorneys, liaison to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
      • Finance Division - provides budgeting, purchasing, and payroll service to the Council
      • Federal Grants and Programs Division - serves as state administering agency for all federal grants and programs applied for by the Council
      • Victims Services Division - serves as state administering agency for Oklahoma's Crime Victims Compensation Fund as well as staff to the Crime Victims Compensation Board
      • Training and Outreach Division - this division is responsible for training the District Attorneys, and their staff
      • Uninsured Vehicle Enforcement Diversion (UVED) Program - this division manages the state-wide initiative aimed at reducing the number of uninsured vehicles on Oklahoma roadways.

District attorneys in Oklahoma "lobbied for or against 47 bills from 2015 to 2018, according to a study published June 3 by the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Prosecutor and Politics Project."[3][4] In 2019, the council’s top two executives were "registered as agency liaisons to lobby the Legislature."[5]

Toni Hasenbeck authored and filed HB 1639, the OK Domestic Violence Survivorship Act, after a mid-September 2022 Oklahoma House interim study in January 2023—a bill that "would allow a survivor to enter into a lesser sentencing range when evidence of abuse has been substantiated."[6] Criminalized survivor April Wilkens's story and others were used to explain the need for new legislation that could give second look resentencing to many currently in Oklahoma prisons.[7][8][9][10][11] It "offers nuance in sentencing."[12] and the bill was originally called the Universal Defense Act.[13] On March 1, 2023, the bill passed out of the Oklahoma House Judiciary—Criminal Committee unanimously. The Sentencing Project thanked the members for passing the bill out of committee.[14][15] The Oklahoma attorney general seemed supportive of solutions the bill attempts to address.[16] Colleen McCarty, who has also worked on the bill, says that legislation is necessary because the parole process under the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has not helped April Wilkens and other women.[17] Wilkens, for example, has never been able to "use the evidence of her domestic abuse in her appeal for early release."[18] However, due to opposition from the District Attorneys Council, the retroactivity part of the bill was removed before it was advanced to the House. Kathryn Brewer, the agency’s executive coordinator, said that Council raised concerns about unintended consequences of the bill.[19]

The bill was voted on in March 22, 2023 and passed the House in a 91-0 vote. Mother Jones reported that retroactivity was removed to "make the bill more palatable to other Republicans" because the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council is "a powerful lobbying group of local prosecutors" that "reportedly opposes retroactive relief."[20] The Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice released a statement asking the Senate to add retroactivity back in and saying that often the prosecution of current criminalized survivors tried "to keep out the evidence of the abuse because it was prejudicial to their cases." They were "told the Oklahoma House leadership would not hear a bill on the floor that provided 'retroactive relief to people in prison. They were, however, amenable to prospective relief for survivors who have yet to enter the justice system [and that] the prosecution and extreme sentencing of survivors is a problem, but [Oklahoma] will only commit to fixing that problem going forward."[21] Many other Oklahoma organizations, such as DVIS and SheBrews and persons involved in the OK Survivor Justice Coalition voiced their concern but hope in the bill.[22] Hasenbeck said "she plans to develop future legislation to expand the Act so that Oklahomans such as April Wilkens...can have a chance at freedom."[23] The associate director and professor at the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. David A. McLeod, encouraged legislators to add retroactivity back in, citing "upward of 65% of incarcerated women in Oklahoma were in abusive relationships at the time of their arrest."[24] Stephanie Henson, Vice President of the Oklahoma chapter of the League of Women Voters said that HB 1639 would "help modernize our justice system and reduce the number of women who are unfairly punished or receive unnecessarily long prison sentences."[25] Hasenbeck has stated that, because of HB 1639, she has had District Attorneys in her office who dislike the bill "because they don't want to have lookbacks" on their past cases if retroactivity is retained in the language.[26] Later, and to the pushback of survivor advocates, Eric Epplin, the DAC Assistant Executive Director, "said the council was concerned about the language of the bill being too broad and potential re-litigation hearings would be burdensome to families of the victims."[27] [28]

In May 2023, Oklahoma representative Kevin McDugle accused the council of applying "pressure across the system to protect their power" and claimed district attorneys are "deeply embedded" in Oklahoma's branches of government in his attempt to help Richard Glossip. The Council has also "actively sought to undermine Prater’s successor, Vicki Behenna, the county’s first female elected DA." Prater and the Council knows "that if the courts agree that Glossip’s conviction should be overturned, it will be up to Behenna to decide whether to retry the case."[29]

• District Attorney
• Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board

• District Attorneys Council official website