From big pond to small pool, former DA metes out justice

By Jean Reid Norman

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

For the 10 years Gary Booker was head of the DUI unit in the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, prosecuting high-profile cases and working in the media spotlight, he often wondered why anybody would want to work in a city prosecutor’s office on the small stuff.

But for the past five years, he’s been working in the city prosecutor’s office in Boulder City, where he’s more likely to handle a littering citation than a felony drunken driving charge. And he’s a convert.

“Now I see. They live longer,” he said. “I like the small pond just fine. Absolutely.”

Booker, 52, a Las Vegas resident since childhood, left the district attorney’s office and its trappings of power and influence in 2004. He described his departure after 18 years as the result of several factors: his health (“I was over 300 pounds and had caught pneumonia”), his wife (“she was pushing me to make a change”) and a basic difference of opinion (“there was a different philosophy in the office and I liked the old philosophy”).

He went into private practice with fellow Deputy District Attorney James Hartsell, defending the sorts of people they had previously been prosecuting.

Not long afterward, he learned Boulder City Attorney Dave Olsen was looking for some part-time help to handle criminal prosecutions in Boulder City Municipal Court. Booker mentioned to Olsen’s paralegal, Susan Murphy, that he might be interested.

“As soon as I heard one of the premier DUI prosecutors in the state was interested in working with me, I immediately called him for an interview,” Olsen said.

Olsen knew Booker’s work by more than just reputation. Earlier that year, Booker had been the deputy district attorney in charge of prosecuting Olsen’s own DUI case.

The city attorney had been a fairly easy case to prosecute, Booker said. Olsen insisted on weekend jail time and other terms that were stricter than were generally given to a first offender.

“I wanted to be able to sit across the table from those accused of DUI and look them in the eye and say, ‘I’m not asking anything of you I didn’t demand of myself,’” Olsen said.

But there was a personal stake in it for Olsen: He had respected Booker long before then because of Booker’s work at statewide conferences on DUI.

“It mortified me, frankly, because it’s bad enough to be arrested for DUI, but to be prosecuted by one of your heroes made me sick to my stomach,” he said.

As a defendant, Olsen said he found the high-profile prosecutor in the cowboy hat “to be very fair.”

As a city attorney looking for a prosecutor, Olsen said, “I thought he would do that kind of great work for Boulder City as well, and he has never disappointed me.”

It was a coup for Boulder City, Municipal Judge Victor Lee Miller said.

“He has the respect of attorneys who come out here,” Miller said. “He knows what you can and can’t do with a criminal case, and no attorney can come out here and blow smoke.”

But it’s also been a place where Booker, who earns $40,000 a year for 10 to 12 hours a week, has had a free hand to fashion a court system he is proud of.

He holds pretrial conferences with defendants and their lawyers in a small office behind the municipal courtroom at 501 Avenue G. He has the police report in front of him and is able to listen to the defendant’s side of the story and weigh the evidence on both sides.

He looks for a solution that meets his goal for “better justice,” he said. If he and the defense can come up with a plea deal that satisfies that requirement, he writes a memo on a form attached to the police report. It goes to his paralegal, Joan McConnell, who types it into the municipal court system. The defendant can head back into the courtroom, and Miller will have the agreement on a computer screen in front of him.

The case can be resolved right then and there, and Booker never has to leave his seat. Instead, he moves onto the next case and the next negotiation.

It allows Booker to spend more time with offenders and find ways to help them instead of punish them, he said. During his tenure at the district attorney’s office, he learned that’s the more effective way to administer justice.

After a few years of watching drunk drivers return to court year after year, Booker began the Serious Offenders Program, which later evolved to Clark County’s Drug Court. It forces offenders to stay away from alcohol or drug abuse using strict supervision and a carrot-and-stick approach. Offenders have the opportunity to have the DUI go onto their record as a less serious offense, but if they fail, there’s hard time to serve.

“We found if we can stop them from drinking for three to four months, the brain begins to rewire itself and reduce the cravings,” Booker said.

The program has had an 85 percent success rate, he said. The key is to catch offenders who have the potential to change before the consequences have become too great, such as a DUI with death, he said.

He has made a believer of Boulder City Police Chief Thomas Finn, who, as a former DUI victim, has made cracking down on drunken driving a hallmark of his career.

After Booker explained the program to him, Finn said, “I thought, ‘It’s one thing to use punishment to stop DUIs, but it doesn’t always work. Treatment is a good approach, a great alternative to locking them up.’”

The smallness of Boulder City helps in Booker’s efforts. The caseload is not as heavy and offenses are usually not as serious, allowing him more leeway to incorporate preventative measures in his plea deals.

“By taking care of the little problems, you don’t get the big ones,” he said. “Kids out here, they do goofy stuff, but they’re not putting guns to old ladies’ heads and robbing them.”

His big city experience gives him a measure of judgment that he thinks helps him spot the offenders who need to be punished.

“I know most of the stories and see where things are going,” he said. “I like to eyeball folks. I don’t want to put a Band-Aid where I should have wrapped gauze.”

Booker also continues to work as a defense attorney in Las Vegas during the rest of his week. He has the same goals there as he does when he’s prosecuting: to find the fair resolution.

“The right thing to do is generally the right thing to do, no matter what side you are on,” he said.