Trump Extends Push on DC Crime By Reshaping Busiest Courthouse

Nearly a month ago, President Donald Trump flooded the DC streets with thousands of National Guard troops and federalized the city’s police force, saying it was needed to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital.

But the Guard deployment is now scheduled to last through November. Another move Trump made this week may end up being more influential—for years—in pushing the city to be tougher on crime.

Late Tuesday, Trump submitted three names as DC Superior Court judicial nominees to the Senate for confirmation. Stephen F. Rickard, Elana S. Sutenberg and John Cuong Truong all currently work or have worked as a federal prosecutor in the city. Edward O’Connell, who Trump nominated earlier this year and who is still awaiting a Senate vote, spent much of his career in the US Attorney’s Office in the District specializing in homicides.

It’s an abrupt shift for a court whose current associate judges in DC are about evenly split between former prosecutors and former defense attorneys. By naming more former prosecutors to the 15-year judicial terms, who are often then reappointed over for consecutive terms, Trump is betting he will be able to push the court to take harsher stances on crime long after he’s out of office.

That could include stiffer prison sentences and locking up those defendants charged with violent crimes as opposed to releasing them on the promise to return to court or placing them on GPS monitoring.

“Crime is such a big issue and a high priority,” said Carrie Severino, president of the JCN, a Washington-based judicial advocacy group. “You want someone who has a background of being tough on crime in the city and prosecutors have that reputation.”

The president has the power to nominate judges to local courts in DC, unlike in states. Amid some speculation he would ignore the city’s guidelines for nominating judges, Trump abided by the process, choosing from a group of names provided to him by the city’s Judicial Nomination Commission. Its seven members,appointed by local and federal officials, have been submitting judicial suggestions to the president since 1973. Bypassing the commission and submitting his own names could have subjected Trump to another legal battle on top of the one DC officials started Thursday, by suing the president in federal court arguing the National Guard units were illegal.

Trump has an opening to tip the balance still more. If the Senate confirms his four nominees, he’ll still have another nine vacancies to fill to bring the court back to its 62 judicial positions. He already has his choice in place as the city’s top federal prosecutor—former Fox News host and New York Assistant District Attorney and judge Jeanine Pirro.

“If the president wants to nominate law and order judges to toughen up the system to assert more control over a courthouse that might be considered more lenient, he has the right to do so,” said Adam H Kurland, a law professor at Howard University School of Law. “This is not the same as federalizing the police force and sending in the National Guard.”

During his first presidency, Trump nominated nine judges to the bench, a majority of whom had worked as prosecutors. Former President Joe Biden nominated 17 candidates, half of whom had prosecution backgrounds with the other half having done defense work.

The idea behind the Judicial Commission which identifies candidates for judgeship, was to better ensure diversity in the backgrounds of the lawyers who are nominated. The commission members are District residents chosen by the president, the mayor, the DC Bar, City Council and the Chief Judge of the US District Court. A new member this year is US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, a former DC public defender who oversaw the president’s federal criminal case involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The commission’s role in selecting judicial nominees has long come under criticism, as has the fact that a federal judge is involved in the process of picking a Superior Court judge. In this case, it’s likely that group’s short list was more weighted toward attorneys with the type of backgrounds Trump wants to see than it has in the past, said James Burnham, the former general counsel of the Department of Government Efficiency and now managing partner at King Street Legal in Washington.

“The prosecutions in the city are only as effective as the judges allow them to be. There is need for judges on the bench who are broadly aligned with the touch on crime perspective and that usually fits that of a prosecutor,” said Burnham, who has advocated for the dismantling of the commission.

The courthouse is the city’s, and one of the nation’s, busiest with more than 51,000 new criminal and civil cases filed in 2023, according to its most recent statistics.

The court is expecting additional retirements in 2026, which means more vacancies. And the more vacancies, the more delays in handling cases. Adding to the delays, the DC Court of Appeals—the city’s highest court—has seen an increase in delays as it grapples with two vacancies among its nine justices. That court is also awaiting Trump to nominate candidates.

Court officials are celebrating the new, much sought after judicial nominations to ease the delays in cases that result from the record high number of vacancies.

Those who might be celebrating a wave of former prosecutors taking the bench may have to wait a while before that impact is felt, though.

The chief Superior Court judge, Milton C. Lee, a former attorney with the city’s Public Defender Service, decides which judges handle criminal, civil and juvenile calendars each year. New judges often don’t hear major criminal cases until years after their appointments. And the chief judge is appointed by the nominating commission, not the president.