New District Attorney Robert Turner outlines plan to curb crime crises in the Black Belt

District Attorney Robert Turner Jr. says he hopes to make the Black Belt’s criminal justice system part of the solution to a rising crime rate rather than contributing to the problem.

Turner, a former defense attorney from Perry County, took over the job on Jan. 17 as the first new prosecutor of the 4^th Judicial Circuit in almost 20 years. Turner beat longtime incumbent Michael Jackson in the November 2022 runoff and says he is dedicated to improving his office’s part of the justice system in hopes it will trigger a trickle effect of improved law enforcement districtwide.

Turner said his biggest obstacle is digging through boxes of purple files that line the hallways of the DA’s office in the Dallas County Courthouse. Each file – more than 700 of them – represents a case that hasn’t been resolved by being tried in court, by a plea deal or by dismissal. Every one of the purple files involves a life that was impacted by that incident, he said, and some cases are six or seven years old.

“We’re going through the process now of getting cases assigned to attorneys and staff and putting eyes on all these files,” Turner said. 

Ending retaliation

For Turner, it’s more than a case of justice delayed but of justice being denied. Much of the violence the community has experienced is retaliation-related because the community doesn’t believe law enforcement will do anything about a crime committed against them, he said. 

“One of main reasons (for the uptick in violent crime) is a growing distrust of systems,” Turner said. “They don’t believe the police are moving fast enough, or once it makes it in the system that the DA’s office and judges will move cases fast enough. Because of that, they’re reverting to taking the law in their own hands.” 

The 4th Judicial District includes Dallas, Perry, Wilcox, Hale and Bibb counties. Dallas County’s 2023 murder count of 11 is only four away from surpassing the total number of killings in 2022, and it’s only four months into 2023. Wilcox County is also reeling from a rash of murders, including a drive-by shooting death of a toddler. 

In addition to the shootings, Turner said the community is experiencing other retaliation-related crimes like shooting into houses and houses being set aflame. 

“People are hurt and angry and are resorting to taking the law into their own hands,” he said.

In his district, Turner says law enforcement needs to increase their presence in certain parts of town, because criminals have become “brazen.” A 5-year-old boy was killed while sitting in a car when a shootout took place at Valley Creek apartments in Selma in broad daylight in late March.

Police also need to follow through on felony warrants, some of which are more than a year old without being served, Turner said. “They’re just waiting for the same people to do the next bad thing,” Turner said.

It’s not all COVID

Soft spoken and straight forward, Turner placed partial blame for the backlog on the two-year shutdown during COVID. But he acknowledged that is a small factor considering many cases took place well before COVID. The backlog is systematic and is not new to area law enforcement agencies whose cases have languished in those boxes for years.

“Every file in this office has somebody’s life in it,” Turner said. “There’s a victim who wants closure. There’s a family of a victim who wants closure. Then there’s a defendant who has been accused and deserves his day in court or have evidence collected against him shared with him and his lawyer so they can make decisions of pleading or taking it to trail. The attitude throughout our staff is to not pick and choose. Treat every one of those files as if there’s a life situation in each one.”

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Turner said many case files are missing evidence and other information that hasn’t been collected from law enforcement agencies. That means they aren’t ready to taken before a grand jury or tried or for the DA’s office to offer a plea deal. Victims and families have not been contacted by the DA’s office to update them or get statements. 

“Our job is to protect and prosecute violations of the criminal laws of state of Alabama, but the higher responsibility of the prosecutor is to seek truth in all matters and make sure justice prevails,” Turner said.

Community costs

Many inmates in the Dallas County jail have been there awaiting resolution of their cases for years, as reported many times by Sheriff Mike Granthum. After the Jan. 12 tornado destroyed the jail, Dallas County taxpayers now pay jails across the state to house those inmates as the county rebuilds their facility.

Defendants who have had charges pending for years have been held back from moving on, Turner said, such as “young people who got in trouble in 2018 in a fight over a boy or a girl and now want be a teacher or nurse and seek professions where it is not advantageous to have a crime of violence on them. Those are important too.”

The backlog could have caused residents to miss out on landing a good job, he added, “keeping them in criminal element longer than they should.” 

While focused on clearing out a backlog of old cases, Turner and his team are faced with an uptick of new crimes that his crew will struggle to keep up with if the current pace continues.

Curbing crime

Turner’s strategy to curb crime is to humanize the cases by getting family members to speak out and tell the story of how painful it is to lose a loved one to a violent crime. He hopes sharing their stories will make some potential criminals “think twice about picking up a gun because they won’t want their mom to go through that.”

Turner said it is time the community steps up and say, “enough.”

“We need communities to say, ‘We’re tired of the violence,’ and start coming forward,” Turner said. “Stop aiding and abetting. They need to stop retaliating. Become a witness.”

He plans to look into funding for the witness protection program, saying he’s aware there is little faith in the system. Turner also wants to increase charges for those helping criminals coverup crimes. 

As his office digs into making changes, Turner worries about how crime is impacting the community’s mental health.

“Think about how much this affects the mental health of teenagers losing friends, parents losing children,” he said. “We have a mental health crisis in the Black Belt, and there are not a lot of professionals willing to help those with mental health issues and anger management if they don’t have the proper insurance. There is so much trauma happening in these communities that no one is sharing.”