Office and Legislative 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.

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.