The job of the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney is among the most difficult of all the 120 Commonwealth’s Attorneys in Virginia. Norfolk is Virginia’s third-largest city and eighth-largest locality. And a legacy of residential, economic, and educational segregation—as well as the resulting concentration of poverty—contributes to a relatively higher rate of violent crime than in other, similar-sized localities in the Commonwealth.
Norfolk is one of the largest and busiest offices in the Commonwealth, with over 40 lawyers and about 45 paralegals, victim-witness advocates, and secretaries, all of whom work with a Norfolk Police Department of close to 700 sworn officers.
Ramin rose through the ranks in Norfolk and hit the ground running in 2022 as Commonwealth’s Attorney, steering the office through a COVID-related spike in violent crime that struck communities nationwide. There has been a 40% decrease in violent crime and homicides since 2022 and a 27% decrease in property crimes since 2023, all while Ramin has implemented criminal justice reforms to make people more safe and the system more fair.
Ramin is proud to serve in the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office alongside close to 90 dedicated public servants. In his second term, Ramin will continue to implement these priorities:
One of Ramin’s first acts as Commonwealth’s Attorney was to restructure the Office to focus on the relationship between geography and crime. The majority of Norfolk’s prosecutors work in prosecution teams assigned to handle cases from one of the two police precincts in Norfolk. They share information with law enforcement and with community partners so that they can help identify the small numbers of people in the community who drive a disproportionate amount of violent crime.
Ramin knows that diversity, equity, and inclusion are a source of strength—no matter how loudly the Trump Administration denies it. That is why Ramin has recruited and retained the most diverse office in Hampton Roads and will continue to do so. Ramin is committed to ensuring that the faces in the office reflect the faces of the people of Norfolk and will continue to make the Office a welcome place for people of all racial backgrounds, for immigrants, for members of the LGBTQ+ community, and for people from all walks of life. Ramin’s prosecutors and staff reflect the best of Norfolk’s and America’s values, and Ramin will continue to bring people together, not drive them apart.
Prosecutors have a fundamental obligation to hold people accountable when they commit acts of violence. That is why Ramin and his senior prosecutors consistently work with law enforcement and members of the community to secure accountability for those people through jury trials. Over the last two years, Ramin’s 40 prosecutors have tried 137 jury trials in the Norfolk courts, one of the highest, if not the highest, numbers for any prosecutor’s office in Virginia.
There is no substitute for a prosecutor seeing the facts on the ground, and in real time. But before Ramin took office, prosecutors in Norfolk did not go to homicide scenes, even though doing so is a recognized best practice.
Ramin changed that. Ramin has gone to nearly every homicide scene in Norfolk during his term, bringing along the prosecutor who will be assigned to try the case, because observing the scene gives them the best information possible to guide their prosecutorial decisions. Ramin has walked many of Norfolk’s blocks in the middle of night, when other prosecutors would be asleep in bed, because it matters.
Ramin also goes to every police shooting scene in Norfolk, because Ramin has mandated that the only person in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office who can decide to charge a police officer in a shooting—or to clear them—is Ramin himself.
Across the country, only 60% of homicide cases are solved, and fewer go to trial. Many cases crumble because witnesses are scared to come forward and cooperate.
That is why Ramin successfully advocated for the first Witness Protection Program in Virginia history. Because of Ramin, witnesses in Virginia, and right here in Norfolk, finally have resources to protect them if they are subject to intimidation. The Office is committed to using this program to encourage people to come forward to help solve cases and then to follow through with accountability in court.
Many prosecutors suffer from burnout, vicarious trauma, and unhealthy coping strategies that prevent them from doing their jobs as well as the public deserves. Ramin has initiated wellness initiatives in the office, like installing an employee breakroom with plenty of natural light, organizing team-building events, and keeping a dedicated wellness expert on staff. Ramin wants to help make sure that prosecutors and support staff in Norfolk still take care of themselves while they take care of others.
The justice system is the primary method of ensuring public safety, but other programs can complement its efforts. Ramin has long supported data-driven, tested alternatives like Norfolk’s violence interrupters—community leaders who diffuse tensions that might otherwise lead to cycles of violence and retaliation. Ramin also supports restorative-justice programs, in which defendants and victims meet to try to heal the harm that criminal behavior inflicts, subject to strict controls and with the consent of everyone involved.
When Ramin took office, Norfolk used a private debt-collection firm to extract non-waivable court debt from Norfolk’s citizens, charging a recovery fee in excess of 20% of every dollar they collected. Ramin used his authority as Commonwealth’s Attorney to remove the profit motive from court debt, dismissing the private collections firm. He enlisted the Virginia Department of Taxation to administer court debt at a much lower rate, saving money both for the people with court debt and for Norfolk taxpayers.
Prosecutors in Ramin’s office undergo continuing education and training on subjects like implicit bias, systemic racism, the history of mass incarceration, and the root causes of crime. Awareness in these areas helps them ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that they prosecute cases on their merits, rather than for impermissible reasons.
Every good prosecutor’s nightmare is sending an innocent person to prison. But the reality is that the American criminal justice system has suffered a plague of wrongful convictions, whether due to police or prosecutorial misconduct, junk science, witness misidentification, perjury, or simple mistakes.
Ramin initiated the office’s first complete forensic review of over 200 cases linked to a disgraced Norfolk detective who went to federal prison for bribery and who was responsible for multiple false convictions, including the infamous case of the “Norfolk Four.”
Ramin has also implemented a policy of providing full access to the office’s file for any lawyer investigating the integrity of her client’s conviction, because real prosecutors have nothing to hide when they do their work right.
The top priority of any prosecutor is to minimize violence, but prosecuting violent crime successfully requires the trust of the community. Criminal justice reform builds that trust by mitigating the effects of overpolicing, overcharging, and over-sentencing.
The trust that comes from Precinct-based community prosecution and a firm commitment to criminal justice reform has allowed Ramin to focus more of his office’s resources on the prosecution of violent crimes—as well as the firearms-possession and firearms-use crimes that are strong indicators of violence to come.
Norfolk has long been a leader in alternatives to incarceration, having been one of the first localities in Virginia to found a Drug Court for those suffering from substance-use disorders, a Mental Health Court for those suffering from mental illness, and a Reentry Court for citizens returning to society. Norfolk is also among the first to implement a Veterans Track in these alternative dockets, offering a helping hand to defendants whose PTSD and other service-related traumas have led them to be criminally charged. Ramin will continue Norfolk’s pioneering support for these important programs.
The Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, in partnership with the YWCA, the Norfolk Police Department, and the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office, opened the first Family Justice Center in Virginia, a landmark achievement in victim-centered services. The Family Justice Center allows victims of domestic and sexual violence to receive services, undergo treatment, and, if they wish, to pursue charges at a single location, helping to address their trauma and to begin the process of healing and closure.
Norfolk has been a leader in providing services for victims and witnesses of crimes, with over a dozen victim-witness advocates on staff. Under Ramin’s leadership, that staff will continue to serve Norfolk’s crime victims with compassion and understanding.
In 2020, the General Assembly passed a landmark expansion of Virginia’s expungement laws, and that expansion is set to take effect on October 1, 2025. That expansion will greatly expand the ability of returning citizens to seal or to erase old convictions that legislators agreed should no longer haunt them.
Once that law goes into effect, Ramin and the Office will hold expungement fairs and clinics to help people who have paid their debt to society move on from their old mistakes.
While individual Commonwealth’s Attorneys have wide discretion in their own cities and counties, true reform must often come from changes to Virginia laws.
Ramin has lobbied the Virginia General Assembly on behalf of the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, other Commonwealth’s Attorneys, and Virginia Progressive Prosecutors for Justice. As Commonwealth’s Attorney, he will continue to advocate in Richmond for these legislative priorities and any other legislation that will benefit the citizens of Norfolk:
The possession and responsible use of marijuana is legal in large parts of the United States and all over the world. Virginia has decriminalized marijuana possession, but marijuana possession remains illegal here. It is time for Virginia to end marijuana prohibition.
Virginia has a $250 million deficit in funding for prosecutors and public defenders. All over Hampton Roads, in Republican and Democratic cities alike, many misdemeanor cases go to trial with no prosecutor in the room, leaving victims at the mercy of defense lawyers and wrongfully accused people at the mercy of the trial process. In some cases, this lack of prosecutorial know-how leads to the conviction of innocent people or the acquittal of guilty people on technicalities.
Just as bad, many parts of Virginia do not have enough lawyers to fill public-defender slots, leading to people languishing in jail for want of a lawyer to represent them.
This is not justice.
That is why Ramin is one of the principals advancing for the Virginia Access to Justice Act, which would require the state government to fully fund the criminal-justice system.
Ramin believes that people who are a danger to the community should be held in jail pending their trials. Ramin also believes that, if an accused person is not a danger to the community, that person should be released from jail.
But in Virginia, magistrates and judges still routinely require people to pay cash bail, even when they pose no threat of further harm and no flight risk.
Nobody should have to pay their way out of jail. Rich people can pay any price, and poor people sit in their cells even after being deemed eligible for release. This unequal treatment criminalizes poverty and privileges wealth.
California, New Jersey, Washington D.C., and other jurisdictions have abolished this outdated practice in favor of pretrial supervision. Ramin has already worked to end cash bail in Norfolk, and he will lobby to end all cash bail in Virginia.
Mandatory minimum penalties tie the hands of prosecutors and judges and prevent individuals from being treated as individuals.
All people convicted in Virginia—even those convicted of minor traffic offenses—are required to pay court fees. Those fees are essentially non-waivable, even for indigent defendants. This blanket requirement is flatly unfair, criminalizes poverty, and catches people in debt traps that can be hard to escape, making it more likely that they will reoffend.
In Virginia, the illegal possession of a minor amount of a Schedule I or II drug—even a single Percocet pill—is a felony that strips a person of the right to vote, to serve on a jury, and otherwise to be a full citizen of the Commonwealth. Reclassification of simple possession as a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to twelve months in jail is more than sufficient to deter the underlying conduct, without depriving people of their rights as citizens.
At present, only incarcerated persons over the age of 60 and persons convicted of crimes prior to 1995 are eligible for parole in Virginia. It is time for the Department of Corrections to assess each of its inmates, with certain exceptions, for release on a showing that they have truly reformed and are ready to reenter the community.
Virginia is one of the few remaining states in America where a felony conviction costs someone their civil rights—including their right to vote and to serve on a jury—forever. Only the Governor can restore those rights. This policy is a racist relic of Virginia’s 1902 Jim Crow constitution and must go.
In 2020, and again in 2025, our Democratic legislators proposed a constitutional amendment to restore the rights of returning citizens after they are released from jail or prison. This amendment advances both civil rights and public safety by giving returning citizens a say in their government and a stake in their society. It must pass the legislature again in 2026, and after that it will go to a vote of the citizens.
Ramin supports this important public-safety and civil-rights measure.