Ryan Thompson is a Baton Rouge public defender and a civil rights attorney. He’s running as Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore’s first challenger since he was elected 18 years ago.
Thompson is a part of legal teams on well-known civil rights cases, including suits surrounding the BRAVE cave, a warehouse where Baton Rouge conducted aggressive interrogations that are alleged to often contain strip searches and brutality.
WRKF Report for America corps member Alex Cox interviewed Thompson ahead of the November 3 election to discuss Moore’s track record, his vision for the office if elected and more.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ALEX COX, BYLINE:
I just kinda wanna start with a warm-up question here — start a little philosophical. What does justice mean to you?
RYAN THOMPSON: Justice looks like our elders being protected in our community. Justice looks like being able to go to the mall and drop your children off and they be able to return. Justice looks like not having to worry about whether or not you're gonna be safe in this community.
It also looks like equal justice, meaning that all communities are treated the same irrespective of race, color, creed, or what college you go to.
COX: I think the point of difference here is the experience debate. You're against 18 some odd years of experience in office. He's also well-connected and generally well-liked in political circles. Why should people go for something new?
THOMPSON: I worked in the office of the public defender. I started as an investigator in the office.
From an investigator, once I passed the bar, I skipped over being a misdemeanor assistant and went straight to felonies because I had worked in the office for so long and understood the ins and outs. I handled thousands of cases as a public defender. I've had trial experience. I have federal trial experience.
I also was so good at the job that I was made section chief. I was training young attorneys. I was even training individuals who had been barred longer than me.
So I have a wealth of experience when it comes to the courtroom — experience and litigation and trial experience. To that point, the reason that the viewers, when you're talking about the difference between the office's current experience, my opponent, you're talking about 1,800 homicides over the last 18 years.
If that's the experience that we're talking about, then no, I don't have that experience.
COX: You've criticized Moore and his office for the deals he's made and saying he's light on crime and inequitable. Can you expand on that for me?
THOMPSON: Well, I'm criticizing him for not keeping us safe, right? That's the criticism. I'm criticizing the unequal justice in the community. I'm criticizing the decisions that he has made.
That's what I'm critical about — that we don't feel safe. One of the biggest things that we have received from voters and engaging them, whether we're talking Zachary, whether we're talking Baker, Central, Baton Rouge — everyone does not feel safe in this community under this current administration.
COX: So when you're in a situation where you're walking into an underfunded office and even an underfunded police department, where you're low on resources, you're not always going to have the best cases in the world. How would you manage your resources better? How would you not plead these people out?
THOMPSON: I think we have to start from the beginning. Underneath the Thompson administration, we're talking about working with these officers, 'cause it starts with the investigation and then the arrest. We plan on being involved at the police academy training, working with these officers, constantly reviewing body-worn cameras with these officers.
We're gonna be screening cases to effectively ensure that if we decide to make a billing decision and adequately charge someone with the crime that they've committed, that we have the evidence for it; therefore, there will be no reason to plea out, especially for violent crime. And I wanna be very clear, my focus upon taking office day one is violent crime.
COX: Moore has criticized you specifically on the kind of people you chose to defend and the kind of cases you chose to take on, specifically saying you take on gang violence cases and these terrible crimes, and I just wanna get your response to that.
THOMPSON: I'm a public defender. I don't get a chance to choose who I represent. The Constitution requires that I represent individuals and provide effective representation.
That's exactly why I chose to go work in the public defender's office for indigent people in this parish, because I felt that they should have talented lawyers to represent them and provide effective representation. When you leave out the fact that I've done public defender work for that time, I think it is disingenuous; I think it misleads people.
My direct answer to that is that I'm not ashamed of the work that I've done. I've done darn good work as a public defender, and I'm a proud public defender, and I'm not gonna run from that.
COX: The lawsuit — the DA's office is currently suing the city parish. Do you agree with that move?
THOMPSON: I believe that everyone should pay their fair share, is what I believe. The suit is already filed. My position is that the other cities should be added to that as plaintiffs.
And if this goes the way that I want it to go on November 3rd, I will be seeking to join those other cities to come in, to actually pay their fair share to make sure that we have an adequately funded district attorney's office.
COX: When you're talking specifically about the ground-up approach, like working with the police and police academy, I don’t see how the office you're walking into has the resources to do that presently — and even if the lawsuit is won — how the city parish can swing giving you the kind of resources to properly do that.
THOMPSON: Let me ask you this. Have you worked for that office?
COX: No, I haven't.
THOMPSON: Right. Until someone is actually in that office and sees exactly what the resources are, then I don't think anybody's really in a position to really say how those resources should be spent. But what I can tell you is, I do believe when you're focusing specifically on certain crimes, violent crime to be specific, that I think we would have the resources to do the things that we're talking about doing, and I think that the people, with confidence in the office, would fund something like that once we get in office and get to running.
